Static HTML Export

Setting output: 'export' tells Next.js to produce a fully static bundle: plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files in an out/ directory, with no Node.js server involved at runtime at all. The result can be served by literally any static file host — an S3 bucket, GitHub Pages, Netlify, a CDN, or a plain nginx container — because there is nothing left to execute on the server.

next.config.mjs

TSX

/** @type {import('next').NextConfig} */
const nextConfig = {
  output: 'export',
}

export default nextConfig

Build the static export

Bash

npm run build
# static files are written to ./out

Warning

Static export is not a drop-in setting for every app — it removes an entire category of App Router features because there is no server to run them on. Enabling it silently disables anything that requires server-side execution per request:

Server Actions — they need a server to receive the mutation request.
Dynamic Route Handlers — a route.ts that reads request data or hits a database per request has nothing to run on.
Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) — there is no server process to revalidate a page on a schedule or on demand after the export exists.
The Image Optimization API — next/image falls back to serving the original, unoptimized file, or needs a third-party loader configured.
Middleware — it runs on every request on a server; a static host has no request lifecycle to hook into.
Dynamic rendering / cookies / headers — pages that need per-request data (like reading a cookie during render) cannot be exported as static HTML.

What still works

Still works	Does not work
Static Server Components (`generateStaticParams`)	Server Actions
Client Components and client-side interactivity	Dynamic Route Handlers (per-request logic)
Client-side data fetching (`fetch` in a `useEffect`, SWR, etc.)	Incremental Static Regeneration
`next/image` with a custom/third-party loader	The built-in Image Optimization API
Static Route Handlers that return the same response every time	Middleware
`next/font` and CSS/Sass/Tailwind	Cookie- or header-based dynamic rendering

Where static export fits

Static export is the right tool when the entire site is knowable at build time — marketing pages, documentation, a blog, a portfolio — and you want the absolute simplest, cheapest hosting story: upload a folder to a CDN and you are done. It is the wrong tool the moment any page needs to run logic per request; for that, a self-hosted Node.js server or a platform like Vercel is required.

Note

Dynamic routes still work under static export, as long as every possible path is enumerated ahead of time with generateStaticParams — the export process visits each one at build time and writes it out as its own HTML file. What is not supported is generating a page for a path on demand after the export has already happened.