output

output?: 'standalone' | 'export'

Two unrelated modes share one key. 'standalone' uses output file tracing to copy only the files each route actually loads into .next/standalone, so a Docker image can drop node_modules entirely. 'export' gives up the server altogether and emits one HTML file per route.

When to reach for it

• Building a small container image for Kubernetes or Fly.
• Publishing to GitHub Pages, S3 or any plain static host.
• Trimming a deployment bundle that is dominated by dev dependencies.

What trips people up

Standalone does not copy public/ or .next/static — the assumption is a CDN serves them. Miss that step and the site loads with no CSS and no images. Copy them by hand after next build, and start the app with node .next/standalone/server.js rather than next start. In a monorepo, tracing is rooted at the project directory, so shared packages above it need outputFileTracingRoot. Native binaries such as sharp are sometimes missed and need outputFileTracingIncludes. For 'export', the whole server-dependent half of the framework is off the table — the failure arrives as a build error, not a runtime surprise.

import type { NextConfig } from 'next'

const nextConfig: NextConfig = {
  output: 'standalone',
}

export default nextConfig

FROM node:20-alpine AS builder
WORKDIR /app
COPY package.json package-lock.json ./
RUN npm ci
COPY . .
RUN npm run build

FROM node:20-alpine AS runner
WORKDIR /app
ENV NODE_ENV=production

# server.js does not include these two directories
COPY --from=builder /app/.next/standalone ./
COPY --from=builder /app/public ./public
COPY --from=builder /app/.next/static ./.next/static

ENV PORT=8080 HOSTNAME=0.0.0.0
EXPOSE 8080
CMD ["node", "server.js"]

import type { NextConfig } from 'next'

const nextConfig: NextConfig = {
  output: 'export',

  // /me -> /me/ and /me.html -> /me/index.html
  trailingSlash: true,

  // out -> dist
  distDir: 'dist',

  images: {
    // the default optimizer needs a server
    unoptimized: true,
  },
}

export default nextConfig