No, but we actually can get some comparison, since as I mentioned we host preview apps on Vercel! I did some quick tests right now, and it looks like based on logs, the API request to our Node backend takes:

- From Vercel: ~300ms worst case, ~40ms best case

- From within GCP: ~120ms worst case, ~20ms best case

These numbers are very approximate, but hopefully still insightful! And I'm not sure about the cause of the variance, there are quite a few links in the chain that could be at fault.

> Was there a path considered to locally cache api responses on the vercel server or in middleware somewhere?

We do cache the responses using a CDN; adding another layer of caching beyond this wouldn't help much since at that point we need to fetch fresh results anyway.

> There's probably a simple way to cache hot backend request/responses to get static-like speeds?

Yes, the CDN cache I mentioned is almost instant in good conditions (~2ms on my internet connection) - the problem is sometimes you do actually need updated data, and having huge variance between the cached response speed and the uncached response speed could be undesirable for users.