It should be noted that open-next does not actually deploy the app. It only bundles everything for your IAC to deploy it.
Here is a table comparing the different options to deploy a next.js app:
| Features | OpenNext | Vercel | AWS Amplify | Docker Standalone |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Function splitting | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Multiple deployment target ¹ | Yes | Yes ² | No | No |
| Serverless | Yes | Yes | Yes | No ³ |
| Warmer function | Yes | No | No | Not necessary |
| External middleware | Yes ⁴ | Yes | No | No |
| Edge runtime support | Partial Support ⁵ | Yes | Embedded ⁶ | Embedded ⁶ |
| ISR | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes ⁷ |
| On-Demand Revalidation | Yes ⁸ | Yes | No | Yes ⁸ |
| Custom server | Yes ⁹ | No | No | Yes |
- Multiple deployment target means that you can deploy the same app to different target like some part to ECS, some part to Lambda etc...
- Vercel supports only serverless Node (backed by AWS Lambda) and Edge runtime (backed by cloudflare workers)
- You can deploy a dockerized next.js app to AWS lambda using AWS Lambda Web adapter, but some part like ISR will not work as expected
- OpenNext supports external middleware, but it is not enabled by default.
- OpenNext supports edge runtime in node, but every route needs to be deployed separately. OpenNext supports edge runtime in cloudflare workers, but only for app router api routes.
- Embedded means that the edge runtime is embedded inside the bundle. It emulates a fake edge runtime inside the prod environment.
- You might experience some inconsistencies with ISR if you have a CDN in front of your app. Next always set the cache-control header to
s-maxage=REVALIDATION_TIME, stale-while-revalidate, it means that your data (json or rsc) and your html might be out of sync. - You need to invalidate the CDN manually. For OpenNext, here is an example for cloudfront
- OpenNext supports custom server, but it is not enabled by default. You can have a custom server even in a serverless environment.