Edge rendering is a rendering strategy that executes server-side code at CDN edge points-of-presence (POPs) geographically close to the user, minimizing Time to First Byte (TTFB) compared to origin-rendered alternatives.
Edge platforms — Vercel Edge Functions, Cloudflare Workers, Netlify Edge, Deno Deploy — run JavaScript at hundreds of locations worldwide. A user in Tokyo hits a Tokyo POP rather than a single US-based origin server, cutting TTFB from 200–500ms to 30–100ms.
Edge environments are constrained — limited execution time per request, no Node.js full API surface (no fs, restricted Buffer, etc.), no traditional database connections (use HTTP-based clients like Neon serverless or Upstash Redis instead).
For ecommerce, the SEO and UX win is structural: the static shell of every page (title, canonical, hreflang, JSON-LD, hero) streams from edge instantly, while dynamic islands (cart, recently viewed) hydrate after. PPR + Cache Components in Next.js 16 makes this the default.