To hire a good Next.js or React developer in Gurugram, check five things before you look at price. They should write TypeScript by default, tell you which of your pages should be static, use ISR or need server rendering, and build sites that pass Core Web Vitals on a mid-range phone. They should also connect a CMS your marketing team can use on its own, and put the code and hosting in your company's name. For context on cost, India-based React freelancers on Upwork typically list $13 to $20 an hour, while Gurugram agencies quote ₹60,000 to ₹2,50,000 for a business website and a lot more for a web app.
I'm Mohit Goyal, a web developer in Gurugram. I've shipped 100+ websites in 4+ years, and I build Next.js and React websites for founders and marketing teams. Below is the checklist I'd use if I were the one hiring.
Why do startups choose Next.js over WordPress?
Next.js suits startups because the marketing site and the product can share React components, and because the site stays quick as marketing keeps adding scripts. For a simple brochure site, WordPress is still a perfectly good choice.
SaaS, fintech and D2C sites often need things WordPress makes harder:
- One component library used by both the marketing site and the product.
- Pages that stay fast as marketing adds tags, widgets and experiments.
- A codebase your future in-house engineers can open and work in straight away.
Next.js gives you React plus server rendering, static generation, routing and image optimisation out of the box. Plain React, like a Vite single-page app, is great for a logged-in dashboard. I wouldn't use it for pages that need to rank, because the first HTML a crawler gets is mostly empty. Google can render JavaScript, but it does that as a separate, later step. Server-rendered HTML removes the guesswork.
If you haven't picked a platform yet, here's how I decide between Next.js or WordPress for a marketing site. You can also try the free Tech Stack Advisor for a layer-by-layer recommendation.
Does hiring a developer in Gurugram make a difference?
It helps in three practical ways: you can meet in person, the time zone works well for India and UK teams, and invoicing is simpler for an Indian company.
- Meeting in person: if your team is in Gurugram or elsewhere in Delhi NCR, a local developer can come in for a kickoff workshop or a launch-day review. The build itself still happens over GitHub, Slack and video calls, so don't pay a premium just for proximity.
- Time-zone overlap: India Standard Time is UTC+5:30, which is 4.5 hours ahead of London in summer and 5.5 in winter, and 9.5 to 10.5 hours ahead of New York. UK teams get a solid afternoon of overlap. US teams usually get early-morning or late-evening India time, so agree a fixed daily window. I've worked remotely from Gurugram with a London agency on sites like Ravens Ait and Crowne Plaza London Kingston.
- Payment and GST: an Indian company will usually want a GST invoice. Ask whether the developer is GST-registered, since a registered business can generally claim input tax credit on the GST charged, and compare quotes on the same basis. Agree milestones and the payment method upfront. If you're paying from the UK or US, ask how the invoice will be raised and in which currency, and check the details with your accountant.
What should a Next.js developer know beyond React?
TypeScript, rendering choices per page, SEO handled inside Next.js, Core Web Vitals, CMS setup, hosting and analytics. React is the entry ticket. Here's what I'd check and what should make you nervous:
| Skill | What good looks like | Red flag |
|---|---|---|
| TypeScript | Strict mode on, typed CMS responses and API calls | any everywhere, or "we'll add types later" |
| Rendering | Picks static, ISR or server rendering for each page type | use client at the top of every file |
| SEO | Metadata API, sitemap, robots, canonicals, JSON-LD | Titles set by a client-side hook, no sitemap |
| Core Web Vitals | Field data passes on mobile | Only shows you a desktop Lighthouse score |
| CMS | Editors publish without a deploy, and preview works | Every copy change needs a pull request |
| Hosting | Vercel or Cloudflare in your name, preview deploy per branch | Site lives on the developer's personal account |
| Analytics | GA4 and GTM events agreed before the build | "I'll just paste the GTM snippet" |
TypeScript
On a startup codebase, TypeScript is cheap insurance. If your pricing data, CMS content and form payloads are typed, a renamed field breaks the build. Without types, it quietly breaks the live site and someone finds out from a customer. Ask to see a repo or a code sample. If the types stop at component props and everything from the CMS is any, you'll pay for it later.
Rendering and SEO
Here's a test you can run yourself on their past work. Open a page and use view-source. If the headline and body copy are sitting in the raw HTML, the page is server rendered or static. If you see an empty div and a pile of script tags, Google and AI crawlers have to work harder to read it.
Then ask for a rendering plan. Marketing pages should usually be static. Blog, changelog and customer story pages suit incremental static regeneration (ISR). Pages whose content changes per request, like a pricing page that shows a local currency, need server rendering or edge middleware. Titles, canonicals, the sitemap and structured data should all be handled through Next.js itself, planned from the start. My technical SEO checklist for a Next.js website has the full list.
Core Web Vitals
Google's "good" thresholds are measured at the 75th percentile of real page visits:
≤ 2.5 s
Largest Contentful Paint (loading)
≤ 200 ms
Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness)
≤ 0.1
Cumulative Layout Shift (stability)
On startup marketing sites, Next.js itself rarely fails these. Third-party scripts do. Picture a GTM container stuffed with tags, a chat widget, HubSpot forms, a heatmap tool and an A/B testing script, all fighting for the main thread. A good developer delays the non-critical scripts, uses next/image and next/font properly, and checks INP in field data rather than trusting a lab score. If your current site is already failing, start with my guide to fixing Core Web Vitals on Next.js or the free Page Speed Fix Planner. I also take this on as technical SEO and Core Web Vitals work.
