With more than 15 years of experience in web development, I’ve seen many frameworks come and go, but Nuxt and Next.js are here to stay. In this article, I’ll compare the two frameworks and share my thoughts on which one is better in 2025.
React vs Vue
The first choice (which I won’t cover in this post) is picking between React or Vue. Both are great frameworks, but I’ll assume you’ve already chosen one for your project.
At the time of this post, both have great communities and are very popular, so you can’t go wrong with either - React being more popular and Vue being more beginner-friendly.
In this article, I won’t cover basic features since both frameworks support many things. I’ll focus on the high-level features instead.
1. Next.js 🚀
I recently tried Next.js for a personal project, and while I’m biased towards Vue, I have to say that Next.js is a great framework with many features and a great community.
But not everything is perfect. I tried hard to ignore all the DX that Vue gives me to embrace the Next.js + React hype train. I researched medium to large Next.js projects on GitHub to learn more about the framework.
I read the documentation, learned the best practices, and watched tutorials & videos to get familiar with the framework, but that wasn’t enough. Coming from Laravel, we’re REALLY spoiled with the DX that Vue or Laravel gives us.
Let’s go through the pros and cons of Next.js:
1.1 Pros ✅
- Great, large & active community
- Solid documentation
- Out-of-the-box TypeScript support
- SSR, SSG, ISR capabilities
- Great concept for Server & Client Components - really loved this feature
- Huge React ecosystem that Next.js inherits
- Pages routing is simple and easy to understand
- Minimalistic/bare bones - you can add only what you need
1.2 Cons ❌
- Vendor lock-in - no matter what you say, Vercel is the way to go for Next.js
- Webpack 😞 - really slow on dev & build, most of the time compared to a Nuxt project
- Middleware - no concept of multiple middlewares, you have to use a single middleware for all routes or implement your own middleware stack
- i18n - while there are a few “demos”, none are actual real-world examples, and the documentation is lacking. External packages exist but they’re HEAVILY complicated to implement in my opinion
- Server & Client components - while a great concept, it’s really hard to understand and implement, you end up prop drilling a lot of data
- Server & Client lines blurred - you have to be really careful with what you’re doing, and you need to know what’s running on the server vs client. A little mistake could be a big problem
- Node.js support for Middleware - this is a BIG one. While Next.js advocates that Middleware should not run Node.js but their “Edge” server, there are many cases where you need to run Node.js code in Middleware, and this isn’t supported by Next.js at the time of this post. This is REALLY necessary for basic stuff like auth checks against databases
- Dev Experience - while the DX isn’t bad, it’s not as good as Nuxt. There’s no proper way to debug your code. React DevTools with Next.js is a HUGE pile of nested contexts
- Unstable - it seems like there are many breaking changes on every release, and the community isn’t happy about it. There are many issues on GitHub about this
- Lack of documentation on how to deploy other than Vercel
- Somewhat slow - while SSR is good, it seems slower than traditional SPAs at first load
2. Nuxt 💚
After my mission with Next.js, I decided to replicate the same project, but this time using Nuxt. I had most of my components already done with Shadcn, and I could easily transfer a lot of code-base from Next.js.
Nuxt instantly provides a better DX than Next.js. Can’t deny - after a few weeks of React, I was really happy to be back on Vue!
With my struggles from Next.js in mind, here’s a breakdown for Nuxt:
2.1 Pros ✅
- Great, large & active community - Vue is growing a lot, and Nuxt is growing with it
- Lots of composables out-of-the-box, like
useFetch,useMeta,useHead,useState, etc. - Great documentation - really easy to understand and follow
- Amazing plugin & modules system - you can add many features with a single line of code
- Out-of-the-box support for stacked middlewares - attach them & use them
- Nuxt i18n just works - with a few clicks you can have a multi-language website, no stress!
- Top-notch DX - install modules directly from the Nuxt DevTools, check OpenGraph images, dependencies, preview builds… just amazing!
- Great hooks for deduping & caching around ofetch
- Amazing universal support from UnJS ecosystem
- No vendor lock-in - you can deploy to Vercel, Cloudflare, etc.
- Middleware supports Node.js & edge runtimes
- Vue reactivity system & bindings are just great!
- Support for “Islands” - Server & Client components are really easy to understand and implement
- Configuration in one place - no need to search for many files, everything is in
nuxt.config.ts - Easier to implement auth modules
- Auto-imports for components, composables, etc. - just write your business logic, no need to import stuff
- Vite bundler - it’s really fast, and the DX is just amazing + the ecosystem
2.2 Cons ❌
- Confusing sometimes - because there are many hooks, composables, etc., sometimes you don’t know what to use or what’s the correct one for a specific case
- Documentation is still lacking some “best practices” for some features
- Unstable sometimes - while auto-imports are a good DX, they also create buggy code, and it’s really hard to find the source of the bug sometimes
- Server Components are not yet polished - you can’t mix and match client & server components like Next.js (yet)
- Lack of methods to inject configurations from user-land & modules (still better than Next.js, which has none)
- Unclear what composables & features you can use on server & client, leading again to unexpected bugs & hard to debug issues
The Winner 🏆
While both frameworks are great, the winner for me is clearly Nuxt. The DX is just amazing, and the features are great compared to Next.js.
I could probably do the same project 10x faster with Nuxt than with Next.js. One of the biggest concerns for me is also the vendor lock-in for Vercel. While many people try to deny and argue against that, for me it’s crystal clear that Next.js doesn’t have/doesn’t want to make these changes, resulting in a lot of drama on Twitter & Reddit.
On the other hand, React has a huge ecosystem, and if you’re already using React, Next.js is a great choice. You may also consider Remix or TanStack Start as alternatives.
Conclusion 🎯
In the past years, many meta-frameworks appeared and some of them are here to stay. For me, there’s no perfect one yet. Nuxt has good potential to be the best one, but there’s still a lot of work to be done, not only in Nuxt but also in the Vue ecosystem.
I’m still a big fan of starting my own projects with vanilla Vue or React, and calling it a day - bring your own plugins, your own features, and your own DX. But if you’re in a hurry or want a quick MVP, both are great choices.
One big concern I also have with full-stack JavaScript frameworks is that while they provide a really flexible way to build applications with a single language & code-base, they can also create the inverse effect.
For instance, including or importing a server module in a client module could potentially leak important data like API keys, database connections, so ALWAYS make sure you double-check your code before deploying it to production.
For me, Rails/Laravel + Vue/React is still the best way to go, but if you’re looking for a quick MVP or a small project, why not give it a go?
Stay safe, and happy coding!