A fast and minimal alternative frontend for SuttaCentral.net
This project fetches data from SuttaCentral's public APIs at request time and serves it as static HTML.
- Complete text library — All suttas, vinaya, and abhidhamma in root languages and every available translation
- Server-side rendering — Pages rendered on-demand with latest data from SuttaCentral's APIs
- Internationalised — Automatic language detection from your browsers preferred language
- Instant search — Fast, powerful search using SuttaCentral's API (includes Pali dictionary lookups)
- URLs you know and love — Mirrors SuttaCentral.net URL structure (just change
.netto.now, or use the browser extension) - Flexible text settings — Customizable reading preferences for footnotes, root-text views, and reference links
- Minimal JavaScript — Optional 7.65kb of client-side JS to enable inline Pali & Chinese dictionary lookups and text-to-speech via the Web Speech API
All benchmarks measured via https://pagespeed.web.dev for desktop on 22/01/2026:
| Â | SuttaCentral.now | SuttaCentral.net | Performance Gain |
|---|---|---|---|
| First Contentful Paint | 0.2s | 1.1s | 82% faster |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 0.2s | 1.7s | 8.5x faster |
| Total Blocking Time | 0ms | 60ms | 100% reduction |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 0 | 0.031 | 100% reduction |
| Â | SuttaCentral.now | SuttaCentral.net | Performance Gain |
|---|---|---|---|
| First Contentful Paint | 0.4s | 0.6s | 33% faster |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 0.4s | 2.3s | 5.8x faster |
| Total Blocking Time | 0ms | 240ms | 100% reduction |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 0 | 0.608 | 100% reduction |
| Â | SuttaCentral.now | SuttaCentral.net | Performance Gain |
|---|---|---|---|
| First Contentful Paint | 0.3s | 0.6s | 50% faster |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 0.4s | 1.7s | 4.3x faster |
| Total Blocking Time | 0ms | 280ms | 100% reduction |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 0 | 0.003 | 100% reduction |
Donated to the public domain via CC0
Favicon via thesunshade