Next.js has two forms of pre-rendering: Static Generation and Server-side Rendering. The difference is in when it generates the HTML for a page.
In development mode (when you run
npm run dev
oryarn dev
), every page is pre-rendered on each request — even for pages that use Static Generation.
Importantly, Next.js lets you choose which pre-rendering form to use for each page. You can create a "hybrid" Next.js app by using Static Generation for most pages and using Server-side Rendering for others.
We recommend using Static Generation (with and without data) whenever possible because your page can be built once and served by CDN, which makes it much faster than having a server render the page on every request.
You can use Static Generation for many types of pages, including:
You should ask yourself: "Can I pre-render this page ahead of a user's request?" If the answer is yes, then you should choose Static Generation.
On the other hand, Static Generation is not a good idea if you cannot pre-render a page ahead of a user's request. Maybe your page shows frequently updated data, and the page content changes on every request.
In that case, you can use Server-side Rendering. It will be slower, but the pre-rendered page will always be up-to-date. Or you can skip pre-rendering and use client-side JavaScript to populate frequently updated data.
In this lesson, we’ll focus on Static Generation. On the next page, we’ll talk about Static Generation with and without data.
Quick Review: When would you use Server-side rendering?