Last month we announced the limited availability of Vercel Edge Config, an ultra-low latency data store for near-instant reads of configuration data.
Edge Config is now generally available, alongside integrations with Statsig and HappyKit for A/B testing and Feature Flags.
Note: This post is historical. Product names and runtime guidance may have changed. For new projects, use Vercel Functions with the Node.js runtime and Fluid compute. Use Routing Middleware for request-time routing before a response completes.
Link to headingWhy Edge Config
Edge Config is a distributed data store optimized for near-instant reads. By pushing data to every region, before any requests are made, you're able to read that data from a Vercel Function or Routing Middleware immediately upon request.
Because data is pushed to every Vercel region at write time, we've seen most lookups return in 5 ms or less, and 99% of reads will return under 15 ms.
This speed and global distribution make Edge Config great for:
A/B testing
Feature flags
Maintaining complex and dynamic redirects
Configuring and updating bespoke request blocking rules, without a redeploy
Link to headingEdge Config for Experimentation
Paired with tools like Statsig, HappyKit, Split, and other experimentation partners, Edge Config can drastically improve performance and load experience. By integrating these tools with Edge Config, their data gets pushed to the edge when it's changed. When a user visits your site, no extra network requests are needed to retrieve the config data. What's more, since the data is globally distributed, latency for the initial read is reduced.
“Edge Config is an awesome tool for our development process. It enables us to continuously work and deploy our application without worrying about latencies or hosting our own solution.”
Alongside the beta release of Edge Config, we're introducing new integrations with both Statsig and Happykit.
Statsig is an experimentation and feature management platform helping businesses use data to move faster and build better products. Vercel users can now leverage Statsig's server SDK at the edge to grab configurations and bucket users into feature experiences.
"Edge Config allows Statsig users to read updated feature flag and experiment configs at the Edge. With this release we’re able to push config updates to the Edge, where our users can read up-to-date configs with ultra-low latency, reducing serverless cold-start times and a greatly improved end-user experience."
HappyKit is a powerful feature flagging service for your Next.js applications that’s trusted by hundreds of projects to serve over a billion feature flags since its creation. HappyKit works directly with Vercel Edge Config — this allows you to update feature flags easily, without performing a redeploy. And you can evaluate feature flags immediately, usually in only a few milliseconds.
We're actively working with our partners in the space to build further first-party integrations.
"Edge Config provides our customers with an easy way to get significantly improved performance for feature flag delivery, and thus application start-up. Developers can use this to help move them towards more modern feature delivery and measurement practices. I'm incredibly excited for what's to come in the space."
Link to headingGet Started
You can get started today with an integration, Edge Config SDK, or by using one of our examples.
import { get } from '@vercel/edge-config';
const featureFlagEnabled = await get("featureFlagEnabled")Get started with Edge Config
Edge Config is now generally available. Check out the documentation or deploy it on Vercel.
We’re excited to hear what you think, and how you’re using Edge Config. Give us feedback in the Vercel Community.