Two frameworks dominate the modern marketing-site conversation: Astro and Next.js. Both are excellent. Neither is universally better. We ship in both — the one we recommend depends on what you're building.
When Astro wins
Astro was built for content-heavy sites that need to be fast. Its "islands architecture" ships zero JavaScript by default and lets you sprinkle interactivity only where it's needed.
Pick Astro when:
- Your site is primarily content (marketing, blog, docs, ecommerce catalog)
- Core Web Vitals matter (and they do)
- You want minimal client-side JS
- Your team is comfortable with plain HTML + a light component layer
- Hosting cost matters — Astro output is pure static files served from a CDN
Our own site — the one you're reading — is built in Astro precisely for these reasons.
When Next.js wins
Next.js is a full application framework. It has server components, streaming, ISR, middleware, edge functions, and the deepest React ecosystem in the industry.
Pick Next.js when:
- Your product has meaningful application logic (auth, dashboards, real-time)
- You already run React elsewhere and want stack consistency
- You need Vercel's platform features (Edge Middleware, Preview environments)
- The site is part of a larger app, not a standalone marketing surface
Performance
Astro is faster out of the box for pure content pages because it ships less JavaScript. Next.js closes the gap with careful use of server components and dynamic imports — but you have to do the work.
For a marketing site targeting LCP under 2 seconds on mid-tier mobile, Astro is the safer bet.
SEO
Both frameworks ship server-rendered HTML, both handle meta tags cleanly, both support structured data. Astro's smaller JavaScript footprint gives it a slight Core Web Vitals edge, which matters for competitive queries.
Developer experience
Next.js has a bigger ecosystem, more StackOverflow answers, and more third-party components. Astro is simpler to reason about — routes are files, components are .astro, and there's less magic.
For a team already running React, Next.js is the shorter learning curve. For a team starting fresh, Astro is easier to hire for and easier to onboard.
Cost
Astro static builds deploy to any static host — Cloudflare Pages, Vercel, Netlify, even shared PHP hosting. Cost approaches zero.
Next.js runs best on Vercel or a Node host. Vercel's free tier is generous but scales up quickly on paid plans.
For a marketing site with steady traffic and no serverless logic, Astro can be 5–10× cheaper to run than Next.js.
Our recommendation
Building a content-heavy marketing site? Start with Astro. Building a product with real app logic that also has a marketing surface? Next.js. Not sure? Book a consultation — we've made this call a hundred times.