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Vercel Deployment Protection, Cloudflare Access or a Netlify Password: Which Should You Use?

Display is our product. This page says where it does not fit. We checked the plan gates, prices and settings below on the Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare and Display pages on 20 October 2026. Vendors change them. Open the linked page before you decide.

Decision table: who needs access, what you protect

Who must get in	What you protect	Pick
Your own team, all with Vercel accounts	A Vercel project	Vercel Authentication (on every plan)
Your own team, all on Netlify	A Netlify project	Netlify Private project visibility
A few people who can share one secret	A site on Vercel Pro or Netlify Pro	Vercel Password Protection ($20 a month for each project) or a Netlify password
Specific readers without accounts on your host, with removal for each person	A site on Cloudflare Pages or any host behind Cloudflare	Cloudflare Access with email PIN or an identity provider
Fixed office or VPN addresses	Production on Vercel Enterprise	Vercel Trusted IPs
Specific readers or your whole company	One report, plan, prototype or Markdown file	Display

Feature table

Option	Plan needed	Price (20 Oct 2026)	Access for each person	Previews covered	Production covered	Custom domain covered	Outside guests
Vercel Authentication	All plans	Included	Yes, for Vercel users with access to the team or project	Yes	Yes, with "All Deployments"	Yes, with "All Deployments"	Only people with a Vercel account. They can request access
Vercel Password Protection	Pro or Enterprise	$20 a month for each protected project on Pro. Included on Enterprise	No. One shared password	Yes	Yes, with "All Deployments"	Yes, with "All Deployments"	Anyone with the password
Vercel Trusted IPs	Enterprise	Included on Enterprise	No. By IP address	Your choice of scope. "Only Production Deployments" leaves previews public	Yes	Yes	Only from allowed IP addresses
Netlify password	Pro (credit-based), Enterprise, legacy Pro	Pro is $20 a month with unlimited members	No. One shared password	Yes	Yes, or leave production open ("Previews only")	Yes	Anyone with the password
Netlify Private project	All credit-based plans. Team-login options on Enterprise	Free and Personal: only the team owner can view. Pro: unlimited team members	Yes, for Netlify team members	Yes	Yes	Yes	No. Visitors must be on your Netlify team
Cloudflare Access, email PIN	Free plan or above	$0 up to 50 users. Pay-as-you-go is $7 per user a month, billed annually	Yes, by email address or domain	Only when you turn on the Pages setting	Not with the Pages setting. Needs a change to the Access application	Needs its own Access application	Yes. Any address that your policy allows
Cloudflare Access, identity provider	Free plan or above	Same as above	Yes	Same	Same	Same	Yes, if the provider and policy allow
Display	Any plan for OTP. Pro for Google and Microsoft sign-in	Free €0 (3 gated artifacts). Solo €15. Pro €49. No fee for each viewer	Yes	Not applicable. You publish a file, not a build	Yes	Enterprise, by contract	Yes. Invited readers use an OTP

The sources are at the end of this page.

Short setup for each option

Vercel Authentication

Open the project, then Settings, then Deployment Protection.
Turn on Vercel Authentication.
Choose the scope. "Standard Protection" protects all deployments except production domains. "All Deployments" protects production too.
Select Save.

Read the Vercel guide. People without a Vercel login cannot get past it, unless you give them a Shareable Link.

Vercel Password Protection

Open Deployment Protection in the project settings.
Turn on Password Protection, choose the scope, enter a password and select Save.
Expect a charge of $20 a month for that project on Pro.

Read the Vercel guide.

Netlify password or Private project

Go to Project configuration, General, Visitor access.
On a credit-based plan, open Project visibility and choose Password (Pro only) or Private.
On a legacy plan, open Password Protection and choose basic password protection or team login protection.
Choose whether production stays open. Select Save.

Read the Netlify guide and our Netlify walkthrough.

Cloudflare Access for a Pages site

In Zero Trust, go to Integrations, Identity providers and add One-time PIN. New Zero Trust organizations do not get it automatically.
In the Pages project, open Settings, General and select Enable access policy. This step covers preview deployments only.
To cover the production pages.dev address, open the Access application. Under Public hostname, delete the wildcard (*) in the Subdomain field and save. Then select Enable access policy in the Pages project again to protect previews.
For a custom domain, create a separate self-hosted Access application for that hostname.
Add an Allow policy with the emails or the email domain that you want.

Read the Pages preview guide, the Pages known issues, the one-time PIN guide and Access policies. Cloudflare sends a PIN only to an address that a policy allows. The PIN expires after 10 minutes and works once.

Display

Connect Display to your agent. Read Publish with your agent.
Ask the agent: "Publish report.html to Display as Private and share it with alice@client.com."
Or ask it to publish the file for your company.

Setup mistakes to check for

The Cloudflare Pages setting does not cover production. The Pages setting "Enable access policy" protects preview URLs. Cloudflare's docs say that it does not protect the *.pages.dev domain or a custom domain. Open the production URL in a private window to check.

A custom domain on Cloudflare needs its own Access application. Protect *.pages.dev first. Then create a separate application for the custom domain. Without it, the Access login page opens but does not let your visitors in.

Vercel "Standard Protection" leaves production open. This scope protects preview and generated URLs. Your production domain stays public. Choose "All Deployments" if production must be private.

Vercel bypass links and secrets open the door. A Shareable Link lets anyone who has it view the deployment. The Protection Bypass for Automation secret skips Password Protection, Vercel Authentication and Trusted IPs. It also skips Vercel's bot protection challenges. Keep the secret as safe as a password, and revoke links that you no longer use.

You cannot take a shared password away from one person. On Vercel and Netlify, you must change the password for everyone to stop one reviewer. Vercel says that visitors must enter a changed password again.

A Netlify Private project admits only your team. Every outside reader must join your Netlify team. On Free and Personal, only the team owner can view a private project.

When the host is too much

Host protection answers one question: who can load this site? That fits an application. For one HTML report, a plan or a prototype, it adds work. You need a project, a deploy, a Cloudflare application or a paid add-on for each project.

Display protects a file, not a site. You publish HTML or Markdown, choose Private or Company, and invite people. Invited readers outside your company open the file with an OTP sent to their email. They need no Display account. On Pro, colleagues sign in with Google or Microsoft. Pro costs €49 a month and has no fee for each viewer.

What Display does not do:

It has no shared password and no expiring links.
It publishes one HTML or Markdown file for each artifact. Publishing a directory or a ZIP file is planned.
It does not run application code, builds or functions.
Outside guests can view an artifact. They cannot comment yet.
Custom domains and SAML are on Enterprise, by contract. Self-serve SAML is planned.

When another option is better

You deploy an application on Vercel or Netlify. Use the platform's own protection. Display does not host applications.
You need Zero Trust beyond one site. Cloudflare Access covers devices, networks and many applications. It is free up to 50 users.
You need a shared password today and nothing more. Vercel Password Protection or a Netlify password is the quicker choice.
Your company has no more than 50 readers and an engineer who knows Cloudflare. Access is free. Display's value there is less setup, not a lower price.

FAQ