3
Frontend
Next.js App Router vs a plain React SPA for a logged-in dashboard
Performance ↔ Simplicity
Context
Everything is behind login, so SEO is irrelevant. The app is a data-heavy dashboard. Does SSR / Server Components still earn their complexity here, or is a Vite SPA with TanStack Query the pragmatic choice?
Next.js (App Router)vsReact SPA (Vite)
Community verdict
Next.js (App Router) 50%React SPA (Vite) 50%
10 engineers · 2 opinions
With these constraints, what would you choose?
One choice per engineer. You can change it any time.
Next.js (App Router)
React SPA (Vite)
Simplicity →
Trade-offs
Dimensions
Next.js (App Router)React SPA (Vite)out of 5
- Initial load
- 5Next.js (App Router) scores 5 of 53React SPA (Vite) scores 3 of 5
- Simplicity
- 2Next.js (App Router) scores 2 of 55React SPA (Vite) scores 5 of 5
- Hosting
- 3
Community discussion
2 comments
Have you made this decision in production? Share your reasoning.
Sign in to commentServer Components still help behind login: less JS shipped, data fetched next to the database, and no waterfall of client requests on first paint. That's noticeable on low-end laptops.
A Vite SPA deploys as static files to a CDN and your API stays the single backend. One less server to run, and one less mental model for the team.