Crax

    Features

    Everything included in a Crax project out of the box.

    Why Crax?

    Crax is a Next.js alternative for developers who believe frontend should not require a server to render a page. Before the React ecosystem became dominated by full-stack frameworks and server-side complexity, Create React App offered something simple: a clean foundation that just worked. Crax brings that simplicity back.

    No SSR, no ISR, no server components, no server actions. Just React, Vite, and the tools you already know. Most applications are client-side. They need fast development, predictable builds, and cheap deployment. Crax is built for that reality.

    The entire framework source ships into your project under .crax/. Every line is owned, readable, and modifiable. This is the same approach shadcn introduced for components, applied to the whole framework layer.

    Built on proven foundations: React 19, Vite 7, React Router, TanStack Query, and Tailwind CSS v4. These are well-maintained, widely adopted, and backed by large communities.

    Routing

    File-based routing via React Router. Drop a file in src/pages/ and it becomes a route. Dynamic segments, nested layouts, catch-all routes, and special files for 404, error, and loading states.

    Routing docs

    State Management

    Global state with createStore and useStore. Built on useSyncExternalStore. Supports subscriptions, history tracking, and store locking. No external dependencies.

    State Management docs

    Data Fetching

    React Query pre-configured with sensible defaults and DevTools. Route-level data loading via React Router loaders.

    Data Fetching docs

    Image Optimization

    Image and Picture components for CDN-aware responsive images. Automatic srcset generation, lazy loading, and blur-up placeholders. Powered by @unpic/react and vite-imagetools.

    Image Optimization docs

    SEO

    Declarative document head management via the Head component. Open Graph, Twitter Cards, canonical URLs, language alternates, and JSON-LD structured data.

    SEO docs

    View Transitions

    Native browser page transitions via useViewTransition hook. Also available as a viewTransition prop on Link. Falls back to a plain callback on unsupported browsers.

    View Transitions docs

    Three prefetch strategies on the Link component: smart (hover, focus, and pointerdown, plus a viewport-observation baseline), foresight (cursor trajectory prediction), and none.

    Routing docs

    PWA

    Progressive Web App support via crax.config.mjs. Icon generation, manifest generation, and optional service worker integration via vite-plugin-pwa.

    PWA docs

    Deployment

    Dockerfile and Caddy config included. Build to dist/, deploy to any static host or CDN.

    Deploy docs