StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Frameworks
  5. Angular Universal vs Next.js

Angular Universal vs Next.js

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Next.js
Next.js
Stacks8.0K
Followers5.1K
Votes330
GitHub Stars135.4K
Forks29.7K
Angular Universal
Angular Universal
Stacks329
Followers413
Votes36
GitHub Stars99.2K
Forks26.7K

Angular Universal vs Next.js: What are the differences?

Angular Universal and Next.js are popular frameworks used for server-side rendering (SSR) in web development. Let's discuss the key differences between them.

  1. Execution Environment: Angular Universal is built on top of Angular framework and is primarily used for server-side rendering in Angular applications. It relies on Node.js and Express for rendering and running the server-side code. On the other hand, Next.js is a React framework that provides support for server-side rendering out of the box. It uses Node.js and provides its own built-in server for rendering React components on the server side.

  2. Language and Syntax: Angular Universal is written in TypeScript, which is a superset of JavaScript that adds static typing to the language. This allows for better tooling and safer coding practices. Next.js, on the other hand, is written in plain JavaScript using the React framework. While TypeScript can be used with Next.js, it is not a requirement.

  3. Framework Compatibility: Angular Universal is specifically designed for use with Angular applications. It fully supports Angular features and provides built-in support for Angular's ecosystem, including Angular CLI and Angular Universal CLI. Next.js, on the other hand, is a React-specific framework and provides seamless integration with the React ecosystem and tools.

  4. Routing: Angular Universal uses Angular's built-in routing system for handling client-side navigation. It provides a router module that allows for declarative routing configuration. Next.js, on the other hand, provides its own routing system that is specifically tailored for React applications. It offers both file-based and dynamic routing options, making it flexible and efficient for handling different types of routes.

  5. Data Fetching: Angular Universal allows for server-side data fetching using Angular's HttpClient module. It provides a way to fetch data from APIs or other sources during the server-side rendering process. Next.js provides its own data fetching mechanism called "getInitialProps". It allows developers to fetch data from APIs before rendering a page and pass it as props to the React components.

  6. Deployment and Server Configuration: Angular Universal applications typically require setting up a separate server, such as an Express server, to handle the server-side rendering and deployment. In contrast, Next.js applications provide a built-in server that handles server-side rendering and simplifies the deployment process. Next.js also provides easy configuration options for serverless deployment on platforms like Vercel.

In summary, Angular Universal is more suitable for Angular applications and provides extensive support for Angular features and tools. Next.js, on the other hand, is a React-specific framework that offers seamless integration with the React ecosystem and provides a simpler deployment process.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Advice on Next.js, Angular Universal

Taylor
Taylor

May 5, 2020

Review

Hey guys,

My backend set up is Prisma / GraphQL-Yoga at the moment, and I love it. It's so intuitive to learn and is really neat on the frontend too, however, there were a few gotchas when I was learning! Especially around understanding how it all pieces together (the stack). There isn't a great deal of information out there on exactly how to put into production my set up, which is a backend set up on a Digital Ocean droplet with Prisma/GraphQL Yoga in a Docker Container using Next & Apollo Client on the frontend somewhere else. It's such a niche subject, so I bet only a few hundred people have got a website with this stack in production. Anyway, I wrote a blog post to help those who might need help understanding it. Here it is, hope it helps!

758k views758k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Next.js
Next.js
Angular Universal
Angular Universal

Next.js is a minimalistic framework for server-rendered React applications.

It executes on the server, generating static application pages that later get bootstrapped on the client. This means that the application generally renders more quickly, giving users a chance to view the application layout before it becomes fully interactive.

Zero setup. Use the filesystem as an API; Only JavaScript. Everything is a function; Automatic server rendering and code splitting; Data fetching is up to the developer; Anticipation is the key to performance; Simple deployment
server-side rendering using the Angular CLI; renders more quickly
Statistics
GitHub Stars
135.4K
GitHub Stars
99.2K
GitHub Forks
29.7K
GitHub Forks
26.7K
Stacks
8.0K
Stacks
329
Followers
5.1K
Followers
413
Votes
330
Votes
36
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 51
    Automatic server rendering and code splitting
  • 44
    Built with React
  • 34
    Easy setup
  • 26
    TypeScript
  • 24
    Universal JavaScript
Cons
  • 9
    Structure is weak compared to Angular(2+)
Pros
  • 7
    Typescript
  • 5
    Complete Framework
  • 5
    Server rendering and code splitting
  • 4
    Dynamic rendering
  • 4
    Same existing code base for both SPA and SSR
Integrations
React
React
.NET Core
.NET Core
PHP
PHP

What are some alternatives to Next.js, Angular Universal?

Node.js

Node.js

Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

Bootstrap

Bootstrap

Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.

Rails

Rails

Rails is a web-application framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.

Django

Django

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.

Laravel

Laravel

It is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. It attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, and caching.

.NET

.NET

.NET is a general purpose development platform. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build native applications for web, mobile, desktop, gaming, and IoT for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and more.

ASP.NET Core

ASP.NET Core

A free and open-source web framework, and higher performance than ASP.NET, developed by Microsoft and the community. It is a modular framework that runs on both the full .NET Framework, on Windows, and the cross-platform .NET Core.

Symfony

Symfony

It is written with speed and flexibility in mind. It allows developers to build better and easy to maintain websites with PHP..

Spring

Spring

A key element of Spring is infrastructural support at the application level: Spring focuses on the "plumbing" of enterprise applications so that teams can focus on application-level business logic, without unnecessary ties to specific deployment environments.

Spring Boot

Spring Boot

Spring Boot makes it easy to create stand-alone, production-grade Spring based Applications that you can "just run". We take an opinionated view of the Spring platform and third-party libraries so you can get started with minimum fuss. Most Spring Boot applications need very little Spring configuration.

Related Comparisons

Bootstrap
Materialize

Bootstrap vs Materialize

Laravel
Django

Django vs Laravel vs Node.js

Bootstrap
Foundation

Bootstrap vs Foundation vs Material UI

Node.js
Spring Boot

Node.js vs Spring-Boot

Liquibase
Flyway

Flyway vs Liquibase