Solid Start Comparison

[brillout]

A comparison of features could be neat.

To give confidence to users that vike-solid supports Solid Start features.

Also for us, so what we know where vike-solid is lacking compared to Solid Start.

[magne4000]

Then we'll pick which features of solid-start are worth implementing in vike-solid

[ailectra]

I did a preliminary comparison table based on the one for NextJS:

Feature	Vike	Next.js	SolidStart
Bundler	Vite (dev: esbuild+ESM, prod: Rollup)	Webpack	Vite
UI Framework	Any (React, Preact, Solid, etc.)	React only	SolidJS only
Code-splitting and bundling	Yes	Yes	Yes
HMR	Yes, fast	Yes, slow	Yes, fast
Optional SSR	Yes	Limited (app[1], pages[2][3], components[4][5])	Yes
SSR
Control	Full control	Limited / Black box	Full control
Renderers	Yes, create as many you need	Just one (_app.ts file)	Single renderer, customizable
RSC (React Server Components)	Yes, partially	Yes, experimental	N/A (uses different approach)
Routing
Filesystem Routing	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Yes	No	Yes
	Yes	Yes, but limited in SPA-only mode ***	Yes
	Yes	No	Yes
Custom Router Configuration	Yes	No	Yes
	Yes	Limited	Yes
Pre-rendering (SSG)
Pre-rendering (SSG)	Yes, for pages	Yes, for pages, or components (Partial Pre-rendering using RSC)	Yes, for pages
Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR)	No*, use	Yes, in the Node.js runtime, on Vercel	Not built-in, but you can use Nitro Route Rules on Vercel (other Deployment platforms such as CloudFlare involve more manual setup)
SPA-only mode (popular for PWAs) ***	Yes	Limited: no dynamic routing in App Router	Yes
Server Capabilities
Server Functions	No*, recommended to use Telefunc	Yes	Yes
API Routes	No*, use your server or an RPC tool	Yes	Yes
Integrations
HTTP server	No*, bring your own	Baked-in, custom server partially supported with caveats[1][2]
Apollo Client with SSR	Fully supported	Partially supported
Relay with SSR	Fully supported	Partially supported
Extras
Head component	No*, use a tool like react-helmet.	Yes, next/head	Yes, built-in Meta component
Image component	No*, use an image optimizer tool.	Yes, next/image	No, use external libraries
Internationalization (i18n)	Yes	Limited	Supported via external libraries
	Yes	No	No
Build your own framework	Yes	No	Yes
Advanced Features
HTML Streaming	Yes	Yes	Yes
Islands Architecture	No, requires manual setup	No	Yes (experimental)
Transitions	Yes	Yes	Yes
Deployment options
Vercel	Yes, minimal config	Yes, zero config	Yes, with adapter
Cloudflare Workers	Yes, minimal config	Yes, but limited	Yes, with adapter
Node server (Docker, Heroku, Digital Ocean etc.)	Yes, minimal config	Yes, but limited	Yes
Caching (see own section above)	No*, if needed, use industry-standard caching**	App Router caching, opt-out	Supports key-based cache/invalidation

(*) Vike doesn't ship those extras by design.

(**) Industry-standard ways of caching is to use the HTTP Cache-Control header to cache in the client's browser and potentially also on a shared/public CDN cache in front of your server side. Additionally, if you ever need even more caching than that, it's possible to have an in-memory cache on your server-side using e.g. Redis or Memcached.

(***) SPA-only mode means you make a static export of your app, into HTML, CSS and JS files, and serve them from a CDN, which means you don't need any server compute on requests (as opposed to SSR).

Features I didn't put in the comparison table but that are interesting are:

• Solid Router useBeforeLeave
• You can pass a custom state in Solid Router useNavigate
• The load function can be called when the Route is loaded or eagerly when links are hovered

[brillout]

@ailectra Thanks!

Head component

It's work-in-progress. (There is already an implementation for vike-react which we can then port to vike-solid.)

Solid Router useBeforeLeave

Does it enable a use case that vike-solid doesn't support?

You can pass a custom state in Solid Router useNavigate

I don't see a use case for this?

The load function can be called when the Route is loaded or eagerly when links are hovered

It's work-in-progress: vikejs/vike#1617. (I'll finish & merge it after I'm done with the new head management.)

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Beyond the work-in-progress on Vike's side, is there a use case Solid Start supports that Vike doesn't?

One neat thing about Solid Start is their research around server components / island architecture 👀