Billions of requests: Black Friday-Cyber Monday 2025

Every year, Black Friday and Cyber Monday reveal how people shop, browse, and discover products at global scale. For Vercel, the weekend doesn’t require a different operating mode. The platform behaves the same way it does , only with higher traffic volume.every day

A showed the traffic as it played out.live dashboard

This year, traffic reached more than 115.8 billion total requests, reflecting 33.6% year-over-year growth with consistent performance throughout the events.

The traffic shape told a familiar story. Requests dipped on Thanksgiving as people stepped away from screens, then surged on Black Friday, stayed elevated through the weekend, and built into a second wave on Cyber Monday.

These rhythms played out across every major geography, and the platform adapted continuously without configuration changes or manual intervention.

Below is a snapshot of what the weekend looked like.

Of the that flowed through Vercel from November 28 through December 1, the United States led activity with over , followed by Germany, the United Kingdom, India, Brazil, Singapore, and Japan. Traffic moved across time zones throughout the weekend, with peaks in one region balanced by lower activity in others.115 billion requests40.7 billion requests

Vercel handled these shifts the same way it manages everyday production traffic, scaling the global network and compute layer to match real user behavior.

AI continued to shape how shoppers discovered products, searched catalogs, and received personalized help. More than passed through across the BFCM window. Retailers used AI for search, recommendations, guided browsing, and customer support. AI Gateway routed these queries across providers and regions, maintaining low latency and resilience even when demand fluctuated.24 million AI requestsAI Gateway

AI is now part of the normal shopping experience. Routing, failover, and provider coordination are essential when millions of customers depend on AI-powered workflows. AI Gateway delivered this consistency at global scale.

handled more than across the weekend. Teams used it for personalization logic, cart behavior, content evaluation, and AI inference. Fluid adjusts instantly to incoming traffic. Capacity increases the moment volume rises and scales back when demand settles. With automated pre-warming, and no tuning or configuration required.Fluid compute43.2 billion function invocations

This elasticity is part of the platform’s normal operation and ensures applications stay responsive regardless of traffic shape.

Product catalogs, pricing details, inventory indicators, and promotions changed continuously throughout the event. ISR processed more than and , refreshing content across the CDN without requiring redeploys or adding strain to backend systems.1.8 billion reads1.5 billion writes

Shoppers received accurate information at static performance speeds, even as merchandisers updated content minute by minute.

Security activity increased alongside customer traffic. More than were taken across system rules and customer-defined WAF logic. These protections stopped invalid and malicious traffic at the edge, preserving compute capacity and ensuring stable performance.7.5 billion firewall actions

Bot Management also operated at massive scale. More than were identified and blocked, while more than legitimate human interactions were verified through invisible checks by both and system security defenses. Retailers protected checkout flows, inventory endpoints, and account systems without introducing friction.415 million bot attempts2.4 billionVercel BotID

More than were served directly from Vercel’s global cache. These cache hits reduced latency, decreased backend load, and ensured fast page delivery throughout the weekend. Caching works in tandem with ISR and Fluid compute, forming a multi-layer performance system where static assets stay fast, dynamic updates propagate instantly, and compute is reserved for real application logic.56.9 billion requests

The 2025 traffic profile reinforces that large events do not require special preparation when the delivery layer is built to adapt to real user behavior. Cache hits, ISR updates, Fluid compute, AI routing, and firewall filtering worked together to absorb global demand. Development teams deployed more than times across the weekend, shipping updates continuously with the confidence provided by instant rollbacks and predictable reliability.6.1 million

As AI-driven experiences expand, as personalization deepens, and as global traffic patterns evolve, the infrastructure behind these applications must adapt at the speed of real users. Vercel’s software layer does this every day. Black Friday through Cyber Monday simply highlight the scale of normal operations.

If you are preparing for your next peak moment, explore how AI Gateway, Fluid compute, ISR, and Vercel’s security tools fit into your architecture. The teams who thrive during high-pressure events are the ones who adopt adaptive infrastructure before they need it.

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Key metrics from the weekend

Global scale and natural traffic rhythms

• -Global traffic delivered with consistent performance.115,836,126,847 total requests

• Traffic delivered at peak demand518,027 peak requests per second -

• -New versions of applications shipped6,120,247 deployments

• -AI routing kept responses fast across providers24,086,391 AI Gateway requests

• -Dynamic workloads scaled automatically43,213,555,901 Fluid compute invocations

• -Fast delivery directly from globally distributed regions56,926,096,915 cache hits

• -Initial regional loads of refreshed content, does not count cached responses1,809,912,897 ISR reads

• -Catalog, pricing, and content updates propagated instantly.1,517,476,504 ISR writes

• -Threats filtered before reaching applications7,507,223,309 firewall actions

• -Automated abuse stopped early415,683,895 bots blocked

• -Legitimate shoppers passed security checks2,408,122,336 humans verified

• US, DE, GB, IN, BR, SG, JP - with high activity across all 20 global regionsTop regions:

AI Gateway supported AI-native shopping at global scale

Fluid compute matched real traffic automatically

Incremental Static Regeneration kept content fresh and fast

Security systems filtered billions of unwanted requests

Caching delivered fast performance worldwide

A platform built for everyday traffic, even when every day is bigger

Looking ahead