To Gatsby or not to Gatsby...

A static site generator generates static HTML on build time. It doesn’t use a server.

With server-side rendering, it dynamically generates the HTML every time a new request comes in. It uses a server for this.

Gatsby is a static site generator tool.

Next is mainly a tool for server-side rendered pages (although it also supports static exports)

Of course, both can call APIs client side. The difference is Next requires a server to be able to run. Gatsby can function without any server at all.

Gatsby just generates pure HTML/CSS/JS. This means you can host it at S3, Netlify or other static hosting services. This makes it extremely scalable to high traffic loads.

Next creates HTML on runtime. So each time a new request comes in, it creates a new HTML page from the server.

	Gatsby	Next
SPA(single page app)	yes	yes
SEO(search engine optimized)	yes	yes
Supports any kind of websites	yes	yes
Learning curve	React + Graphql + few Gatsby apis	React + few Next.js apis
Final HTML code generation	In the ‘build’ process (continuous integration and continuous delivery CI/CD server)	In the server
Output	HTML + CSS + JS files	HTML + CSS + JS files + Node.js code to serve these files
Supports Netlify (or any static hosting sites)	yes	No (yes, if only using static export)
Requires server	no	yes
Data handling	Gatsby dictates how you should handle data in your app: GraphQL	up to you!