Vite is a build tool similar to Webpack that basically allows you to work locally on your application and build it into production. It will also bring various loaders, hot module replacement capabilities, environment variables, asset management, and more.
Nuxt has absolutely nothing to do with any of this. It's comparable to React/Svelte from Gatsby/Next/Vitepress.
Its goal is to provide more functionality for VueJS. For example, Vue only runs as an SPA, which means you won't get any kind of indexing by search engines, while Nuxt does have SSR and SSG modes that allow your site to be crawled efficiently.
It also brings many developer experience benefits: automatic import of composite APIs, components, simple routing, a large ecosystem thanks to all Nuxt modules, simpler configuration, etc...
Basically it's more like a VueJS application!
Additionally, the latest version of Nuxt (v3) can be used with Vite out of the box. So, they're both complementary in that you need a build tool to work in today's JS ecosystem, and you get more functionality than just VueJS.
There are tools like vite-plugin-ssr and vitesse (btw, created by the core maintainer of Nuxt) that can solve the basic need of statically generating some routes etc., but it Not as powerful, the community is smaller around it, and the overall movement speed is slower.
Trusting the people behind Nuxt/Vite is also an important aspect, most of them are well known in the community and are serious day-to-day maintainers!
Vite is a build tool similar to Webpack that basically allows you to work locally on your application and build it into production. It will also bring various loaders, hot module replacement capabilities, environment variables, asset management, and more.
Nuxt has absolutely nothing to do with any of this. It's comparable to React/Svelte from Gatsby/Next/Vitepress.
Its goal is to provide more functionality for VueJS. For example, Vue only runs as an SPA, which means you won't get any kind of indexing by search engines, while Nuxt does have SSR and SSG modes that allow your site to be crawled efficiently.
It also brings many developer experience benefits: automatic import of composite APIs, components, simple routing, a large ecosystem thanks to all Nuxt modules, simpler configuration, etc...
Basically it's more like a VueJS application!
Additionally, the latest version of Nuxt (v3) can be used with Vite out of the box. So, they're both complementary in that you need a build tool to work in today's JS ecosystem, and you get more functionality than just VueJS.
There are tools like vite-plugin-ssr and vitesse (btw, created by the core maintainer of Nuxt) that can solve the basic need of statically generating some routes etc., but it Not as powerful, the community is smaller around it, and the overall movement speed is slower.
Trusting the people behind Nuxt/Vite is also an important aspect, most of them are well known in the community and are serious day-to-day maintainers!