Sources

Conducted by Traefik Labs, a provider of application networking software for microservices, the survey also finds 60% of respondents are running two or more Kubernetes clusters. ... A total of 44% of respondents also note cost management causes friction as they scale and expand their Kubernetes clusters. Other issues include securing applications and integrating third-party tracing systems tied at 33% each. Not surprisingly, the top pain point cited by respondents (43%) is setup and configuration, followed by maintenance and having too many platforms at 28% each. Half of respondents (50%) also said they still log in directly into their clusters to review logs manually when issues arise. The most widely employed management tools are Grafana and Prometheus at 74% and 68%, respectively. Finally, 60% of respondents note they are also employing multiple ingress controllers.

- **Frequent breaking changes between versions **— Every major release seemed to bring a new thing. This isn’t unique to Next.js — we see it across frameworks — but it becomes a problem when you’re forced to rewrite a chunk of your application every year - **Documentation that requires constant reference **— When working with Next.js, the last thing you need far from you is the documentation. The docs went from being a quick reference to something you needed to keep open in a browser tab … |Requirement|Next.js solution|Complexity level|Pain points| |--|--|--|--| |**Routing**|File-based routing (Pages) + App Router|🟡 Medium|Two different systems, migration confusion| |**SSR/SSG**|Built-in with multiple strategies|🔴 High|Hydration mismatches, debugging nightmares| |**Build tooling**|Zero-config Webpack/Turbopack|🟢 Low|Works great until you need customization| |**Code splitting**|Automatic|🟢 Low|Generally solid| |**API routes**|Built-in serverless functions|🟡 Medium|Limited scalability, middleware complexity| |**Authentication**|Third-party (NextAuth/Auth.js)|🔴 High|Session management issues, random logouts| |**Data fetching**|Multiple patterns (`getServerSideProps`, Server Components, etc.)|🟡 Medium|Too many ways to do the same thing| |**Deployment**|Optimized for Vercel|🟡 Medium|Self-hosting complications| |**Developer experience**|Hot reloading, TypeScript support|🟡 Medium|Slow build times, cryptic error messages| |**Error handling**|Built-in error boundaries|🟡 Medium|Debugging leads to framework internals| |**Performance**|Automatic optimizations|🟡 Medium|Good results, but opaque process| |**Styling**|CSS Modules, Styled JSX|🟢 Low|Flexible but not opinionated|

## Executive Summary We looked at 57,793 GitHub issues from Next.js to find out what developers really struggle with. Instead of relying on survey answers, we focused on the problems that actually lead people to file issues. **Key Findings:** - Server-side rendering complexity: 19,277 issues (33% of total) - Configuration and integration pain: 14,450 issues (25% of total) - Resolution rate: Only 29% of issues get resolved; 52% of discussed issues remain unresolved - Build performance concerns: 8,511 issues (15% of total) despite being a core promise … ## The Three Big Pain Points ### 1. Server-Side Rendering (19,277 issues) SSR is here to stay, but it’s tough to get right in production. Developers face challenges like error handling, server components, hydration bugs, and the ongoing struggle to manage server and client boundaries. Here’s what your workflow tools miss: Your sprint velocity might look fine, but if developers spend hours debugging hydration issues that never become tickets, they aren’t building new features. Instead, they’re dealing with architectural debt. ### 2. Configuration Hell (14,450 issues) React version conflicts, webpack configs, and TypeScript integration issues. When your framework touches the entire ecosystem, every version bump is a potential minefield. There’s a hidden cost: Developers often solve problems on their own without creating tickets. Your Jira board shows closed stories, but it doesn’t show the 40 hours spent last quarter fixing webpack configurations. ### 3. Build Performance (8,511 issues) Turbopack, babel, webpack, optimization – the word cloud screams it. Developers are obsessed with build speed, but they’re also frustrated by experimental features that break existing setups. Here’s the problem: Slow builds affect every feature delivery. Your CI metrics show longer build times, and your sprint board shows completed points, but neither tells you the true cost. … **What they don’t show:** ... **The planning problem:** You can’t account for what you can’t measure. When engineering says “this will take longer than expected,” is it because they’re being conservative, there’s legitimate technical complexity, or framework debt is compounding? Without visibility into where complexity accumulates, every planning conversation becomes a negotiation instead of a data-driven discussion.

