Legacy build image is being deprecated on September 1, 2025
By Steven Van ·
Projects still on Node.js 18 or the old build image will get errors on new builds after September 1, 2025; existing deployments keep working.
Vercel is deprecating its legacy build image on September 1, 2025, alongside Node.js 18, whose LTS support ends April 30, 2025. Projects still on the legacy image after that date will see an error when new builds run. Existing deployments are not affected, but the Node.js version has to be updated on the next deployment, according to Vercel's build image documentation.
The latest build image raises the minimum Node.js version to 20.x, moves the Python toolchain to 3.12 and the Ruby toolchain to 3.3.x.
A project uses the legacy image if it has either of these:
- Node.js 18.x set in Build and Deployment Settings
- Overrides in package.json
To list affected projects, install the latest CLI with npm i -g vercel@latest and run vercel project ls --update-required. To upgrade, change the version in the project's Build and Deployment settings, or set the engines field in package.json, for example "node": "22.x".