How to Run Background Tasks on Vercel

Vercel’s serverless functions are fast and affordable — but they enforce strict timeout limits. If your function needs to call a slow API, process a file, or wait for an external service, it will hit a gateway timeout.

AsyncQueue solves this by accepting the task in milliseconds and handling the long-running work outside Vercel.

The Problem

// This will timeout on Vercel (10s on Hobby, 60s on Pro)
export async function POST(req) {
  const data = await req.json();

  // This external API takes 2-5 minutes
  const result = await fetch('https://ai-service.example.com/generate', {
    method: 'POST',
    body: JSON.stringify(data),
  });

  return Response.json(await result.json());
}

Step 1: Understand Vercel’s timeout limits

Plan	Timeout	Enough for…
Hobby	10 seconds	Simple API calls
Pro	60 seconds	Most database queries
Enterprise	300 seconds	Still not enough for video/AI

Anything longer requires a task queue like AsyncQueue.

Step 2: Set up AsyncQueue in your Vercel project

npm install asyncqueue-js

Add your API key in the Vercel dashboard under Settings then Environment Variables:

ASYNCQUEUE_API_KEY=your_api_key_here

Step 3: Replace direct API calls with task creation

// app/api/generate/route.ts (Next.js App Router)
import { AsyncQueue } from 'asyncqueue-js';

const aq = new AsyncQueue({ apiKey: process.env.ASYNCQUEUE_API_KEY });

export async function POST(req) {
  const data = await req.json();

  const task = await aq.tasks.create({
    callbackUrl: 'https://ai-service.example.com/generate',
    payload: data,
    webhookUrl: `${process.env.VERCEL_URL}/api/on-complete`,
    retries: 3,
  });

  // Returns in ~50ms instead of 2-5 minutes
  return Response.json({ taskId: task.id, status: 'processing' });
}

Step 4: Deploy a webhook handler route

// app/api/on-complete/route.ts
export async function POST(req) {
  const { taskId, result, status } = await req.json();

  // Save result to your database
  await db.tasks.update({
    where: { taskId },
    data: { result, status: 'completed' },
  });

  return Response.json({ received: true });
}

Step 5: Verify the integration

Deploy to Vercel: vercel --prod
Trigger a task via your API endpoint
Open the AsyncQueue dashboard to watch execution
Confirm the result arrives at your webhook handler

This Pattern Works With

Next.js (App Router and Pages Router)
Nuxt on Vercel
SvelteKit on Vercel
Astro SSR on Vercel
Any framework deployed to Vercel