NestJS vs Next.js: The differences and when to use each framework

NestJS and Next.js have similar names, so they can be easily confused despite having quite different purposes.

Both were built on Node.js at very similar times and were intended to extend its functionality, but at opposite ends of the stack. NestJS is designed to bring more structure to large backend apps, and Next.js is all about using Node.js to give full-stack capabilities to React apps. The name similarity? Chalk it up to trends in naming Node-based products.

This post explains the differences between NestJS and Next.js, their relation with Node.js, and when to use each.

What is Next.js?

Next.js is a frontend-first, full-stack web development framework. This means it provides a full front end (in React) but with some minimal backend features (in Node.js). If you're already a React developer, Next.js is a great way to add some basic backend functionality to your site. You can think of Next.js as React with built-in routing, rendering, and performance improvements. 

With Next.js, you can add backend features and performance enhancements to your site without having to hire a separate backend developer. It allows you to develop a full-stack site in one single project, all in TypeScript (or JavaScript — if you must!).

The backend features that Next.js supports are server-side rendering (SSR), static site generation (SSG), incremental static generation (ISR), and API routes. These features allow you to fetch and render dynamic data.

SSG is a super fast rendering method, as HTML pages are built at build time and served from a CDN. However, it's not great for keeping content fresh. SSR generates the HTML of every page on request, providing great content freshness but slower performance than SSG. ISR gives the best of both worlds — pages are served statically for speed but can be re-rendered either at regular time intervals or when triggered by a webhook.

Next.js is a flexible framework. Beyond functions like routing and rendering, it doesn't follow a strict architecture. And it's ready for serverless deployment (for example, to Vercel or Netlify) out of the box.

Next.js is ideal for SEO-friendly React apps that need good performance — such as marketing sites, landing pages, or customer portals. It has a bunch of features that make it fast, such as automatic code splitting, lazy loading, and React Suspense components, but the fast performance also comes from choosing SSG or ISR.

What is NestJS?

In contrast, NestJS has no frontend component to it at all. It's a full application framework for the back end. It's Node.js's answer to Django, Laravel, Spring Boot, or Ruby on Rails. 

It's quite a different beast compared to more minimal frameworks like Express, Flask, or Sinatra. It's a very opinionated framework, enforcing a modular architecture (which makes separation of concerns easier, improving team collaboration, and is good for scalability), design patterns like dependency injection, and decorators. 

NestJS comes with enterprise patterns built in — such as guards, interceptors, pipes, and lifecycle hooks — and it comes with useful features like validation, authentication, and easy integration with databases (via ORM), websockets, and GraphQL. It can even support advanced architectural patterns like CQRS (command query responsibility segregation), making it well suited for enterprises that need to scale.

NestJS was built to run on top of more lightweight, minimal Node.js web frameworks (like Express or Fastify). These minimal frameworks are great for quickly building web servers and APIs, and routing HTTP requests, but NestJS adds extra structure and features on top of that, making it a great choice for enterprises working on distributed services, microservices, message-driven architectures, or large-scale internal systems.

Key differences: NestJS vs. Next.js

Despite their similar names, NestJS and Next.js have different purposes. The table below highlights the main differences between NestJS and Next.js, including their features, design philosophy, and typical use cases.

When to use Next.js

Next.js is a great choice if you're a React developer who wants to create a static site or add a few simple API routes to your (mostly) frontend project without setting up a full backend project or relying on a separate backend team. 

In the Next.js vs. NestJS debate, Next.js stands out when your focus is on improving SEO. This is thanks to its built-in support for pre-rendering pages (via SSR or ISR ) and its fine-grained metadata control.

When to use NestJS

NestJS is more suited to highly structured backend projects for large enterprises.You should use NestJS if you're working on a large project with many developers and you need modular, maintainable code.

When comparing NestJS and Next.js, NestJS is the better choice if you need advanced backend features like dependency injection, support for microservices, GraphQL APIs or WebSockets, or if you're working with real-time apps and using an event-driven architecture.

When to just use Node.js with Express or Fastify

You should use Node.js (with a lighter framework like Express or Fastify) if you just want to build a quick web server, such as for a prototype or a small- or medium-sized project — anything where you want to get up and running quickly.

Another reason to use Node.js is if you prefer flexibility over an opinionated framework — for example, if you're already knowledgeable about architecture or scaling, you might want the freedom to choose how to implement things, and Node.js gives you that flexibility.

Can you use NestJS for frontend development?

No — NestJS is for backend development only.

Can you use Next.js for backend development?

Next.js already contains a few minimal backend features such as SSR, SSG, ISR, and API routes, so you can use it for these backend features. However, that's as part of a full-stack project — you wouldn't use it for backend development exclusively.

Can you use NestJS and Next.js together (and should you?)

Yes, you can use NestJS and Next.js together. You might do that if you need lots of backend business logic but also need to do SSG, SSR, or ISR. 

You can't use NestJS alone for this; even though these rendering strategies technically run on the back end, they're really frontend concerns, so NestJS wasn't really designed to handle it. And you can't rely on only Next.js for this either — having too much business logic in your Next.js app may affect performance or cold-start time. Plus, it's also not a great framework for large-scale apps, as it's harder to separate concerns and test your code.

An example of when you might use Next.js with NestJS is for a large ecommerce application that needs the performance benefits of server-side rendering, but uses business logic on the server. The image below shows how the two systems would be connected — the Next.js code calls the NestJS API endpoint in the ```getServerSideProps``` function.

Of course, depending on the amount of server-side logic you have, you might prefer to use Next.js with third-party services rather than have the overhead of maintaining your own back end. In the example in the above image, the Next.js code could fetch the products from a headless CMS like that of the Contentful® Composable Content Platform, bypassing the need for a NestJS project.

Use Contentful to power your SSG or SSR sites with dynamic content using Next.js

When comparing NestJS and Next.js, it becomes clear that Next.js is better for building static or hybrid static/dynamic sites. If that's your goal, it's easy to manage dynamic content using Next.js with Contentful. 

All you need to do is create a content model in Contentful (for example, a "Product" content model might have fields for “title,” “description,” “price,” “images,” “SKU,” and “stock status”) and then create content items for that model (by adding the different products you're selling).

Then, using Next.js, fetch the data from Contentful and choose Next.js ISR as your rendering strategy, which balances performance with content freshness. 

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