CMS setup
If you run marketing, this is the part that will hurt most day to day. A beautiful Next.js site that needs a developer for every headline change will slow your team to a crawl. The usual options:
- Headless WordPress: your team keeps the editor it already knows, and content reaches Next.js through the REST API or WPGraphQL. I build these as headless WordPress sites.
- A hosted headless CMS such as Sanity or Contentful: clean content modelling, with a monthly fee that grows as you add seats.
- MDX files in the repo: fine if your engineers write the content. Painful if marketing does.
Ask how preview works. Ask how a published post goes live (ideally a webhook triggers on-demand revalidation, no redeploy). And ask whether marketing can put together a new landing page from existing sections without calling a developer.
Hosting and ownership
Vercel's Pro plan is $20 per user per month plus usage at the time of writing, and Cloudflare is a strong alternative. I compare them in Vercel vs Cloudflare for Next.js. Whichever you choose, the GitHub organisation, hosting team, domain registrar, DNS, CMS and analytics should all be in your company's name, with the developer added as a member. If the site lives on a developer's personal account, you can lose access when they move on. I've written about taking back your site when a developer disappears.
If you're in fintech, security headers matter too: Content-Security-Policy, HSTS and the rest. I maintain the HTTP Security Header WordPress plugin for exactly this, and it has 1,000+ active installs. On Next.js, the same headers go in the config or the middleware. Run any live site through my free Security Headers Checker to see where it stands.
How much does a Next.js or React developer cost in Gurugram?
Roughly $10 to $20 an hour for junior freelancers on Upwork, $21 to $54 an hour for mid-level developers in India (Second Talent) and $40 to $70 for senior React developers across Asia (Index.dev), or ₹60,000 to ₹6,00,000 per project through a Gurugram agency. These are market ranges, not my rates:
| Option | Typical rate or price | Source |
|---|---|---|
| India React.js freelancer | $13–20/hour | Upwork |
| India Next.js freelancer | $10–15/hour | Upwork |
| Mid-level Next.js developer, India | $21–54/hour | Second Talent |
| Senior React developer, Asia | $40–70/hour | Index.dev |
| Gurugram agency, business website | ₹60,000–₹2,50,000 | WebSenor |
| Gurugram agency, SaaS MVP | ₹3,00,000–₹6,00,000 | WebSenor |
| Senior developer, time and materials | ₹80,000–₹1,20,000/month | WebSenor |
| In-house Next.js developer, India median | ₹7.5 lakh/year all-in | Flexiple |
The low marketplace rates are mostly junior profiles. Index.dev reports that Next.js or server components experience adds 15–35% to base rates, and seniority adds more on top. Agencies build project management and QA into the price. On a multi-developer web app that's money well spent. On a 10-page marketing site it's mostly overhead. For a fuller look at rates and vetting, read hiring a Next.js developer in India.
Should a startup hire a freelancer or an agency?
For a marketing site or a focused web app, I'd usually go with a senior freelancer. If you need several developers, a project manager and QA working at once, an agency makes more sense.
With a freelancer, the person on the sales call is the person writing the code. Decisions happen faster and there's less overhead. The risk is that everything rests on one person, so insist on repo ownership, a README and a component library someone else could pick up.
An agency gives you more people working in parallel. The usual catch is a senior person on the call and a junior on the code, or the work quietly subcontracted. Even WebSenor's own guide to agency pricing warns about sub-contracting. Ask straight out who will write the code.
There's a middle option too. When a project needs more than me, I bring in my design partners or my web and mobile app team, and I stay your single point of contact.
How long does a Next.js build take?
A Next.js business website usually takes 3 to 6 weeks and a SaaS MVP 8 to 12 weeks, going by Gurugram agency benchmarks. What actually moves your date:
- Design readiness: a finished Figma file versus designing as you go.
- Templates, not pages: 40 blog posts on one template is quick. Eight unique landing layouts isn't.
- Integrations: HubSpot, Razorpay or Stripe, authentication, a product API.
- Migration: moving content and mapping redirects from an old site.
Will moving from Webflow or WordPress to Next.js hurt SEO?
Only if URLs change without 301 redirects or metadata gets lost. A planned migration keeps your rankings. Startups often launch on Webflow or WordPress and outgrow it once the product team wants shared components or the site gets slow. That's when URLs change, redirects get missed and traffic drops. I've written separate guides on Webflow to Next.js migration and moving from WordPress to Next.js without losing SEO. My free Redirect Map Builder turns a list of old WordPress URLs into a redirects() array for next.config.js and flags chains and loops for you.
What should you ask before you hire?
Give it about a week. These six checks will tell you most of what you need to know:
- 1
Ask for live URLs
Open three past sites and view the source. Real copy in the HTML means server-rendered or static pages.
- 2
Check field speed
Run their sites through PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile real-user data, not just the lab score.
- 3
Ask for a rendering plan
Have them say which of your pages they would make static, ISR or server rendered, and why.
- 4
Watch an editor publish
Ask them to show a CMS change going live without a redeploy, including preview.
- 5
Confirm ownership
Agree in writing that the repo, hosting, domain and CMS accounts sit in your company's name.
- 6
Start with a small paid milestone
A homepage or one landing template shows code quality before you commit to the full build.
You can see what I build on my projects page. This portfolio is itself a React app on TanStack Start, with a chat that answers as me through the Claude API. The case study explains how it works.
Next step
Write down what you need first. The free Project Scope Generator turns a two-line idea into pages, features and a build order. Then book a 20-minute discovery call and I'll tell you honestly whether Next.js, React or WordPress is the right fit for your startup.
