Nuxt vs Vue: Which should you pick for your app and why?

As a 3 year (and counting) Vue/Nuxt user, this is a question I have now been asked 3 times in interviews and embarrassingly stumble over every time. Admittedly, I didn't have a solid understanding of Nuxt vs Vue, but I finally decided to hunker down and answer this question.

What is Nuxt?

Per the documentation: "Nuxt is a free and open-source framework with an intuitive and extendable way to create type-safe, performant and production-grade full-stack web applications and websites with Vue.js." Nuxt is also rendered on the server, we will get into why that matters in a second. Think of Nuxt as sort of a "beefed up"/structured version of Vue (in some respects)

What is Vue?

Per the documentation: "Vue (pronounced /vjuː/, like view) is a JavaScript framework for building user interfaces. It builds on top of standard HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and provides a declarative and component-based programming model that helps you efficiently develop user interfaces, be they simple or complex." Vue is ideal for those looking to learn/use their first front-end framework, as the learning curve is not nearly as steep compared to it's counterparts (React, Angular). It is lightweight, and ideal for SPAs. Both Vue3 and Nuxt3 use Javascript/Typescript (it's up to your preference), and have built in state-management.

So...what's the difference?

Like I said above, Nuxt is rendered on the server (read here about server side vs client side rendering) . Nuxt offers much better SEO, has better meta-tag customization capabilities, uses automatic routing, and handles high traffic better. Vue on the other hand is rendered on the client, so SEO is pretty sub-par. However, Vue does not use automatic routing, which is honestly a preference thing (in this case, Vue is the winner for me because I like to have more control over routes). I have found that Vue is also more customizable in general compared to Nuxt, which I appreciate because I personally like to have a bit more flexibility on the front-end. But again, Vue is rendered on the client, which lends itself to slower performance as compared to it being rendered on the server.

Which one should I go with for my project?

If you're looking to build a larger, more structured web app, I would suggest going with Nuxt. It is ideal also for e-Commerce sites, and other public facing apps that heavily rely on high-traffic and SEO performance. If you're looking for a more lightweight option that doesn't need to handle a lot of interactions at once nor needs to really care about SEO performance, I would choose Vue. Additionally, Vue is more flexible and customizable, so if you have needs that require some really out-of-the-box stuff, I'd go with Vue.