NextJS-less admin UI?

[cofl]

I've got a few small applications that would benefit from a proper CMS, but they're all on Vite-based frameworks (specifically SvelteKit) where NextJS is an unworkably heavy set of dependencies to drop in and have to start tracking.

Is there any way to use or embed the admin UI without also adding NextJS to the project? Is the only option using Payload 2?

[salvador-castro]

Confirmed — in Payload 3, the admin panel is Next.js-only by design. Outside Next (SvelteKit, Remix, Nuxt, scripts) you get the Local API/REST/GraphQL data layer, but not the admin UI itself; the official blog post on 3.0 explicitly says installing Payload in Remix "won't bring... the admin panel" — it's just not available, not a lighter version of it.

So yes, Payload 2 (Express-based, webpack-bundled React admin) is currently the only Payload-native way to get the bundled admin UI without a Next.js dependency. The tradeoff is it's in maintenance mode (security fixes only, no new features).

A middle ground a lot of people use: keep a tiny standalone Next.js app that only serves /admin (and optionally the API routes), pointing at the same payload.config and database, while your actual SvelteKit app stays completely separate and talks to Payload over REST/GraphQL. Next.js never touches your SvelteKit dependency tree — it's confined to that small sidecar deployment.

If even that's too much, the other option is skipping Payload's bundled admin entirely and wiring a generic panel (AdminJS, react-admin, Refine) to Payload's REST/GraphQL API — more manual setup per collection, but zero Next.js anywhere.

[cofl]

That's a bit disappointing. React itself is already a pretty hard pill to swallow, and NextJS (with its terrible approach to disabling telemetry) just makes it worse.

I guess I'll just have to check back in a few months and see if running 4.0 on Tanstack is any better.