Next.js or WordPress in 2026 — a concrete comparison for companies in Serbia

Choose WordPress if you need a site a non-technical team changes frequently on its own, the budget is under €3,000 and the features are standard. Choose Next.js if speed matters commercially, you plan custom features or integrations, and you have a budget from €3,000 upward. In 2026 both platforms can deliver an excellent website — the difference is who will maintain it and how much it will grow. The bad choice is not the platform, but a platform that does not fit how your company actually works.

Speed: Next.js with static generation serves finished HTML from a CDN, so LCP is typically 0.8–1.5s with no extra work. WordPress without optimisation often has an LCP of 2.5–5s due to PHP rendering, database queries and plugins; with a good caching layer (LiteSpeed, Cloudflare, static cache) it can come down to 1.5–2.5s. The practical consequence: a Next.js site passes Core Web Vitals out of the box, WordPress passes only after deliberate optimisation work. For e-commerce and high-traffic sites, that difference is measured in conversions.

Build cost in Serbia in 2026: WordPress presentation site €800–€2,500, with a custom theme €2,500–€5,000. Next.js site €2,500–€6,000, with a headless CMS (Sanity, Strapi) €4,000–€9,000. Maintenance: WordPress €100–€250 monthly because it requires regular core, theme and plugin updates plus security checks; Next.js €50–€150 monthly because there is no plugin ecosystem to break, but every functional change requires a developer. Total three-year cost is often even — WordPress pays through maintenance, Next.js through development.

For classic SEO both platforms can be excellent — Google indexes either without trouble when the site is technically sound. The difference appears in AI visibility and structured data: in Next.js you write JSON-LD directly in code, fully control what AI reads and easily build a linked entity graph; in WordPress this depends on a plugin (Rank Math, Yoast) that generates templated markup which is hard to customise. The second difference is speed, which is both a ranking signal and a factor Perplexity weighs when selecting sources.

Recommendation by company type: small business, local service, blog or portfolio — WordPress, because it is cheap, fast to deliver and the owner can edit content themselves. Mid-size company with a marketing team and regular content — WordPress with a custom theme or Next.js with a headless CMS, depending on how much speed matters. B2B company, SaaS, application, a site with integrations or a site that is your main sales channel — Next.js. E-commerce up to 200 products — WooCommerce; beyond that or with complex logic — Shopify or custom. Feather Studio builds on both platforms and only recommends after understanding how the company works.