Next.js on Vercel

Next.js is a fullstack React framework for the web, maintained by Vercel.

While Next.js works when self-hosting, deploying to Vercel is zero-configuration and provides additional enhancements for scalability, availability, and performance globally.

There are multiple ways to get started with Next.js on Vercel:

• If you already have a project with Next.js, install Vercel CLI and run the vercel command from your project's root directory
• Clone one of our Next.js example repos to your favorite git provider and deploy it on Vercel with the button below:

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• Or, choose a template from Vercel's marketplace:

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Vercel deployments can integrate with your git provider to generate preview URLs for each pull request you make to your Next.js project.

Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) allows you to create or update content without redeploying your site. ISR has three main benefits for developers: better performance, improved security, and faster build times.

When self-hosting, (ISR) is limited to a single region workload. Statically generated pages are not distributed closer to visitors by default, without additional configuration or vendoring of a CDN. By default, self-hosted ISR does not persist generated pages to durable storage. Instead, these files are located in the Next.js cache (which expires).

To summarize, using ISR with Next.js on Vercel:

• Better performance with our global Edge Network
• Zero-downtime rollouts to previously statically generated pages
• Framework-aware infrastructure enables global content updates in 300ms
• Generated pages are both cached and persisted to durable storage

Learn more about Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR)

Server-Side Rendering (SSR) allows you to render pages dynamically on the server. This is useful for pages where the rendered data needs to be unique on every request. For example, checking authentication or looking at the location of an incoming request.

On Vercel, you can server-render Next.js applications in either the Node.js runtime (default) with Serverless Functions or the Edge runtime with Edge Functions. This allows you to pick the best rendering strategy on a per-page basis.

To summarize, SSR with Next.js on Vercel:

• Scales to zero when not in use
• Scales automatically with traffic increases
• Has zero-configuration support for Cache-Control headers, including stale-while-revalidate
• Framework-aware infrastructure enables switching rendering between Edge/Node.js runtimes

Learn more about SSR

Image Optimization helps you achieve faster page loads by reducing the size of images and using modern image formats.

When deploying to Vercel, images are automatically optimized on demand, keeping your build times fast while improving your page load performance and Core Web Vitals.

When self-hosting, Image Optimization uses the default Next.js server for optimization. This server manages the rendering of pages and serving of static files.

To use Image Optimization with Next.js on Vercel, import the next/image component into the component you'd like to add an image to, as shown in the following example:

import Image from 'next/image'
 
interface ExampleProps {
  name: string;
}
 
const ExampleComponent = (props: ExampleProps) : => {
  return (
    <>
      <Image
        src="example.png"
        alt="Example picture"
        width={500}
        height={500}
      />
      <span>{props.name}</span>
    </>
  )
}

To summarize, using Image Optimization with Next.js on Vercel:

• Zero-configuration Image Optimization when using next/image
• Helps your team ensure great performance by default
• Keeps your builds fast by optimizing images on-demand
• Requires No additional services needed to procure or set up

Learn more about Image Optimization

@next/font enables built-in automatic self-hosting for any font file. This means you can optimally load web fonts with zero layout shift, thanks to the underlying CSS size-adjust property used.

This also allows you to use all Google Fonts with performance and privacy in mind. CSS and font files are downloaded at build time and self-hosted with the rest of your static files. No requests are sent to Google by the browser.

To use font optimization with Next.js on Vercel, first install the @next/font package:

pnpm i @next/font

Then, you can import a font from the @next/font package and use it to style elements as shown below:

import { Roboto } from '@next/font/google';
 
const roboto = Roboto({
  // Specifying weight is only required for
  // non-variable fonts.
  weight: '400',
  subsets: ['latin'],
  display: 'swap',
});
 
export default function FontExample({
  children,
}: {
  children: React.ReactNode;
}) {
  return (
    <html lang="en" className={roboto.className}>
      <body>{children}</body>
    </html>
  );
}

To summarize, using Font Optimization with Next.js on Vercel:

• Enables built-in, automatic self-hosting for font files
• Loads web fonts with zero layout shift
• Allows for CSS and font files to be downloaded at build time and self-hosted with the rest of your static files
• Ensures that no requests are sent to Google by the browser

Learn more about Font Optimization

Dynamic social card images (using the Open Graph protocol) allow you to create a unique image for every page of your site. This is useful when sharing links on the web through social platforms or through text message.

The @vercel/og image generation library allows you generate fast, dynamic social card images using Next.js API Routes.

On Vercel, your Next.js API Routes using Vercel OG are automatically optimized using Vercel Edge Functions and WebAssembly. This enables social card images to be generated faster, cheaper, and more scalable than self-hosted Next.js.