EDIT: Gave it another try and more issues appear, within seconds of using. The left side has a rendering bug where the selected areas are cut off sometimes, ctrl+zoom does not zoom the page as it does on all normal websites. I can still zoom via menu. Middle mouse open link in new tab doesn't work. Z layer bugs everywhere. I expect more the longer I'd look. … blinkbat 6 months ago ... After a week of futzing with it I just threw up my hands and said 'no can do'. I couldn't untangle the spaghetti JS and piles of libraries. 'Compiling' would complete and if you looked at the output it was clearly missing tons of bits but never threw an error. Just tons of weirdness from the toolchain to the deployment platform. … Framework-defined infrastructure is a seriously cool and interesting idea, but nowadays Next feels more like an Infrastructure-defined framework; the Vercel platform's architecture and design are why things in Next are the way they are. It was supposed to be "Vercel adapts to Next", but instead we got four different kinds of subtly different function runtimes. My usage dashboard says my two most-used things are "Fluid Active CPU" and "ISR Writes". I just pay them $20/mo and pray none of those usages go over 100% because I wouldn't have the first clue why I'm going over if it does.

### 🚀 Executive Summary **TL;DR:** Upgrading to Next.js 16 can introduce challenges like increased build times, hydration mismatches, and deployment failures. This guide provides actionable solutions to optimize performance, modernize CI/CD pipelines, and effectively leverage Server Components and data fetching patterns. … **Unexpected Increase in Build Times and Bundle Sizes:**Projects that previously built swiftly might now take significantly longer, consuming more CI/CD resources. Output bundle sizes could bloat, leading to slower initial page loads and poorer Core Web Vitals scores. **Runtime Instability and Hydration Mismatches:**Applications might exhibit inconsistent behavior after initial load, often manifesting as hydration errors (React’s client-side reconciliation not matching server-rendered HTML), leading to flicker, broken interactivity, or console warnings. This is particularly prevalent with new Server Component paradigms. **Deployment Failures and Environment Discrepancies:**Existing CI/CD pipelines, finely tuned for previous Next.js versions, may unexpectedly fail. Differences between local development environments and production servers can lead to “works on my machine” scenarios, making debugging challenging. … ### 🤖 Frequently Asked Questions #### ❓ What are the primary issues users face when adopting Next.js 16? Users commonly experience unexpected increases in build times and bundle sizes, runtime instability often manifesting as hydration mismatches, and deployment failures due to environmental discrepancies or outdated CI/CD practices. … #### ❓ What is a common pitfall with Next.js 16 Server Components and how can it be addressed? A common pitfall is hydration mismatches caused by incorrect usage of Server and Client Components. This can be addressed by explicitly marking interactive components with `’use client’`, ensuring static content and data fetching logic remain in Server Components, and passing only serializable props between them. ## Leave a Reply

### 1. Poor performance Next.js loves to talk about how fast it is. Yet it’s painfully slow at scale. Here’s what we saw: - Basic page renders were taking **200-400ms**. - Large pages, especially ones with dynamic content, could spike well beyond **700ms**. - If a Google crawler or our Ahrefs SEO monitoring tool hit multiple pages at once, the site would start crashing **multiple times per week**. - Next.js’s built-in caching was **unpredictable and inefficient** across multiple replicas. Performance isn’t just a "nice to have." Or at least, not for us. It’s everything. In a world where milliseconds determine conversion rates, Next.js forces businesses into a suboptimal reality where every interaction carries unnecessary latency. > **Google doesn’t wait. Users don’t wait. Next.js makes them wait.** … #### Landing page performance: - **First Contentful Paint:** Improved from **2.1s → 0.5s** (**4x faster**) - **Largest Contentful Paint:** Improved from **5.1s → 0.8s** (**6x faster**) - **Speed Index:** Improved from **8.4s → 1.7s** (**5x faster**) Even if you have a CDN in front, it doesn’t solve Next.js's deeper inefficiencies. Performance bottlenecks persisted regardless of CDN usage. Additionally, if you are seeking to enhance your landing page, you may find these tips beneficial. ... - **First Contentful Paint:** Improved from **2.0s → 0.5s** (**4x faster**) - **Largest Contentful Paint:** Improved from **3.6s → 0.8s** (**4.5x faster**) - **Total Blocking Time:** Improved from **2,810ms → 870ms** (**3x improvement**) … ### 2. SEO took a hit Next.js is supposed to be good for SEO because of SSR and SSG. Except when your page takes forever to render, search engines don’t care how "static" it is. We saw this firsthand: - Our **SEO performance halved in December**. - We **lost valuable rankings** because of **slow server-side rendering and JSON bloat**. - **Google was actively penalizing us** for slow speeds. - Customers noticed and **reported issues** with our slow-loading documentation pages. … ### 3. It was a black box - When Next.js crashed, we didn’t get **useful errors**. - When things slowed down, we couldn’t **pinpoint why**. - Instead of control, we got **a black box** with unpredictable performance issues. There were **no good ways to debug slow renders**. At some point, we stopped asking, *"How do we fix this?"* and started asking, *"Why are we using this?"* … ## The real cost of Next.js and Vercel One of the biggest issues with Next.js is how **tightly it’s coupled with Vercel**. - Next.js features often **work best (or only) on Vercel**. - **Vercel locks you in** with expensive hosting. - **Scaling Next.js is a headache** because of bad cache invalidation across replicas.

