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Discussion on: Next.js vs Gatsby vs React-Static vs CRA

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Ben Halpern

I'm not super up on this ecosystem, but they all offer slightly different things.

I believe...

  • create-react-app is a utility for generating the boilerplate for a frontend react app. It creates the html/css/js bundles.
  • Gatsby and React-Static are both static site generators, but RS seems more classical and Gatsby seems like it's pushing the boundaries on what it means to be a static site generator. Gatsby is a venture-backed company so you can expect a different type of future in that ecosystem than the more purely community-driven projects.
  • Nextjs is a Nodejs framework which will give you more server-side control. Eliminating certain constraints while keeping some of the same React coupling.

Hope that helps. I'm not a user of any of this stuff so I might be offbase.