To use OG image generation with Next.js, you must create a pages/api directory. Note that even if you're using Next.js 13 and your app lives in the app directory, you must still put your API routes in the pages/api directory.

You must also run Node v16 or higher, and install the @vercel/og package with the following command:

pnpm i @vercel/og

The following example demonstrates using OG image generation in both the Next.js 12 and 13.

import { ImageResponse } from '@vercel/og';
 
export const config = {
  runtime: 'edge',
};
 
export default function () {
  return new ImageResponse(
    (
      <div
        style={{
          fontSize: 128,
          background: 'white',
          width: '100%',
          height: '100%',
          display: 'flex',
          textAlign: 'center',
          alignItems: 'center',
          justifyContent: 'center',
        }}
      >
        Hello world!
      </div>
    ),
    {
      width: 1200,
      height: 600,
    },
  );
}

To see your generated image, run npm run dev in your terminal and visit the /api/og route in your browser (most likely http://localhost:3000/api/og).

To summarize, the benefits of using Vercel OG with Next.js include:

• Instant, dynamic social card images without needing headless browsers
• Generated images are automatically cached on the Vercel Edge Network
• Image generation is co-located with the rest of your frontend codebase

Learn more about OG Image Generation

Middleware is code that executes before a request is processed. Because Middleware runs before the cache, it's an effective way of providing personalization to statically generated content.

When self-hosted, Middleware is limited to a single region workload. Middleware is not distributed closer to visitors by default, without additional configuration or vendoring of Edge compute. Since Middleware runs before every request, using Edge compute is a more efficient and performant way to serve content.

To get started, create a middleware file in the root directory of your project. The following example demonstrates Middleware that uses a matcher and geolocation information to block users from the US from visiting a secret page:

import { NextResponse } from 'next/server';
import type { NextRequest } from 'next/server';
 
// The country to block from accessing the secret page
const BLOCKED_COUNTRY = 'SE';
 
// Trigger this middleware to run on the `/secret-page` route
export const config = {
  matcher: '/secret-page',
};
 
export function middleware(request: NextRequest) {
  // Extract country. Default to US if not found.
  const country = (request.geo && request.geo.country) || 'US';
 
  console.log(`Visitor from ${country}`);
 
  // Specify the correct route based on the requests location
  if (country === BLOCKED_COUNTRY) {
    request.nextUrl.pathname = '/login';
  } else {
    request.nextUrl.pathname = `/secret-page`;
  }
 
  // Rewrite to URL
  return NextResponse.rewrite(request.nextUrl);
}

To summarize, Middleware with Next.js on Vercel:

• Runs using Edge Middleware which are deployed globally
• Replaces needing additional services for customizable routing rules
• Helps you achieve the best performance for serving content globally

Learn more about Edge Middleware

Vercel supports streaming in Next.js projects with:

• Route Handlers
• Edge Functions
• React Server Components

Streaming data allows you to fetch information in chunks rather than all at once, speeding up Function responses. Using streams can improve your app's user experience and prevent your Serverless and Edge Functions from failing when fetching large files.

To create an Edge Function that returns a readable stream, your Function's exported handler method should return a Response object that takes an instance of the ReadableStream interface as the first argument in its constructor. For example:

export const config = {
  runtime: 'edge',
};
 
export default async function handler(_) {
  const encoder = new TextEncoder();
 
  const customReadable = new ReadableStream({
    start(controller) {
      controller.enqueue(encoder.encode('Basic Streaming Test'));
      controller.close();
    },
  });
 
  return new Response(customReadable, {
    headers: { 'Content-Type': 'text/html; charset=utf-8' },
  });
}

See our docs on Edge Function streaming to learn more.

In Next.js 13 (using the app directory), you can use the loading file convention, or a Suspense component, to show an instant loading state from the server while the content of a route segment loads.

The loading file offers a solution for displaying a loading state for an entire route or route-segment, rather than specific parts of a page. This file lives at the same level as the layout file that applies to the route, and its contents will be displayed until all data fetching in the route segment has finished.

The following example demonstrates a basic loading file:

export default function Loading() {
  return <p>Loading...</p>;
}

Learn more about loading in Next 13's docs.

The Suspense component, introduced in React 18, enables you to display a fallback until components nested within it have finished loading. This solution is more granular than showing a loading state for an entire route, and is useful when only sections of your UI need a loading state.

