Your Shopify Stack Choice Costs You $47K/Year in Hidden Fees

With equivalent configurations, both frameworks hit sub-100ms TTFB at the edge. Hydrogen on Oxygen benefits from co-located Shopify API servers -- that shaves roughly 10-20ms off API calls in practice. Next.js Commerce on Vercel closes the gap with edge functions and aggressive ISR caching. Honestly, the real-world difference is small enough that your implementation quality will matter far more than which framework you picked.

Yes. Next.js Commerce ships with a Shopify provider adapter that connects to the Storefront API out of the box -- product listings, cart operations, and checkout redirect all work. That said, Shopify-specific features like the Customer Account API and Shopify Analytics need custom integration work that Hydrogen handles natively. If those features matter to you, factor that effort into the comparison.

No. Hydrogen v2 runs on any Node.js-compatible or edge runtime -- Vercel, Cloudflare Workers, Netlify, or your own servers. Oxygen is the default and the only option included free with Shopify plans. Deploy elsewhere and you lose Oxygen's built-in Shopify API proximity and you'll pay separate hosting fees on top.

Hydrogen on Oxygen is included in your Shopify plan -- genuinely useful if you're watching costs. Next.js Commerce on Vercel's Pro plan starts at $20/month per team member, then adds usage-based charges for bandwidth and serverless function invocations. At scale, Vercel bills can land anywhere from $500 to $2,000+/month depending on traffic. Worth modeling before you commit.

Not necessarily. Hydrogen v2 uses React Router 7 (formerly Remix) conventions -- loaders, actions, nested routes -- which are genuinely different from Next.js App Router patterns. Your team will hit a learning curve. If they're already moving fast in Next.js and Oxygen hosting isn't a priority, Next.js Commerce is the pragmatic call. No shame in that.

Yes, but don't underestimate the work. React components and styling carry over without much trouble. The data layer, routing, and server-side logic need full rewrites -- Hydrogen uses React Router loaders while Next.js uses server components and route handlers. For a mid-size storefront with meaningful custom functionality, budget 4-8 weeks. It depends heavily on how much you've built on top of the defaults.