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Lighthouse 98 is the new minimum

How we ship Next.js sites that score 98+ across the board, and why it now matters more than ever for SEO.

January 15, 2026 5 min read
Engineering

Five years ago, Lighthouse 90 was a stretch goal. Today, 98+ is achievable on every site we build, and it matters more than ever — both for ranking and for conversion.

Here's the short version of how. Use Next.js 15 + the App Router. Rely on next/image for everything. Use next/font (or self-hosted variable fonts). Avoid client components except for genuinely interactive UI. Set proper cache headers. Keep third-party scripts to a minimum and load them with `next/script` strategy='lazyOnload'.

Done well, this nets you LCP under 1.5s, CLS near zero, INP under 200ms, and Lighthouse 98+ — without doing anything exotic.

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