Qwik vs Next.js, best javascript framework for web development in 2024

Introduction

Qwik and Next.js are two JavaScript-based frameworks that have been gaining popularity among developers. Qwik is an independent JavaScript framework that serves pages statically and only changes parts of the page as needed, optimizing for quicker startup times. It also has a unique "resumability" feature that allows it to solve "hydration" issues, where the client-side needs to reprocess server-side generated HTML.

Comparison

While both frameworks have different approaches, with Next.js offering client-side rendering (CSR), SSR, and progressive hydration, Qwik eliminates the need for hydration and instead serializes the app state, potentially leading to more efficient rendering and improved performance.

Performance

One of the distinguishing factors in the battle between Qwik and Next.js boils down to performance. When building robust, interactive web applications, performance is a crucial aspect to consider. Whether debating load times, server-side rendering, or handling JavaScript tasks, each of these can affect the overall user experience and the success of a project. Through my research, I stumbled across an interesting performance comparison based on OpenAI's DALL-E made by Daw-Chih Liou. He conducted a demonstration where Next.js uses React server components for fast server-side rendering (SSR). We can observe the following:

• Qwik's speed index is 0.5 s faster than Next.js.
• Qwik's time to interactive is 0.3 s faster than Next.js.
• Next.js has a 0 ms total blocking time, comparing to Qwik's 160 ms.
• Next.js has a slightly higher overall performance score by 5 points.
• Next.js's largest contentful paint is 0.8 s faster than Qwik.

Tool Compatibility

While Next.js is most suitable for React developers due to its compatibility with tools like TypeScript and Sass, Qwik is supportive of modern Angular apps and other features including TypeScript, Sass, PWA and SEO.

Code Snippets

Here are some code snippets that demonstrate how the initial setup is different for both frameworks:

Qwik

import {registerComponents} from 'qwik';

registerComponents({

  'my-component': {

    template: '<div>Hello {{name}}!</div>',

    props: {name: 'World'},

  },

});

Next.js

// Define the component class
class MyComponent {
  constructor(props) {
    this.props = { name: 'World', ...props };
  }

  render() {
    return `<div>Hello ${this.props.name}!</div>`;
  }
}

// Create an instance of the component
const myComponentInstance = new MyComponent();

// Render the component
const componentHTML = myComponentInstance.render();

console.log(componentHTML); // Output: <div>Hello World!</div>

References

Qwik vs Next.js: In-depth Comparison for Developers | caisy Is Qwik Faster than React Server Component? - GitHub Pages