Nuxt 3 reached end of life on 31 July 2026. The Nuxt team said so in the 4.5.0 release notes. By October, a production site still on Nuxt 3 is already off that support line.
The replacement is Nuxt 4, not a preview of Nuxt 5. On 13 October 2026, npm latest is 4.6.1. There is no Nuxt 5 dist-tag. The upgrade guide still describes Nuxt 5 as in development, with future.compatibilityVersion: 5 as a way to try breaking changes early.
Do not ship the preview
compatibilityVersion: 5 is for finding what will break. It is not a production target. Stay on the 4.x line until Nuxt 5 is released and the modules you actually use have caught up. Feeling current is not a deploy plan.
Pick the mode per route
How we build scalable web applications already puts Nuxt on the public side of a Laravel system. It does not say how each route should render. That choice is the one that changes cost, crawlability, and what the user sees before JavaScript runs.
| Mode | Use it when | Do not use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Prerender / static | Brochure pages, docs, prices that change when you deploy | The HTML must include live stock or the logged-in user |
| Server render | Public pages that must be fresh and readable without waiting on the client | Every authenticated click, if you are paying for HTML nobody indexes |
| Client only | Admin and tools behind login | The marketing homepage |
Hybrid means those rules live on routes in one app. The public site can be prerendered or server-rendered. The logged-in tool can be client-rendered. You do not need a second frontend to get that split.
What a 95+ Lighthouse score actually means measures the result. This article is which renderer you asked for. A slow server render is not fixed by calling the page static, and a static page is the wrong tool when the data is the product.
Moving off Nuxt 3
- Follow the upgrade guide and run the app on Nuxt 4 in staging before you touch production.
- List routes. Mark each as public content, live data, or an authenticated tool.
- Set route rules to match that list. Do not flip the whole site to a client-only app because one dashboard needed it.
- Re-check the pages that matter in a browser, including a mid-range phone. The mode is not an excuse for a heavy client bundle.
Straight next step
If the public site and the logged-in tool are one Nuxt app and you are not sure which routes should be static, send the route list. We will mark the mode per route. We will not propose a Nuxt 5 upgrade that has not shipped.
