Cloudflare just slop forked Next.js…

Cloudflare built a Vite-based Next.js reimplementation called V-Next in one week for $1,100 in AI tokens, directly challenging Vercel’s deployment lock-in.

• Cloudflare built V-Next, a full Next.js API reimplementation on Vite, achieving 94% API coverage in roughly one week.
• Total AI token cost to build V-Next: approximately $1,100.
• Day 1: basic SSR, middleware, server actions, and streaming working; Day 3: full deployment to Cloudflare Workers with client hydration.
• V-Next production builds were up to 4.4x faster than Next.js and produced 57% smaller client bundles, credited to Vite and the Rust-based Rolldown bundler.
• Vercel CTO called V-Next a ‘slop fork’; Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch posted a Cloudflare-to-Vercel migration guide and flagged security vulnerabilities in the project.
• The existing Open Next project (which repackages Next.js build output) is fragile because it reverse-engineers Next’s output format, which motivated Cloudflare’s ground-up rebuild.
• Fireship achieved 5x faster builds migrating their bytes.dev newsletter app to V-Next but did not ship to production due to early-stage instability.

2026-03-02 · Watch on YouTube