How a component reaches the browser affects first-paint speed, search indexing (Search Engine Optimization) and hosting cost more than the framework choice does.
A single-page application (SPA) sends an empty HTML shell; JavaScript builds the page and navigates without reloads. Easy to host, slow on weak phones.
Server-side rendering (SSR) renders HTML on the server per request; hydration then re-runs the components in the browser to attach handlers (dashed outline).
Static site generation (SSG) renders pages at build time. Incremental static regeneration (ISR), from Next.js 10,514 , serves the cached page and rebuilds it in the background after an interval (export const revalidate = 60).
Islands (Astro 17,728 ) hydrate only the interactive widgets; Qwik 453,955 skips hydration entirely.
Meta-frameworks (Next.js, Nuxt 37,147 , SvelteKit 36,701 , SolidStart 269,718 , Angular 42,088 SSR) mix these per route: a prerendered blog, a server-rendered product page and a client-side dashboard in one project.