Next.js become a hype of the day (or year), but it's slowly suffocating under the weight of technical debt. There are many big enough pain points with Next.js: - Slow and painful dev mode, if you changed something and need to check more than 1 route, you need to wait till route compiled. Next.js server also uses few gigabytes of RAM. Turbopack complaining about perfectly working TS code, and struggle to understand `:global` in CSS modules, still not production ready.

😬 Why teams like Northflank are moving away from Next.js ⚠️ Major developer frustrations and real-world bottlenecks 💡 The hidden downsides: Overengineering, vendor lock-in & performance issues 🚀 Best alternatives in 2025: Astro, Remix, Qwik, and good ol' Vite! … {ts:111} client confusion with RSC, slower development due to the {ts:115} complexity. Real challenges of the NexJS {ts:118} over engineering, app router, middleware, edge, functions, etc. Simple {ts:125} apps feel too complex, steep learning {ts:127} curve, performance concerns, cold starts on serverless, RSC introducing latency {ts:134} and the complexity. Okay, so let me just {ts:138} go with this one. Vendor lockin, versal optimized {ts:142} features, hard to migrate to AWS, do … {ts:160} static export, RSC until suddenly a simpler project feel like launching a {ts:165} spaceship. Common complaints to {ts:167} manufacturers, steep and harder learning curve. With larger apps, complexity {ts:172} grows exponentially. the framework … {ts:191} routes. Tight integration with versel for easy deployment strong documentation {ts:196} and the {ts:197} ecosystem. Okay. Cons: Increased complexity, poor DX for {ts:203} the small projects, performance issues

So we had. Huge amount   of files we needed to transfer to the client. And now we have nearly 200,000 lines of code. {ts:589} And that got even worse, right? Even though it got better with the bundling mechanisms there,   but still Webpac wasn't an issue for us.

We dive deep into the downsides of Next.js, including performance issues, serverless limitations, growing complexity, and vendor lock-in concerns. Whether you're a frontend developer, CTO, or tech enthusiast, this video gives you the full picture. … where developers often share the unfiltered truth ah yes the real talk happens there sometimes exactly and the article sums up some recurring frustrations people are voicing about NexJS things like uh slowness during the actual development ment process So not just the final sight speed but the dev experience right That plus unexpected bugs being introduced and some uh limitations cropping up around server client interactions how

