A development team migrated from Next.js to pure React after hitting slow build times, failures with the recent Next.js 15, and other issues, winning support for its claim that the framework is now too heavyweight and complex for most applications.

Benny Kok, author of ComfyDeploy, a service for running and deploying AI applications and workflows made with the open source ComfyUI, posted about how the project, which used full-stack Next.js, had become problematic. “Local dev was brutal,” he said, with every change triggering a full SSR (server-side rendering) reload. Building the application took up to seven minutes. 

He attempted an upgrade to the recently released Next.js 15 but abandoned it after a week upgrading, because of compatibility issues. Kok also said that Next.js 15 in turbo mode, which means using Turbopack – an incremental bundler written in Rust – still took more than 10 seconds to build the first page in development, and a full build seven minutes. Times like these would be no problem for deployment, but in the context of the code/debug development cycle they are difficult. “Fixing a typo literally gave you a coffee break,” wrote Kok.

Kok’s solution was to migrate to pure React, supplemented with the TanStack Router and the Rspack bundler, also written in Rust. The time to do the initial development bundle dropped to 1.67 seconds, he said, on his M3 Max Macbook Pro.

“Sometimes less really is more,” said Kok. “In our case, less Next.js meant more shipping, more speed, and more happy developers.” He acknowledged the advanced features in Next.js and calls it “great for what it’s meant to do,” but said that for most products it is “like using a sledgehammer to hang a picture frame.”

One team’s experience is not significant, perhaps, but there is evidence that others share this sense that Next.js has become too complex and slow. “Our codebase got radically simpler when we did the exact same thing. And faster too, in terms of page rendering,” said a developer commenting on Kok’s post. Another said, “I’m grateful for Rails and Hotwire. Completely enabled me to escape the madness that is the React ecosystem.”

A 2024 State of JavaScript survey showed Next.js to be the dominant meta-framework (defined as frameworks focused on rendering and serving an application) by a huge margin: 54 percent usage versus 23 precent for second-placed Astro, followed by Nuxt, Gatsby, and Sveltekit. Flip the chart to retention though – positive sentiment among those using a framework – and Next.js drops to second last, whereas Astro and Sveltekit “have managed to keep their users very happy,” the survey authors remark.

The odd thing here is that Next.js, according to the developers of React itself, is recommended as “the most complete implementation” for newer features such as the App Router. The React documentation recommends that developers use a framework rather than pure React; but even if Next.js is the most complete, developer experience may count for more when choosing that framework.