Gatsby trends show that this once-fav framework is losing its bliss, as developers seek faster, simpler, and lighter options. One competitor that stood out is certainly Astro.
But you know what they say about statistics: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
So, we will leave statistics aside and compare Astro vs. Gatsby in depth to understand what these trends are trying to tell us.
Why is Gatsby losing its bliss?
There are a lot of reasons why developers love to hate Gatsby, but here are the top 4 reasons:
- Plugins maintenance
- React-based
- Can be too slow
- Gatsby Cloud didn’t improve build times
From this, you can conclude that developers looking for solutions with fewer plugins ( or plugins that are easy to update) have the freedom to choose tech-stack and top of it to be fast and efficient.
Why is Astro becoming popular?
On the other hand, Astro is becoming more and more popular (besides being a newer tool on the market) for:
- File-based routing
- Frontend-agnosticism
- Component islands architecture
- Ships zero JavaScript by default
Even though both are static site generators, how do these differences affect the development process? It’s time to compare Astro and Gatsby based on the features crucial for building websites, apps, or other projects.
Astro vs Gatsby: Features comparison
Here are the features and differences that can make dev life easier or harder, depending on your framework.
Astro vs Gatsby: Performance and speed
Regarding performance and speed, Astro and Gatsby offer unique advantages but differ in their approaches to site generation and rendering, which can significantly impact how fast your site feels to users. Here’s a closer look at how they compare:
Rendering strategy: Astro Islands vs Gatsby Functions
Astro uses an Islands architecture approach, meaning it only sends JavaScript to the client for interactive components ("islands"), while the rest is static HTML. Minimizing JavaScript on the front end speeds up loading times, making Astro extremely lightweight.
Gatsby, on the other hand, relies on React and primarily uses static generation, but it tends to send more JavaScript to the client. While Gatsby does support deferred loading through "Gatsby Functions" and server-side rendering (SSR), its core approach still depends heavily on a JavaScript layer.
Astro vs Gatsby: Build times
Astro is known for its fast build times, as it only processes the necessary parts of the site. Because Astro generates static sites with no JavaScript by default, it is ideal for rapid development and deployment.
Gatsby is known for longer build times, especially on large sites with thousands of pages, mainly because it needs to compile a significant amount of JavaScript and run GraphQL queries for data. However, Gatsby Cloud and incremental builds have helped reduce these times, but they still don’t reach Astro’s level of efficiency for static builds.
JavaScript and client-side rendering
As Gatsby loads all React components on the client, even those that don't need immediate interaction, Astro's selective hydration feature lets only specific components hydrate when needed. This results in minimal JavaScript and reduced page weight, leading to faster time-to-interactive.
Data handling
Unlike Gatsby, Astro doesn’t have a built-in GraphQL layer, making it more straightforward for simple, content-based sites. It relies on direct data imports or fetches, which can sometimes be faster and less complex.
How are these differences in approach reflected in practice? Let's say, you want to build a content-heavy blog site with hundreds of articles and a few interactive components, the development process would look like this:
Astro site structure example:
index.astro: The homepage lists blog posts using static generation.
[slug].astro: Dynamic blog post pages for each article, generated server-side.
Astro would statically generate the HTML for the article pages and only hydrates JavaScript on the interactive SearchBar and Comments components.
This minimal JavaScript approach results in a fast and quick initial load, as only necessary interactive components are hydrated.
Gatsby site structure example:
For the same blog example, Gatsby uses GraphQL to query the content. All components (including SearchBar and Comments) are loaded with React.
As a result, users may notice a slightly longer initial load, especially on mobile devices, because the entire React application and its JavaScript payload are loaded for every page, regardless of the actual interactivity needed.
Astro vs Gatsby: Syntax
Astro’s syntax is very similar to HTML, so if you know basic HTML, you’re ready to use it. You need to admit that this is very convenient, even for beginners. Besides being HTML-based, it is framework-agnostic, so you can use its syntax and mix it with different frontend frameworks (React, Vue, Svelte), without any complex configuration. This file-based routing makes Astro easy to use and learn.
Gatsby’s syntax is fully React-based, so you’ll be writing in JSX, however, it relies on GraphQL for data fetching makes it powerful but a bit more complex.
Overall, if you are looking for simpler and more flexible syntax that doesn’t lock you into a single framework Astro would be a better choice.
JavaScript vs TypeScript support
JavaScript vs TypeScript support in Astro and Gatsby is a key area where they differ.
Even though Astro is designed to work with JavaScript out of the box it has built-in support for TypeScript, which allows you to add static typing without any extra configuration.
