How I Cut Costly Bandwidth Spikes by Disabling Nuxt Link Prefetch

The Discovery: An Unexpected Spike in Bandwidth

The other day, I was optimizing a Nuxt 3 project I inherited—and noticed weird spikes in “Fast Data Transfer” on Vercel. The app wasn’t doing anything heavy, yet the network usage seemed excessive.

One clue stood out: every internal link was preloading content the moment it entered the viewport.

Turns out, Nuxt’s nuxt-link prefetch feature was preloading numerous chunks—turning simple page navigation into a bandwidth-hungry process :contentReference[oaicite:0]0.

What I Found: Prefetching Isn't Free

By default, Nuxt enables smart prefetching—that means when a <nuxt-link> appears on screen, it automatically fetches that page’s code. It uses IntersectionObserver and requestIdleCallback, which is clever—but in larger apps with many links, it leads to a flood of unnecessary network requests :contentReference[oaicite:1]1.

This accidental behavior meant users triggered dozens of page fetches just by scrolling. All that ended up on my Vercel bill.

The Fix: Disable Prefetch Globally

I needed a quick and effective way to stop it. A look at the docs revealed we can disable prefetch across the board in nuxt.config.ts:

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  experimental: {
    defaults: {
      nuxtLink: {
        prefetch: false,
      },
    },
  },
})

Or, more simply:

export default {
  router: {
    prefetchLinks: false,
  },
}

Both methods prevent Nuxt from injecting <link rel="prefetch"> tags for page chunks ([Nuxt][1], [Medium][2]).

Results: Faster, Leaner, and Cheaper

• Bandwidth usage dropped significantly
• Vercel “Fast Data Transfer” costs normalized
• Page performance stayed fast—without wasted fetches
• More control over what actually gets prefetched

Lessons Learned

1. Inherited defaults—especially features like smart prefetch—can stealthily drain bandwidth.
2. Nuxt gives you control—disable prefetch globally when you value budget over ultra-aggressive navigation performance.
3. For high-link-volume pages, disable by default and opt-in manually on critical links.
4. Vercel’s cost dashboard helped me trace the issue fast—a crucial part of the optimization process.