Your Nuxt Guide

# Why Nuxt Is Popular

Nuxt gives you modern rendering, clean DX, and an ecosystem that scales with your app.

• • Universal rendering (SSR, SSG, Hybrid, SPA) without extra config
• • File-based routing and auto imports
• • Performance-first (Vite + Nitro under the hood)
• • Edge-ready deployment (Cloudflare, Vercel, Netlify, Bun, etc.)
• • Strong ecosystem of official & community modules

# Authentication

Nuxt doesn’t ship with built-in auth. Use one of these:

Nuxt Auth Utils (community favorite)

• • Secure cookie-based sessions with encryption
• • 40+ OAuth providers out of the box
• • Typed session helpers (useUserSession())
• • Works with SSR, ISR, and SPA

BetterAuth

• • Lightweight and flexible token/session flows
• • Great for enterprise-grade identity and custom rules

Tip: Start with Nuxt Auth Utils, switch to BetterAuth/Lucia when you need more control.

# Database Providers

Nuxt leaves persistence to you. Great options:

• • Cloudflare D1 – SQLite-compatible DB on the edge (cheap, fast, NuxtHub-friendly)
• • Supabase – Postgres + Auth + Storage + Realtime, great DX
• • Turso (libSQL) Turso (libSQL) – Distributed SQLite with sync & vector support
• • PocketBase – OSS backend (DB + auth + files) for small apps

# Must-Have Modules

• • @nuxt/image – Optimized, responsive images
• • @nuxtjs/sitemap – SEO-ready sitemap generation
• • @nuxt/icon – Iconify-powered, no manual SVG imports
• • @nuxt/fonts – Optimized font loading
• • @nuxt/devtools – Inspect routes, payloads, server, and Vue tree live

# Form Validation

Schema validators that work great with Nuxt:

• • Zod – TypeScript-first schemas (great in server routes & components)
• • Joi – Mature validator with rich rules

Tip: Choose Zod if you want type inference inside your Vue components.

# UI Libraries

• • Nuxt UI – First-party, Tailwind-based, excellent DX
• • Shadcn Vue – Headless & highly customizable
• • PrimeVue – 90+ rich, styled components
• • Radix Vue – Accessible, headless primitives

# ORM Choices (Databases Made Easy)

ORMs simplify migrations, relations, and typing:

Drizzle ORM (best TS support)

• • Edge-friendly (Cloudflare D1, Turso, Neon, etc.)
• • Strongly-typed queries, lightweight migrations
• • Popular in Nuxt full-stack templates

Prisma

• • Feature-rich ORM (relations, migrations, studio)
• • Best for Postgres/MySQL; not for D1; limited on Turso

Kysely

• • Lightweight, type-safe query builder
• • Good choice where Prisma isn’t supported

Rule of thumb: Deploying to Cloudflare → use Drizzle. On Supabase/Postgres → Prisma or Drizzle both shine.

# Testing & Quality

• • Vitest – Vite-native unit testing
• • Playwright – E2E browser tests (fast, resilient)
• • Cypress – Popular E2E choice, rich tooling
• • ESLint + Prettier – via @nuxt/eslint for consistent code

# Deployment Options

• • NuxtHub – Cloudflare Workers + D1 + KV + Blob
• • Vercel – Simple deploys, great edge support
• • Netlify – Similar to Vercel, excellent DX
• • GitHub Pages – Static-only (SSG)
• • Cloudflare Pages + Workers – Edge SSR + databases

# Analytics & Monitoring

• • Plausible – Lightweight, privacy-friendly analytics
• • Umami – Self-hosted, privacy-focused analytics
• • PostHog – Product analytics (replay, funnels)

# Email & Notifications

• • Resend – DX-focused email API
• • Postmark – Reliable transactional email
• • Frontegg – Identity + notifications suite

# Security Hardening

• • Add rate limiting in Nitro middleware
• • Set security headers (CSP, HSTS, no-sniff, referrer-policy)
• • Add /.well-known/security.txt
• • Force HTTPS everywhere (Cloudflare “Always Use HTTPS” + HSTS)

# AI

• • Vercel AI SDK – Streaming AI in Nuxt UIs
• • LangChain.js – LLM chains & tools
• • NuxtHub CloudFlare AI – Simple wrappers for common AI tasks