diff --git a/packages/nuxt/src/app/nuxt.ts b/packages/nuxt/src/app/nuxt.ts
index 3c83b9680a..c4fa103289 100644
--- a/packages/nuxt/src/app/nuxt.ts
+++ b/packages/nuxt/src/app/nuxt.ts
@@ -281,30 +281,7 @@ export function createNuxtApp (options: CreateOptions) {
 
   // Expose runtime config
   const runtimeConfig = process.server ? options.ssrContext!.runtimeConfig : reactive(nuxtApp.payload.config)
-
-  // TODO: remove in v3.5
-  // Backward compatibility following #4254
-  const compatibilityConfig = new Proxy(runtimeConfig, {
-    get (target, prop: string) {
-      if (prop in target) {
-        return target[prop]
-      }
-      if (process.dev && prop in target.public) {
-        console.warn(`[nuxt] [runtimeConfig] You are trying to access a public runtime config value (\`${prop}\`) directly from the top level. This currently works (for backward compatibility with Nuxt 2) but this compatibility layer will be removed in v3.5. Instead, you can update \`config['${prop}']\` to \`config.public['${prop}']\`.`)
-      }
-      return target.public[prop]
-    },
-    set (target, prop, value) {
-      if (process.server || prop === 'public' || prop === 'app') {
-        return false // Throws TypeError
-      }
-      target[prop] = value
-      target.public[prop] = value
-      return true
-    }
-  })
-
-  nuxtApp.provide('config', compatibilityConfig)
+  nuxtApp.provide('config', runtimeConfig)
 
   return nuxtApp
 }
diff --git a/test/bundle.test.ts b/test/bundle.test.ts
index eab3032392..9c5fb05868 100644
--- a/test/bundle.test.ts
+++ b/test/bundle.test.ts
@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ describe.skipIf(isWindows || process.env.TEST_BUILDER === 'webpack' || process.e
 
   it('default client bundle size', async () => {
     stats.client = await analyzeSizes('**/*.js', publicDir)
-    expect(roundToKilobytes(stats.client.totalBytes)).toMatchInlineSnapshot('"94.2k"')
+    expect(roundToKilobytes(stats.client.totalBytes)).toMatchInlineSnapshot('"94.0k"')
     expect(stats.client.files.map(f => f.replace(/\..*\.js/, '.js'))).toMatchInlineSnapshot(`
       [
         "_nuxt/entry.js",
@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ describe.skipIf(isWindows || process.env.TEST_BUILDER === 'webpack' || process.e
 
   it('default server bundle size', async () => {
     stats.server = await analyzeSizes(['**/*.mjs', '!node_modules'], serverDir)
-    expect(roundToKilobytes(stats.server.totalBytes)).toMatchInlineSnapshot('"66.8k"')
+    expect(roundToKilobytes(stats.server.totalBytes)).toMatchInlineSnapshot('"66.6k"')
 
     const modules = await analyzeSizes('node_modules/**/*', serverDir)
     expect(roundToKilobytes(modules.totalBytes)).toMatchInlineSnapshot('"2654k"')