A Vercel OG alternative that is not Satori

People search Vercel OG alternative when @vercel/og is awkward: not on Vercel, hitting CPU limits, or tired of JSX-as-layout. OGForge is one hosted option. It is not a drop-in for Satori.

What @vercel/og is

next/og and @vercel/og render an image from JSX in a Vercel Function. You own the layout in code. It is excellent if your app is already a Next.js project on Vercel and the card is part of that codebase.

Limits are the usual ones: execution time, bundle size, “this font file is 4 MB”, and the fact that the function is the renderer. Other hosts can run similar stacks (Satori elsewhere, resvg, Playwright). Those are different products.

What OGForge is

One native Go render engine. You pick a template id, pass params on a GET URL, and use that URL as og:image. The editor preview, PNG/JPEG/WebP download, HTTP API, MCP tools, and x402 agent lane share that engine. Same template + params + preset + format → same bytes.

We do not screenshot HTML/CSS. If you need “render this Tailwind page to PNG”, look at htmlcsstoimage-style APIs, not us.

When to pick which

• Stay on @vercel/og if the card is unique JSX you already maintain, and Vercel is home.
• Use OGForge if you want a catalog, a public URL that works from Next.js / Astro / Go / Rails, agents (MCP / x402), or an editor your writer can open without a deploy.

Next.js only needs an absolute URL in openGraph.images (and twitter: { card: 'summary_large_image' }). The image host can be you (opengraph-image.tsx + @vercel/og) or a render URL from the dynamic OG image API. Social crawlers cannot fetch localhost — test against a public deploy.

Browse OG image templates, save a /u/… URL, paste it into og:image. PNG in the editor is free. An API key is Pro. Confirm the live page with the OG image checker.