Gatsby also has solid TypeScript support, and many of its plugins and templates are TypeScript-friendly. However, because Gatsby is React-based, its TypeScript usage aligns specifically with React’s component-based structure.
The main difference here is that Gatsby doesn’t support components from other frontend frameworks out of the box, so TypeScript’s benefits are focused on React’s APIs and patterns while Astro makes it easy to use TypeScript with any framework you prefer.
Support for Tailwind, SCSS, and CSS modules
Both Astro and Gatsby offer support for these popular technologies for building modern sites. The difference is how: out of the box or through plugins. Since Gatsby is known for its plugin system ( almost like WordPress) you can conclude the outcome:
As you can see from the table, Astro takes the lead in flexibility and simplicity, offering out-of-the-box support for these styling and configuration tools without extra plugins, which keeps projects lightweight and reduces dependency issues.
Astro vs Gatsby: SEO comparison
As a person whose daily job is to worry about SEO, I can’t not compare these two in terms of SEO. I will start this comparison with something that both frameworks slay: SSG.
Static site generation (SSG)
The two frameworks both produce static sites that are lightweight and easy for crawlers to crawl. It means that the site is generated from static HTML, CSS, and JS files and is not hosted on a backend server. By this approach, both frameworks offer SEO-friendly features such as:
- Pre-rendered content: Both frameworks generate static HTML pages during the build process, which ensures that all content is available to search engines. This eliminates the need for SSR or CSR, making it easier for crawlers to index your site.
- Fast loading times are directly tied to better SEO performance, as search engines prioritize speed and user experience.
- SEO-friendly URLs: Both Astro and Gatsby support clean, readable URLs that are optimized for SEO, with clear hierarchies and no unnecessary query strings or dynamic parameters.
- Sitemap generation: Both Astro and Gatsby allow you to automatically add and update a sitemap. It is done using @astrojs/sitemap in Astro, and gatsby-plugin-sitemap in Gatsby.
Although both frameworks are SEO friendly, each one of them has unique features that improve SEO and that make them different.
Astro SEO features that are better:
No/Minimal JavaScript by default
Astro’s default behavior is to minimize JavaScript usage. The framework is designed to render static HTML and CSS with zero JavaScript unless needed. By reducing JavaScript, Astro improves page speed and core web vitals, which are crucial for SEO performance. Pages with less JavaScript tend to load faster.
Crawler friendliness
Since Astro generates minimal JavaScript, search engines can crawl your site more quickly. Crawlers spend less time executing JavaScript, so they can index your content faster, making better use of your crawl budget. This is particularly beneficial for large sites where the crawl budget is limited.
Gatsby SEO features that are better:
SEO Plugins
Gatsby has a rich ecosystem of SEO plugins, such as gatsby-plugin-seo, that allow you to manage meta tags, open graph tags, and structured data for better indexing by search engines. With this plugin, it’s easy to configure your site's title, description, and other important metadata, ensuring your site is optimized for search engines automatically.
Image optimization
While Astro does support modern image formats and lazy loading through built-in functionality (@astrojs/image) its features are more limited compared to Gatsby’s (gatsby-plugin-image), which automatically serves responsive images with lazy loading, WebP support, and image compression.
Out of the two, Gatsby does it a lot better. Astro lacks the specific loading styles that Gatsby features, such as images that fade from zero to full opacity when they load.
In terms of SEO capabilities, I would say that Gatsby and Astro are quite similar. Each one supports SSG and includes features that contribute to strong SEO performance.
That said, Astro stands out for sites that don’t rely on heavy interactivity, as it uses minimal JavaScript. On the other hand, if your site requires a high level of interactivity Gatsby may be a better choice.
Interested in how Gatsby compares with other frameworks? Read the comparison of: Gatsby vs Next vs Nuxt: Key Features and Differences
Final thoughts: Is Astro ready to take over Gatsby?
Without a doubt, Astro aims to be the best Gatsby alternative because it solves some of Gatsby’s biggest drawbacks (and devos nightmares): heavy JavaScript, longer build times, and complex GraphQL setups.
In conclusion, Astro is a strong contender and may indeed replace Gatsby for many developers prioritizing speed, simplicity, and modern site architecture. But for high-interactivity sites that rely on advanced plugins, Gatsby still has the upper hand. Astro is close, but it may need a broader plugin ecosystem and more interactivity support before it can fully take over Gatsby's role in the SSG landscape.
Good news?
BCMS offers support in whichever framework you choose to build your sites.
Try Astro CMS to see why this framework is becoming more and more popular.
And if you need a platform to give back bliss to Gatsby projects, you could try using BCMS as your headless CMS for Gatsy.
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