Once you’ve finished creating your “create react app”, you may have started to hear “Next.js” and “Gatsby”. From many aspects, it may look similar. But each has a purpose, their own pros and cons. One won’t fit for all.
Here is a quick comparison table. (Full guide initially posted in Coffee N Coding)
| CRA | Next.js | Gatsby | |
| Final HTML code generation | In the Client (Browser) | In the Server | In the ‘build’ process (CI/CD server) |
| SEO | Not good enough | Pretty good | Pretty good |
| Supports any kind of websites | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Learning curve | Normal | React + few Next.js apis | React + Graphql + few Gatsby apis |
| Output | HTML + CSS + JS files | HTML + CSS + JS files + Node.js code to serve these files | HTML + CSS + JS files |
| Supports Netlify (or any static hosting sites) | Yes | No (yes, if only using static export) | Yes |
Still confused? Read my full post where I explain with examples of different websites and which one to choose.