Vercel Integration: Environment variables explained

Last edited: 4/17/2026

Vercel has three environments, which map to different stages of the deployment lifecycle:

  • Production is used for the branch configured as the production branch (usually main). Deployments from that branch go to the live site.
  • Preview is used for all other Git branches, including pull requests, feature branches, and persistent branches like staging. If you deploy a staging branch, it still runs under the Preview environment unless you explicitly create a separate environment in Vercel and map that branch to it.
  • Development is only used for local development via the Vercel CLI (vercel dev). It allows your local environment to pull env vars from Vercel, but it does not apply to Git branches or deployments on the platform.

Creating a staging environment#

On the Hobby plan, staging is implemented by scoping Preview environment variables to a branch. On the Pro plan, staging can be configured as a dedicated environment with its own settings.

You can create a dedicated environment (Vercel Pro):

  1. Go to Project → Settings → Environments
  2. Click Create Environment
  3. Name it staging
  4. Enable Branch Tracking and select the staging branch
  5. Add environment variables scoped to this environment

With this setup, the staging branch deploys to its own environment and is fully separate from Preview and Production.