How to Deploy to Vercel via CLI With GitHub Actions

Run the Vercel CLI with a token: pull settings, build with vercel build, then ship with vercel deploy --prebuilt --prod.

When you want CI to own the deploy (rather than the Vercel Git integration), use the CLI: vercel pull to fetch project config, vercel build to produce .vercel/output, then vercel deploy --prebuilt.

Steps

• Create a Vercel token and store it plus VERCEL_ORG_ID and VERCEL_PROJECT_ID as secrets.
• Run vercel pull --yes --environment=production.
• Build with vercel build --prod, then deploy with vercel deploy --prebuilt --prod.

Workflow

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      VERCEL_ORG_ID: ${{ secrets.VERCEL_ORG_ID }}
      VERCEL_PROJECT_ID: ${{ secrets.VERCEL_PROJECT_ID }}
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: npm i -g vercel@latest
      - run: vercel pull --yes --environment=production --token=${{ secrets.VERCEL_TOKEN }}
      - run: vercel build --prod --token=${{ secrets.VERCEL_TOKEN }}
      - run: vercel deploy --prebuilt --prod --token=${{ secrets.VERCEL_TOKEN }}

Common pitfalls

• Skipping vercel pull means the build has no project settings and vercel build uses wrong framework defaults.
• Omitting --prebuilt re-uploads source and rebuilds on Vercel, double-spending build time.
• If the Vercel Git integration is still enabled, both it and this workflow deploy; disable one to avoid duplicate deployments.

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