SvelteKit vs Next.js: A Comprehensive Comparison

Having built production applications with both SvelteKit and Next.js, I want to share an honest, experience-based comparison of these two excellent frameworks.

Bundle Size & Performance

SvelteKit compiles your components to vanilla JavaScript at build time, resulting in significantly smaller bundles. Next.js ships the React runtime, which adds to the initial bundle size.

Winner: SvelteKit for initial bundle size.

Developer Experience

SvelteKit's file-based routing is clean and predictable. Svelte's reactivity model with runes ($state, $derived) is more intuitive than React's hooks.

Next.js has the advantage of the massive React ecosystem and extensive documentation.

Winner: Tie — depends on team familiarity.

Data Fetching

SvelteKit uses load functions in +page.server.ts files. It's explicit and type-safe.

// SvelteKit
export const load: PageServerLoad = async ({ params }) => {
  const post = await getPost(params.slug);
  return { post };
};

Next.js uses Server Components and various fetching patterns.

Winner: SvelteKit for simplicity.

Routing

Both use file-based routing. SvelteKit uses +page.svelte convention while Next.js uses the App Router with page.tsx.

SvelteKit's layout system with +layout.svelte is cleaner than Next.js's nested layouts.

Winner: SvelteKit for consistency.

Ecosystem & Community

Next.js has a larger ecosystem, more third-party libraries, and more learning resources. React's component library ecosystem is unmatched.

Winner: Next.js for ecosystem size.

Deployment

Both deploy easily to Vercel, Cloudflare, and other platforms. SvelteKit's adapter system is elegant — swap adapter-cloudflare for adapter-node and you're done.

Winner: Tie

When to Choose SvelteKit

• New projects where you control the tech stack
• Performance-critical applications
• Small to medium teams
• Content-heavy sites and blogs
• Projects that benefit from smaller bundles

When to Choose Next.js

• Teams already proficient in React
• Projects needing extensive third-party React libraries
• Enterprise applications requiring the React ecosystem
• Projects with existing React component libraries

My Recommendation

For new projects, I'd recommend SvelteKit if your team is open to learning Svelte. The developer experience is superior, the performance is better out of the box, and the learning curve is gentler.

For teams invested in React, Next.js remains the best choice in the React ecosystem.

Both are excellent frameworks, and you won't go wrong with either.

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Originally published at umesh-malik.com