Nuxt I18n Micro is a fast, simple, and lightweight internationalization (i18n) module for Nuxt. Despite its compact size, it's designed with large projects in mind, offering significant performance improvements over traditional i18n solutions like nuxt-i18n. The module was built from the ground up to be highly efficient, focusing on minimizing build times, reducing server load, and shrinking bundle sizes.

The Nuxt I18n Micro module was created to address critical performance issues found in the original nuxt-i18n module, particularly in high-traffic environments and projects with large translation files. Key issues with nuxt-i18n include:

• High Memory Consumption: Consumes significant memory during both build and runtime, leading to performance bottlenecks.
• Slow Performance: Especially with large translation files, it causes noticeable slowdowns in build times and server response.
• Large Bundle Size: Generates a large bundle, negatively impacting application performance.
• Memory Leaks and Bugs: Known for memory leaks and unpredictable behavior under heavy load.

To showcase the efficiency of Nuxt I18n Micro, we ran the same fixture suite via pnpm test:performance against @nuxtjs/i18n@10.6.0 on the same hardware. We also include a plain-nuxt baseline (no i18n module) to measure the real overhead.

Note: The plain-nuxt baseline is a minimal implementation created solely for benchmarking purposes. It loads data directly from JSON files without any i18n logic. Latest published comparison: @nuxtjs/i18n@10.6.0, mean of 3 consecutive runs (forced rebuilds), real module dist, Artillery --load full (warm 6s@6 + 60s@60 uncapped) — see docs/guide/performance-results.md and docs/guide/performance-methodology.md.

Code Bundle = JS/CSS only (excludes classified translation payloads, including @nuxtjs/i18n chunks/raw/*). Older tables that showed ~15 MB “code” for v10.6 were counting message chunks as app code.

• i18n-micro vs baseline: ≈ same build time, +0.22 MB code, +138 MB peak RSS
• @nuxtjs/i18n v10.6 vs baseline: +3.16s build, +0.68 MB code, +433 MB peak RSS

• Build Time: 3.22s faster (5.01s vs 8.23s)
• Average Response Time (Artillery): 685 ms faster (583 ms vs 1,268 ms)
• Requests Per Second (Artillery): 104 more (230 vs 126)

Micro leads on build cost and especially under load. See the full benchmark report for methodology and charts.

• 🌐 Compact Yet Powerful: Despite its small size, Nuxt I18n Micro is designed for large-scale projects, focusing on performance and efficiency.
• ⚡ Optimized Build and Runtime: Reduces build times, memory usage, and server load, making it ideal for high-traffic applications.
• 🛠 Minimalist Design: The module core is a single Nuxt module plus a small set of runtime plugins, making it easy to understand, extend, and maintain.
• 📏 Strategy-Based Routing: Locale prefixes are handled via @i18n-micro/route-strategy (build-time) and @i18n-micro/path-strategy (runtime), with strategies such as prefix, no_prefix, prefix_except_default, and prefix_and_default.
• 🗂 Streamlined Translation Loading: Only JSON files are supported, with translations split between a global file for common texts (e.g., menus) and page-specific files, which are auto-generated in the dev mode if not present.

Install the module in your Nuxt application with:

npm install nuxt-i18n-micro

Then, add it to your nuxt.config.ts:

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  modules: [
    'nuxt-i18n-micro',
  ],
  i18n: {
    locales: [
      { code: 'en', iso: 'en-US', dir: 'ltr' },
      { code: 'fr', iso: 'fr-FR', dir: 'ltr' },
      { code: 'ar', iso: 'ar-SA', dir: 'rtl' },
    ],
    defaultLocale: 'en',
    translationDir: 'locales',
    meta: true,
  },
})

That's it! You're now ready to use Nuxt I18n Micro in your Nuxt app.

Docs

Plugin Methods

Performance

Performance Test Results

Components

Layers

Seo

Migration

Contribution