I'm still exploring this, but my sense is that with Next.JS, the cached version is still deposited on the edge cache at build time, so you don't have that first expensive query. Not sure if you can do something like that with Cloudflare alone.

Second is that with Next.JS, expiration means that it gets built and re-deposited onto the edge cache in the background, without ever needing that expensive query. Again, not sure if you can do something like that with Cloudflare alone.