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Buildhound vs Vercel Daemons

Vercel Daemons run long-running Linux containers next to your app on Vercel, and name self-hosted CI runners as a use case. It is a public beta. Buildhound runs your jobs on machines you already have, each in a fresh VM.

Set up by hand
  • Checked 16 October 2026
  • No referral agreement

At a glance

Clean runners on machines you already have$24a machine a month on Team
Vercel DaemonsLong-running containers on Vercel, in public betaNo pricepublished in the beta

Vercel Daemons publishes no price we can put beside a machine, so this page compares how each works.

Choose the one that fits

Choose Vercel Daemons when

  • Your team already deploys its app on Vercel.
  • You want Linux CI runners where you deploy, with no new vendor.
  • A public beta's limits, which will likely change, fit your CI.

Choose Buildhound when

  • You have machines already, Macs included.
  • Each job should get a fresh VM.
  • Jobs at once should grow with every machine you connect, with new jobs routing to the healthy side when one is offline.

Side by side

Vercel Daemons from its own pages, checked 16 October 2026

Two ways to run the same workflow
Clean runners on machines you already have$24a machine a month on Team
Vercel DaemonsLong-running containers on Vercel, in public betaNo pricepublished in the beta

Price

How it is priced
BuildhoundFlat, per machine$10 a machine a month on a personal account, $24 in an organisation, counted only on days it runs a job. Public repositories free.
Vercel DaemonsNo price publishedFor Daemons in the public beta; Hobby includes 10 vCPU-hours a month.
macOS
BuildhoundYour MacA fresh macOS VM per job; Apple allows two per Mac.
Vercel DaemonsNot offered
Linux
BuildhoundYour Mac or Linux boxA fresh Linux VM per job, arm64 on a Mac.
Vercel Daemonsamd64 containersBuilt from a Dockerfile in your project, up to 4 vCPUs and 8 GiB each.
Windows
BuildhoundNot yetWindows jobs stay on GitHub-hosted.
Vercel DaemonsNot offered

Where it runs

Machines
BuildhoundYoursA spare Mac, a Linux box, or a laptop while plugged in and not in use.
Vercel DaemonsVercel's serversOn Fluid compute, in the regions you pick.
Secrets
BuildhoundOn your hardwareOnly on a machine a person marked Trusted.
Vercel DaemonsOn Vercel's serversWith your deployment's environment variables.

When things change

Jobs at once
BuildhoundAs many as your machines holdSuch as one macOS and one Linux job on a 24 GB Mac mini. When every machine is busy, new jobs go to GitHub-hosted after two and a half minutes.
Vercel DaemonsA fixed number of instancesSet per region, with no autoscaling; Pro teams run up to 16 vCPUs at once.
Setup
BuildhoundOne prompt to your coding agentOr two commands by hand.
Vercel DaemonsA Dockerfile and vercel.jsonProduction deployments only, not in a project whose root is a subfolder, and no runner guide yet.

One line in runs-on

Vercel documents no runner label or template for Daemons yet.

Buildhoundruns-on: ${{ vars.BUILDHOUND_MACOS || 'macos-latest' }}The job runs on your machine while one can take it, and on GitHub-hosted when none can.

Put the machines you already have to work.

A spare Mac, a Linux box, or the laptop you code on while it is plugged in and not in use. One prompt into Claude Code, Codex or Cursor: Linux jobs run within minutes, macOS jobs once the Mac has built its image.

Set up by hand
  • The Buildhound agent holds no GitHub credential
  • A fresh VM per job, off your network
  • Your agent prepares, you approve
  • How security works