62.4k stars · MIT · astro@7.3.1 (2026-09-03)
Static, content-first web framework — the part of the site that can actually rank, because the React SPA cannot.
▶Repo detailsthe review · specs · pros & cons · install
What it is
A web framework built for content-driven sites. It renders pages to plain static HTML by default and ships no JavaScript unless a component genuinely needs it, so pages arrive fast and complete.
Why it matters
This is the structural fix for the problem Unlighthouse (Edition 2) will report and cannot solve. A React single-page app hands a crawler an empty shell and a pile of JavaScript; Google sometimes copes, AI crawlers frequently do not, and Core Web Vitals suffer either way — on exactly the marketing pages that most need to rank. Astro flips it: your blog, your landing pages, your Russian-language pages and your /llms.txt become static HTML at the edge of your domain, while the app itself stays React and unchanged at /app. It is also where programmatic SEO becomes possible — one template plus a list of use cases generates a hundred real, indexable pages.
- MIT, enormous community — Claude Code writes correct Astro on the first attempt
- Static output is cheap to host and near-impossible to make slow
- You can embed React components where you genuinely need interactivity, so nothing is thrown away
- A second front-end codebase to maintain beside the React app — real ongoing cost
- Keeping one visual identity across two builds takes discipline, or the site looks stitched together
- v7 is in beta; start on v6 and do not chase the upgrade mid-project
npm create astro@latest marketing-site cd marketing-site npm run dev # preview at localhost:4321 npm run build # static HTML into ./dist
