What's the difference between "next start" and "node server.js"?

Question

So I'm struggling a bit with this. Let's say I build my NextJS project, I have 2 css files one of them is 10mb. Then I run next start and I see on Lighthouse that the file size is only a few kb. But if I run node server.js on the standalone folder, the css file size stays the same and that's a problem. Is this the intended behavior? Is there any way to fix this?

When I say standalone folder I mean this: https://nextjs.org/docs/advanced-features/output-file-tracing#automatically-copying-traced-files-experimental

Answer 1

UPDATED

I think you're trying to build custom server (https://nextjs.org/docs/advanced-features/custom-server)

According to that document, they mention this part which may be related to what you're looking for

Before deciding to use a custom server, please keep in mind that it should only be used when the integrated router of Next.js can't meet your app requirements. A custom server will remove important performance optimizations, like serverless functions and Automatic Static Optimization.

OLD ANSWER

next start usually goes along with next build (https://nextjs.org/docs/api-reference/cli#production) and it has its own custom configs under next.config with a ton of good stuff like file compression, routings, image optimization, etc. (under the hood, it also uses Webpack and Babel for builds)

node server.js is just simply to run a server and does nothing else. Therefore, if you want to have better builds like NextJS. You need to add libraries into NodeJS.

You can find some useful libraries here.

https://blog.bitsrc.io/23-insanely-useful-nodejs-libraries-you-should-know-in-2020-5a9b570d5416