You can specify a component to show during the loading state with the fallback prop on the Suspense component as shown below:

import { Suspense } from 'react';
import { PostFeed, Weather } from './components';
 
export default function Posts() {
  return (
    <section>
      <Suspense fallback={<p>Loading feed...</p>}>
        <PostFeed />
      </Suspense>
      <Suspense fallback={<p>Loading weather...</p>}>
        <Weather />
      </Suspense>
    </section>
  );
}

To summarize, using Streaming with Next.js on Vercel:

• Speeds up Function response times, improving your app's user experience
• Allows you to fetch large data without exceeding Edge and Serverless Function file size limits
• Display Instant Loading UI from the server with the app/ directory

Learn more about Streaming

Draft Mode enables you to view draft content from your Headless CMS immediately, while still statically generating pages in production.

See our Draft Mode docs to learn how to use it with Next.js.

When self-hosting, every request using Draft Mode hits the Next.js server, potentially incurring extra load or cost. Further, by spoofing the cookie, malicious users could attempt to gain access to your underlying Next.js server.

Deployments on Vercel automatically secure Draft Mode behind the same authentication used for Preview Comments. In order to enable or disable Draft Mode, the viewer must be logged in as a member of the Team. Once enabled, Vercel's Edge Network will bypass the ISR cache automatically and invoke the underlying Serverless Function.

You and your team members can toggle Draft Mode in the Vercel toolbar on Preview Deployments. When you do so, the toolbar will become purple to indicate Draft Mode is active.

Users outside your Vercel team cannot toggle Draft Mode.

To summarize, the benefits of using Draft Mode with Next.js on Vercel include:

• Easily server-render previews of static pages
• Adds additional security measures to prevent malicious usage
• Integrates with any headless provider of your choice
• You can enable and disable Draft Mode in the comments toolbar on Preview Deployments

Learn more about Draft Mode

Vercel's Web Analytics features enable you to visualize and monitor your application's performance over time. The Analytics tab in your project's dashboard offers detailed insights into your website's visitors, with metrics like top pages, top referrers, and user demographics.

To use Web Analytics, navigate to the Analytics tab of your project dashboard on Vercel and select Enable in the modal that appears.

To track visitors and page views, we recommend first installing our @vercel/analytics package by running the terminal command below in the root directory of your Next.js project:

pnpm i @vercel/analytics

Then, follow the instructions below to add the Analytics component to your app either using the pages directory or the app directory.

import type { AppProps } from 'next/app';
import { Analytics } from '@vercel/analytics/react';
 
function MyApp({ Component, pageProps }: AppProps) {
  return (
    <>
      <Component {...pageProps} />
      <Analytics />
    </>
  );
}
 
export default MyApp;

To summarize, Web Analytics with Next.js on Vercel:

• Enables you to track traffic and see your top-performing pages
• Offers you detailed breakdowns of visitor demographics, including their OS, browser, geolocation, and more

Learn more about Web Analytics

You can see data about your project's Core Web Vitals performance in your dashboard on Vercel. Doing so will allow you to track your web application's loading speed, responsiveness, and visual stability so you can improve the overall user experience.

On Vercel, you can track your Next.js app's Core Web Vitals in your project's dashboard.

If you're self-hosting your app, you can use the reportWebVitals hook to send metrics to any analytics provider. Doing so requires creating your own custom app component file.

Then you must export a reportWebVitals function from your custom app component, as demonstrated below:

export function reportWebVitals(metric) {
  switch (metric.name) {
    case 'FCP':
      // handle FCP results
      break;
    case 'LCP':
      // handle LCP results
      break;
    case 'CLS':
      // handle CLS results
      break;
    case 'FID':
      // handle FID results
      break;
    case 'TTFB':
      // handle TTFB results
      break;
    case 'INP':
      // handle INP results (note: INP is still an experimental metric)
      break;
    default:
      break;
  }
}
 
function MyApp({ Component, pageProps }) {
  return <Component {...pageProps} />;
}
 
export default MyApp;

Next.js uses Google's web-vitals library to measure the Web Vitals metrics available in reportWebVitals.

To summarize, tracking Web Vitals with Next.js on Vercel:

• Enables you to track traffic performance metrics, such as First Contentful Paint, or First Input Delay
• Enables you to view performance analytics by page name and URL for more granular analysis
• Shows you a score for your app's performance on each recorded metric, which you can use to track improvements or regressions

Learn more about Speed Insights

Vercel has partnered with popular service providers, such as MongoDB and Sanity, to create integrations that make using those services with Next.js easier. There are many integrations across multiple categories, such as Commerce, Databases, and Logging.

To summarize, Integrations on Vercel:

• Simplify the process of connecting your preferred services to a Vercel project
• Help you achieve the optimal setup for a Vercel project using your preferred service
• Configure your environment variables for you

Learn more about Integrations

See our Frameworks documentation page to learn about the benefits available to all frameworks when you deploy on Vercel.

Learn more about deploying Next.js projects on Vercel with the following resources: