When using ssr: false (aka SPA-only), what are the benefits of Nuxt over Vue?

Question

In nuxt.config.js I have configured ssr: false and I'm using some static hosting.
I understand that Nuxtjs with ssr: false is CSR (Client Side Rendering).

I wonder what is the difference between Nuxt and Vue in that case?

Answer 1

Nuxt's purpose is mainly SSG/SSR/Edge rendering (or anything tied to have your code coming from a server step at some point).

If you use ssr: false, you will indeed lose a lot of Nuxt's strengths, meanwhile, you will still have:

• simple route creation with file-based rather than configuring a router.js file
• automatic code-splitting of your routes
• the whole Nuxt modules ecosystem
• middlewares on the client side
• auto-imported components and Vue's ref, reactive, onMounted etc for you (if using Composition API)
• cool data fetching capabilities (if using Composition API)
• automatic TS configuration (if using Nuxt3)
• [more benefits...]

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As you can see, even if you use Nuxt as SPA-only, you will still get some quality of life improvements in your developer journey (better "DX").
Is it worth an abstraction on top of vanilla Vue? Maybe, depends on how fast/custom you want your code to be and if you don't feel like re-implementing the features already available in Nuxt.