Cloudflare Releases Experimental Next.js Alternative Built With AI Assistance
InfoQ, Tuesday, March 10th, 2026
Cloudflare recently released vinext, an experimental reimplementation of Next.js built on Vite rather than Turbopack. The project was developed by one engineer over roughly one week, using AI, at a cost of $1,100 in API tokens.
In addition, the company positions it as a drop-in replacement for Next.js optimized for Cloudflare Workers, though it explicitly labels the project experimental and untested at scale.
Early benchmarks look promising but come with caveats. On a 33-route test app, production builds finished in 1.67 seconds using Vite 8's Rolldown bundler versus 7.38 seconds for Next.js 16 with Turbopack. That's 4.4x faster. Client bundles also shrank from 168.9 KB to 72.9 KB gzipped, a 57% reduction. But Cloudflare warns these numbers are "directional, not definitive" since they're based on one test fixture, not real-world production apps.