Features
- Incremental computation engine written in Rust
- Native integration with Next.js dev server
- Function-level caching for maximum rebuild speed
- Support for TypeScript, JSX, and CSS out of the box
Pros
- Extremely fast HMR and cold starts in Next.js projects
- Backed by Vercel with strong long-term investment
- Designed to scale to massive codebases
Cons
- Tightly coupled to Next.js, limited standalone usage
- Still maturing compared to established bundlers
- Plugin ecosystem is not yet fully developed
Overview
Turbopack is an incremental bundler written in Rust, created by Vercel as the spiritual successor to Webpack. It was designed from the ground up to leverage Rust’s performance characteristics and a novel incremental computation model that caches work at the function level, enabling extremely fast rebuilds.
Turbopack is deeply integrated into Next.js, where it serves as the dev-mode bundler starting from Next.js 13. Its architecture is based on the Turbo engine, which tracks dependencies between computations and only re-executes the minimum necessary work when files change.
While still evolving, Turbopack represents Vercel’s vision for the future of JavaScript bundling: a tool fast enough to handle the largest enterprise codebases without sacrificing developer experience.
When to Use
Use Turbopack when building Next.js applications and you want the fastest possible dev server experience. Enable it with the --turbopack flag in your Next.js dev command.
Getting Started
npx create-next-app@latest my-app
cd my-app
npm run dev -- --turbopack