Static vs Server Rendering: When to Use Which

The rendering spectrum

Next.js gives you three main rendering strategies. Choosing the wrong one causes performance and cost problems.

Static Site Generation (SSG)

Best for: marketing sites, blogs, company websites. Pages generated at build time, served from CDN. Zero server costs, instant global responses.

Server-Side Rendering (SSR)

Best for: personalized dashboards, authenticated pages, real-time data. Generated on each request.

export const dynamic = 'force-dynamic'

Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR)

Best for: e-commerce product pages, news sites. Pages regenerate in the background after a configurable interval.

export const revalidate = 3600 // regenerate every hour

Our rule of thumb

Default to static. Reach for SSR only when the page needs user-specific or real-time data that cannot be fetched client-side.

Questions about choosing the right architecture? Start a conversation.