Nextjs Routing System Simplified

 

Currently  Nextjs uses Two Routing methods was PageRouter and AppRouter along side ReactRouter

#PageRouter

If you have worked with older versions of Next.js, you’ve probably come across the Pages Router — Next.js’s file-based routing system.

With the Pages Router, every file inside the pages directory could represent a route in your application. For example, creating pages/about.js automatically made /about available in the browser.

This approach was one of the things that made Next.js different from a traditional React application. In a React app, developers commonly used libraries such as React Router to manually configure routes. In Next.js, routing was largely handled for us through the file structure.

#AppRouter

But modern Next.js introduced another approach: the App Router.

The App Router uses a folder-based routing system built around the app directory. Instead of treating individual files as routes, folders represent URL segments, while special files such as page.js define the actual UI for that route.

app/

├── page.js              → /

├── about/

│   └── page.js          → /about

└── blog/

    ├── page.js          → /blog

    └── post/

        └── page.js      → /blog/post

So, while the Pages Router and App Router follow the same fundamental idea — your project structure determines your URLs — they organize routes differently.

The App Router goes further than simply changing how routes are created. It introduces modern Next.js concepts such as nested layouts, Server Components, loading states, error handling, and streaming, making it a powerful foundation for building modern web applications.