Netlify is now the official deployment host for the React Framework TanStack, presenting it as a strong alternative to Next.js for developers who want to avoid vendor-lock in and “value architectural freedom and developer control.”
TanStack was created by Tanner Linsley, who continues to maintain it. The project has recently introduced TanStack Start, which combines the framework with Nitro (tools for creating web servers) and Vite (a build tool) in order to provide an end-to-end framework for applications that are ready to deploy. Linsley said that working with Netlify will optimize the experience of deploying TanStack Start applications as well as giving the ability to add features via Netlify functions.
Netlify referenced TanStack’s rapid growth in popularity and that the framework was a refreshing change from “bloated, over-abstracted frameworks.” TanStack is well-suited to data-heavy dashboards, real-time collaboration, multi-step workflows, and the inevitable “AI-powered interfaces.”
The background to this is that Netlify competes with Vercel in this hosting market, where Vercel has gained momentum by its special relationship with both React and Next.js; five of the React core team work at Vercel. Next.js applications can be hosted elsewhere but some developers have found it hard to get the latest features working correctly on other platforms. Next.js is the most popular React framework but its increasing complexity has disillusioned some developers.
These factors are likely behind some of the remarks in the Netlify post concerning the need to “avoid vendor lock-in with hosting providers” and the reference to retaining developer control.
Despite this, Netlify itself supports Next.js as well as other frameworks including Astro and Remix. Like Vercel, Netlify points developers towards its own server functions and other services.
TanStack is a front-end Javascript framework implemented as a set of TypeScript libraries, including Query for asynchronous state management, Router for typesafe React routing including caching, Form for form state management, Table for building tables and datagrids, and more.
The company behind the framework is TanStack LLC, which is owned by Linsley without any venture capital funding. The TanStack libraries are open source under the MIT license.
Kyle Gill, software engineer at Particl, a company whose service tracks retailer prices, said this week that he has recently “moved as much code as possible away from Next.js,” in favor of TanStack and Vite. The reasons he cited are the cost of Vercel’s services (though one can run Next.js elsewhere), the complexity of new concepts such as in the app router which he claims is “riddled with footguns,” and that debugging is difficult.
Gill said there are three separate caches in Next.js – the full route cache, the data cache, and the router cache –which is why debugging is hard, and that many APIs are still marked unstable or experimental. The documentation is also hard to understand, he said, and he found the mental model of Next.js difficult to grasp despite years of React experience.