Edge Functions — Code That Runs Close to Your Users
Learn how edge functions work, where they run, and when moving your logic to the edge actually makes your app faster.
When you deploy a traditional serverless function, it runs in one data center — usually us-east-1 (Northern Virginia) because that's the default for everything. A user in Tokyo makes a request, and that request travels across the Pacific Ocean to Virginia, your function runs, and the response travels all the way back. That round trip adds 150-300 milliseconds of pure network latency. Your code could execute in 5ms, but the user still waits a third of a second just for the data to travel.
Edge functions solve this by running your code in data centers around the world — not one region, but dozens or hundreds of locations. When that user in Tokyo makes a request, it hits a server in Tokyo. A user in London hits a server in London. The same code, running everywhere, automatically.
What
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