The web development community is experiencing a wave of criticism toward Next.js, one of the most popular React frameworks. What started as a single developer's blog post about logging difficulties has sparked a broader conversation about the framework's increasing complexity and its tight coupling with Vercel's hosting platform. ### Middleware and Logging Nightmares The core issue that triggered this discussion centers around Next.js middleware and production logging. Unlike traditional web frameworks where setting up logging is straightforward, Next.js presents unique challenges due to its complex execution model. Developers report spending hours trying to implement basic logging functionality that works across different runtime environments - edge functions, server-side rendering, and client-side code. The problem stems from Next.js running code in multiple contexts simultaneously. Some code executes on edge servers, some on traditional Node.js servers, and some in browsers. This creates confusion about where logs actually appear and how to maintain consistent logging across the entire application lifecycle. **Common Next.js Pain Points:** **Middleware limitations**: Single middleware file requirement, complex chaining **Logging difficulties**: Inconsistent behavior across edge/server/client environments **Runtime confusion**: Code execution context unclear (edge vs server vs client) **Vercel coupling**: Features optimized for Vercel hosting, problematic elsewhere **Documentation gaps**: Missing details about execution contexts and gotchas ### The Vercel Vendor Lock-in Debate A significant portion of the community discussion focuses on allegations that Next.js is deliberately designed to push developers toward Vercel's paid hosting services. Many developers report that features work seamlessly on Vercel but become problematic when deployed elsewhere. This has led to accusations that the framework's complexity isn't accidental but rather a business strategy. ... Several developers shared stories of inheriting Next.js projects that were so tightly coupled to Vercel's infrastructure that migrating to other hosting providers proved nearly impossible, sometimes requiring complete rewrites. ### Breaking Changes and API Instability The community has expressed frustration with Next.js's rapid release cycle and frequent breaking changes. With version 15 recently released, developers note that the framework has introduced 15 major versions in 8 years, each potentially containing backwards-incompatible changes. This creates maintenance burdens for long-term projects and makes it difficult for teams to keep applications updated. The transition from the Pages Router to the App Router has been particularly controversial. Many developers found the Pages Router intuitive and straightforward, but the newer App Router introduces additional complexity that some argue is unnecessary for most applications. **Next.js Version History:**

In this video I'll share 5 performance killers that are eating your nextjs application performance. Many developers say that Next.js is slow, when in fact they are using it wrong. ... And even worse, all your images load immediately when the page {ts:111} opens. Even the ones below the fold that users might never even scroll to. I see developers ship apps with hero images {ts:119} that take 8 seconds to load on mobile connections because they never tested on anything slower than their office Wi-Fi. … Fetching data in use effect {ts:150} creates a wasted round trip. Your component renders triggers a data fetch then rerenders with the data. When child {ts:159} components also fetch data, you create a butterfall where each component waits for its parent before making its own {ts:167} request. So here's the exact sequence that happens. The page loads, the React hydrates your component, uh, use effect {ts:176} runs, and then the fetch request starts, and only then does your data begin loading. That's three steps before any {ts:186} data even starts moving. And the problem gets worse when you have nested components that each fetch their own … You might think this is fine because the data loads eventually, but your users are {ts:217} staring at the loading spinners for anywhere between 3 to 5 seconds when they could have seen the content {ts:223} immediately. And here's what nobody mentions. Every one of those used effect fetches happens after your JavaScript … The most common culprit is importing entire libraries when you only need one function. For example, writing {ts:298} import from load dash pulls in 70 kilobytes when you probably only needed one 2 {ts:306} kilobyte function. So here's what actually happens when you import an entire library. You add one line of code {ts:313} that looks innocent, but your bundle size jumps by 70 kilobytes or more. Most developers never check what they are {ts:321} actually shipping until uh the app starts to feel slow. The worst part is that you are not just importing load {ts:329} dash. You are probably also importing moment.js for dates and entire icon libraries when you use five icons and {ts:337} analytic packages that pull in dependencies you never asked for. Another common mistake is not using {ts:344} dynamic imports for heavy components like models, charts or admin panels that users might never even see. … {ts:391} you import. Backend performance matters just as much as front end optimizations. The classic mistake is the N plus1 query {ts:400} problem. Fetching all list items then making a separate database call for each items related data. If you're loading, {ts:408} for example, 20 blog posts and fetching the author for each one in individually, that's 21 queries when it should be two. … If you have 50 posts on the page, you just made 51 trips to the database. Other common mistakes include {ts:439} missing database indexes on columns you frequently cury, fetching entire tables when you only need 10 rows, and not {ts:447} using connection pooling. So your app creates new database connection on every request. You might think your queries {ts:455} are fast because they work fine in development with 100 rows of test data, but in production with 50,000 rows and {ts:462} no indexes, that same query takes 3 seconds instead of 30 milliseconds. The serverless functions on platforms like … Your API response times will drop from seconds to {ts:495} milliseconds. Analytics, chat widgets, ads, and social media embeds can easily destroy your performance. Loading these {ts:504} scripts synchronously in your document head blocks your entire page from rendering. So, users see a blank screen {ts:512} while Google Analytic downloads and executes. … {ts:535} they are all competing for bandwidth and CPU on the initial page load. A slow analytics script can add two to three {ts:544} seconds to your load time. And if their server is having issues, your entire page is stuck waiting. I've seen {ts:550} perfectly fast apps become unusable because a chat widget get took 8 seconds to load and blocked everything else.