TanStack Start
Hacker ApprovedRanked 15 of 63 web frameworks by recommenders
Recommended for a smooth developer experience, sane defaults and less opinionated design than Next.js, with static prerendering and non-React support. Critics note frequent breaking changes and rough documentation.
Recommended for a smooth developer experience, sane defaults and less opinionated design than Next.js, with static prerendering and non-React support. Critics note frequent breaking changes and rough documentation.
32 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 25
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 78%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 25 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Less opinionated than Next.js
“It fills a different niche, with a slightly different approach, that the Next.js app router just hasn't prioritized enabling anymore.”
Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “Denial of service and source code exposure in React Server Components” “Tanstack Start / Router are pretty great coming from nextjs, and not limited to React either.”
Comment from 12 May 2026 in “TanStack NPM Packages Compromised” “an opportune time to consider less-opinionated modern alternatives, like TanStack Start”
Comment from 12 Mar 2026 in “Returning to Rails in 2026” - Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “TanStack Start Now Support React Server Components”
- Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “TanStack Start Now Support React Server Components”
Better developer experience and defaults
“The DX is smooth, the defaults are sane, and things generally makes sense if that makes sense.”
Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “TanStack Start Now Support React Server Components” “an alternative metaframework that gives you more freedom, better DX, and better defaults”
Comment from 26 Oct 2026 in “Removing Next.js Got My Blog to 100 on Every Lighthouse Category” “My favourite is Tanstack Start. No magice, great DX”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Vite 8.0 Is Out” Strong ecosystem and growing momentum
“TanStack Start is a recent metaframework (and the one w/ the brightest future, IMO)”
Comment from 8 Apr 2026 in “We moved Railway's front end off Next.js. Builds went from 10 minutes to under 2” “I just setup a new project with it and like the whole ecosystem.”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Vite 8.0 Is Out” “Tanstack Start seems to be gaining steam.”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Ember.js 7.0” Static prerendering and export support
“I'm a huge fan of tanstack start especially the ability to just static prerender some paths”
Comment from 8 Apr 2026 in “We moved Railway's front end off Next.js. Builds went from 10 minutes to under 2” “Tanstack Start is the gold standard here. It'll do a static export no problem.”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Vite 8.0 Is Out”
Other web frameworks people recommend
The four most recommended other web frameworks, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ruby on Rails | 337 | 145 | 70% | 12 | 14 yrs38 owners | Approved |
| Django | 277 | 97 | 74% | 12 | 15 yrs38 owners | Approved |
| Next.js | 127 | 256 | 33% | 12 | 3 yrs6 owners | — |
| Phoenix Framework | 85 | 11 | 89% | 12 | 8 yrs7 owners | Approved |
| TanStack StartThis page | 25 | 7 | 78% | 8 | — | Approved |
What people said
36 of the 37 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Tanstack SPA isn’t half bad”
“absolutely merits a closer look”
“an alternative metaframework that gives you more freedom, better DX, and better defaults”
“Reduces bugs, increases agent velocity, doesn’t poison your code base.”
“it reduces the number of tokens required to generate the code”
“it seems like a waste of time basically”
“AFAIK, this isn’t true. And you still get more JS per interactive element than with HTMX.”
“if you are already using Node, I see no reason not to use TanStack Start instead.”
“Tanstack Start seems to be gaining steam.”
“Tanstack Start / Router are pretty great coming from nextjs, and not limited to React either.”
“I really like their apprach to RSC and therefore am surely giving TSS a try.”
“the documentation is rough, especially for their support for non-React frameworks”
“it's worth for the performance and resource gains alone”
“Tanstack is the de facto best React framework at this point.”
“I have switched from the bloated mess of Nextjs to Vite+TSS and never looked back.”
“Explicitly avoiding turning react into “webforms” and focusing on the actual point of RSC”
“I'm perhaps less excited about having to wrap RSC's in special functions”
“I appreciate tanstack not forcing them down my throat like next I guess.”
“The DX is smooth, the defaults are sane, and things generally makes sense if that makes sense.”
“It's so beautiful I nearly cried”
“they are the next toy for the magpie developers”
“TanStack Start is a recent metaframework (and the one w/ the brightest future, IMO)”
“I'm a huge fan of tanstack start especially the ability to just static prerender some paths”
“TanStack just has a nicer mental model overall”
“consolidated both into a single Vite + TanStack Start app”
“Tanstack Start is the gold standard here. It'll do a static export no problem.”
“I just setup a new project with it and like the whole ecosystem.”
“My favourite is Tanstack Start. No magice, great DX”
“an opportune time to consider less-opinionated modern alternatives, like TanStack Start”
“You can't just use someone else's trademark in your product name, especially when related to it.”
“predictability beats abstraction every time”
“check out Tanstack Start. It's by the creator of React-Query”
“things like NextJS or even TanStack Start add a lot of things that might be overkill for a simple web app”
“Tanstack anything has breaking changes constantly and they all exist in perpetual alpha states.”
“can do similar things but without the whole”
“It fills a different niche, with a slightly different approach, that the Next.js app router just hasn't prioritized enabling anymore.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.