Developer chooses Astro over Next.js for personal site, citing tool-problem fit

A developer recently launched a personal website and chose Astro over the more popular Next.js after evaluating what the project actually required. The site consists of five static pages with no forms, authentication, database, or server-side mutations, making Astro — a content-focused, markdown-first framework — a more appropriate fit. Next.js, while powerful, ships features like middleware, server actions, and edge runtime that would have gone entirely unused on such a minimal site, adding unnecessary build time and bundle weight. Astro's content collections offered end-to-end typed frontmatter via Zod schemas in around twelve lines of configuration, and its default Shiki highlighter handled dual-theme syntax highlighting with minimal setup. The developer acknowledged Next.js remains the right choice for full-stack apps with auth and database needs, but argued that reflexively defaulting to it for every project weakens a developer's ability to match tools to problems.