SuttaCentral.now

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 .net to .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

Performance Comparisons

All benchmarks measured via https://pagespeed.web.dev for desktop on 22/01/2026:

/

	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

/dn1/en/sujato

	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

/search?query=deva

	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

Related Projects

• SuttaCentral
• SuttaCentral Static
• SuttaCentral Redirect

License

Donated to the public domain via CC0

Favicon via thesunshade