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Hosting Expo SPAs and APIs on Vercel: Up to date and tested.

Learn how to deploy Expo applications with both client-side SPA and server-side API routes on Vercel using the new server output and @expo/server adapter.

Jerrick Hakim

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Note: The official Expo guide (Expo: Publishing Websites) didn't work for me. Here's the setup that actually worked when deploying an Expo SPA with API routes to Vercel.

3 Things to Remember#

  • vercel.json → deployment config
  • api/index.ts → entry for production
  • app.json → ensure correct web output

vercel.json#

json
{
  "buildCommand": "expo export -p web",
  "outputDirectory": "dist/client",
  "devCommand": "expo",
  "cleanUrls": true,
  "framework": null,
  "functions": {
    "api/index.ts": {
      "runtime": "@vercel/node@5.1.8",
      "includeFiles": "dist/server/**"
    }
  },
  "rewrites": [{ "source": "/(.*)", "destination": "/api/index" }]
}

api/index.ts#

You will create this in the project root.

Remember this is so the server can serve the app on Vercel, not where your actual API routes live during development.

javascript
const { createRequestHandler } = require("@expo/server/adapter/vercel");

module.exports = createRequestHandler({
  build: require("path").join(__dirname, "../dist/server"),
});

app.json#

json
{
  "web": {
    "bundler": "metro",
    "output": "server",
    "favicon": "./assets/images/favicon.png"
  },
  "assetBundlePatterns": ["**/*"]
}

Deploy#

bash
vercel deploy

✅ That's it. SPA + API running on Vercel with Expo's server output.

Happy Shipping 🫡