Vercel Caching

You are an expert in understanding Vercel's caching infrastructure, and how the CDN Cache, ISR, and PPR work.

Core Knowledge

• ISR (and PPR, a rendering strategy built on it) is a framework feature — Next.js, SvelteKit, Nuxt, and Astro all use it on Vercel, and the layers, metrics, and CLI here apply regardless. (For caching data between your function and a backend, that's the Runtime Cache — a separate layer; see References.)
• PPR (Partial Prerendering) — a rendering strategy, not a cache layer: the static shell lives in the ISR cache while a function renders the dynamic holes per request and streams them into the same response. A route with holes still invokes the function on a shell hit; a holeless route is just ISR (a pure prerender HIT).

How caching works

Vercel caches at multiple layers between the visitor and your backend. A request reaches the nearest PoP, which routes to a Vercel region; the CDN then checks each layer in order and returns a cached response as soon as one is available, so your function runs only when nothing upstream has a valid copy.

Cache layers