---
title: "Inline Minification"
description: "Automatically minify inline scripts and styles in your SSR responses to reduce page weight."
canonical_url: "https://nuxtseo.com/docs/seo-utils/guides/minification"
last_updated: "2026-07-27T12:59:44.875Z"
---

Nuxt SEO Utils automatically minifies inline `<script>` and `<style>` tags in your SSR responses. This is enabled by default in production builds.

## How It Works

The module provides two complementary minification modes that can be toggled independently.

### Build Mode

At build time, the module has access to native tooling for full minification:

- **JavaScript**: Minified with [Rolldown](https://rolldown.rs/) (Vite 8+) or [esbuild](https://esbuild.github.io/) (Vite 7), automatically detected
- **CSS**: Minified with [lightningcss](https://lightningcss.dev/) (full CSS optimization)

This applies to:

- Static scripts and styles defined in `app.head` within your `nuxt.config`
- All inline scripts and styles in prerendered/generated route HTML

### Runtime Mode

For dynamic SSR where scripts are generated per request (hydration payloads, `useHead()` injections), the module registers an [Unhead](https://unhead.unjs.io/) `ssr:render` plugin that minifies `HeadTag` content before it's serialized to HTML.

This uses lightweight pure JS minifiers with zero native dependencies, ensuring compatibility with any deployment target (serverless, edge, Docker).

Build mode minification has no runtime cost. Runtime mode adds minimal overhead per request since the lightweight minifiers are simple single-pass transforms (comment stripping, whitespace collapsing) with no parsing or AST construction.

## Configuration

Minification is enabled by default. You can configure it in your `nuxt.config`:

<code-group>

```ts [Both (default)]
export default defineNuxtConfig({
  seo: {
    minify: true,
  },
})
```

```ts [Build only]
export default defineNuxtConfig({
  seo: {
    minify: { build: true, runtime: false },
  },
})
```

```ts [Runtime only]
export default defineNuxtConfig({
  seo: {
    minify: { runtime: true, build: false },
  },
})
```

```ts [Disabled]
export default defineNuxtConfig({
  seo: {
    minify: false,
  },
})
```

</code-group>

## What Gets Minified

<table>
<thead>
  <tr>
    <th>
      Content
    </th>
    
    <th>
      Build Mode
    </th>
    
    <th>
      Runtime Mode
    </th>
  </tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
  <tr>
    <td>
      <code>
        app.head
      </code>
      
       scripts/styles
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Rolldown or esbuild / lightningcss
    </td>
    
    <td>
      n/a (static)
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      Prerendered route HTML
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Rolldown or esbuild / lightningcss
    </td>
    
    <td>
      n/a (static)
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      Hydration payload (<code>
        __NUXT__
      </code>
      
      )
    </td>
    
    <td>
      n/a (dynamic)
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Lightweight JS
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      <code>
        useHead()
      </code>
      
       injected scripts
    </td>
    
    <td>
      n/a (dynamic)
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Lightweight JS
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      <code>
        useHead()
      </code>
      
       injected styles
    </td>
    
    <td>
      n/a (dynamic)
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Lightweight CSS
    </td>
  </tr>
</tbody>
</table>

## What Gets Skipped

The following are skipped by the JS minifier:

- JSON script types (`application/ld+json`, `application/json`) are minified via `JSON.parse`/`JSON.stringify` instead of JS minification
- `importmap` and `speculationrules` script types are left completely untouched
- External scripts (with `src` attribute)