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To be fair, react is < 0.5MB.

create-nextjs-app is installing React, React Router, Webpack, Tailwind, ESLint, Jest, etc.

create-nextjs-app is by design an "everything and the kitchen sink" approach.

yea but this more like install react more than nextjs, nextjs do to much magic to be comparable 600 mb is insane anyway but is important to be clear then we are comparing different things

Would SvelteKit be a better comparison then?

Yes. Svelte:React::SvelteKit:NextJS

Yes agree, SvelteKit is the better comparison.

Creating a skeleton SvelteKit app was around 150mb.

and totally irrelevant. how is having 600mb of dependencies making your life so much harder compared to time savings and developer experience Nextjs provides

I wouldn't say it's totally irrelevant...it translates to slow dev builds, slow dev startup, etc. Especially considering SvelteKit may be ~150 mb, but npm i is a couple seconds and npm run dev is basically instant. I'm biased because I'm allergic to React and anything JSX touches, including NextJS, so in all honesty I wouldn't use it if it was 1kb.