I would say NextJS focuses a lot more on server-rendering. If you use the app router, the default path is to render as much as you can on the server.

This can work great, but you lose some benefits: your pages won't work offline, they won't be real-time, and if you make changes, you'll have to wait for the server to acknowledge them.

Instant pushes handles more of the work on the frontend. You make queries directly in your frontend, and Instant handles all the offline caching, the real-time, and the optimistic updates.

You can have the best of both worlds though. We have an experimental SSR package, which to our knowledge is the first to combine _both_ SSR and real-time. The way it works:

1. Next SSRs the page

2. But when it loads, Instant picks it up and makes every query reactive.

More details here: https://www.instantdb.com/docs/next-ssr