CSS-in-JS Library Comparison: Emotion vs Styled-Components
Both Emotion and Styled-Components are popular tools that let you write CSS directly in your JavaScript code, which is known as CSS-in-JS. They help developers create reusable styled components and manage styles in React applications without separate CSS files. These libraries solve similar problems but have different approaches to performance and syntax.
Styling Solutionscss-in-jsreactstylingcomponent-basedtheming
Detailed Comparison
Technical Analysis
featureComparison
Both libraries provide a way to write CSS-in-JS, but emotion has more features like source maps, label prefixing, and a more customizable API. styled-components has better support for server-side rendering and a more straightforward API.
typescriptSupport
Both libraries have excellent TypeScript support, with emotion having more extensive type definitions.
browserCompatibility
Both libraries support all modern browsers, including Internet Explorer 11.
dependencies
emotion has fewer dependencies (1) compared to styled-components (5).
performance
Both libraries have similar performance characteristics, with emotion being slightly faster in some benchmarks.
Ecosystem Analysis
frameworkCompatibility
Both libraries are compatible with popular frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue.js.
communityActivity
styled-components has a more active community, with more contributors and issues closed in the past year.
documentationQuality
Both libraries have high-quality documentation, with styled-components having more tutorials and guides.
maintenanceStatus
Both libraries are actively maintained, with regular updates and releases.
Performance Comparison
bundleSizeAnalysis
emotion has a smaller bundle size (12.6 KB) compared to styled-components (14.1 KB).
runtimePerformance
emotion is slightly faster in some benchmarks, but the difference is negligible.
loadingTime
Both libraries have similar loading times.
memoryUsage
Both libraries have similar memory usage patterns.
Code Examples
Basic Styling with emotion
1import { css } from 'emotion';
2const styles = css`color: hotpink;`;
3<div className={styles}>Hello World!</div>This example shows how to use emotion to style a div element with a hotpink color.
Basic Styling with styled-components
1import styled from 'styled-components';
2const Div = styled.div`color: hotpink;`;
3<Div>Hello World!</Div>This example shows how to use styled-components to style a div element with a hotpink color.
Recommendation
Summary
Both libraries are excellent choices for CSS-in-JS, but styled-components has a more active community and better support for server-side rendering.
Details
- styled-components has a more straightforward API
- emotion has more features like source maps and label prefixing
Similar Packages
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A CSS-in-JS library that works like styled-components but compiles your styles to real CSS files at build time. This means better performance because there's no runtime styling overhead.
Perfect alternative if you like styled-components syntax but want better performance. It's basically styled-components without the performance downsides of runtime styling.
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CSS-in-JStailwindcss
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A utility-first CSS framework that lets you style elements using pre-built classes. Instead of writing CSS, you add classes directly to your HTML elements like 'bg-blue-500' or 'p-4'.
While it's a different approach from emotion/styled-components, it's become super popular for styling React apps. It's easier to learn for beginners and makes it simple to create consistent designs without writing CSS-in-JS.
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