styled-components vs emotion vs aphrodite
CSS-in-JS Libraries Comparison
1 Year
styled-componentsemotionaphroditeSimilar Packages:
What's CSS-in-JS Libraries?

CSS-in-JS libraries allow developers to write CSS directly within JavaScript files, enabling dynamic styling based on component state and props. This approach promotes modularity and encapsulation, making it easier to manage styles in large applications. Each library offers unique features and methodologies for styling components, catering to different developer preferences and project requirements.

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styled-components6,242,52540,7151.66 MB314a month agoMIT
emotion620,832---4 years agoMIT
aphrodite110,9485,346-926 years agoMIT
Feature Comparison: styled-components vs emotion vs aphrodite

Dynamic Styling

  • styled-components:

    Styled-components enable dynamic styling through props, allowing developers to pass props directly into styled components to modify their styles. This feature enhances reusability and makes it simple to create responsive designs.

  • emotion:

    Emotion supports dynamic styling using both object styles and template literals, allowing developers to easily create styles that respond to props and state changes. This flexibility makes it suitable for applications that require frequent style updates based on user interactions.

  • aphrodite:

    Aphrodite allows for dynamic styling through JavaScript objects, enabling styles to change based on component state or props. This feature is particularly useful for responsive designs and conditional styling, making it easy to adapt styles without writing additional CSS.

Theming Support

  • styled-components:

    Styled-components have built-in theming support, enabling developers to define a theme and access it within styled components. This feature promotes consistency and makes it easy to switch themes dynamically.

  • emotion:

    Emotion offers robust theming support, allowing developers to create a theme object that can be easily accessed throughout the application. This feature simplifies the management of consistent styles across components, making it ideal for applications with multiple themes.

  • aphrodite:

    Aphrodite provides basic theming capabilities by allowing developers to define styles in a centralized manner. However, it may require additional setup for more complex theming solutions compared to other libraries.

Performance

  • styled-components:

    Styled-components may have a slight performance overhead due to its runtime styling generation, but it provides tools like server-side rendering and optimized class name generation to mitigate potential performance issues.

  • emotion:

    Emotion is designed with performance in mind, utilizing a caching mechanism to avoid unnecessary style recalculations. This results in efficient rendering and improved performance, especially in larger applications with many styled components.

  • aphrodite:

    Aphrodite is optimized for performance, generating unique class names at runtime and minimizing the CSS footprint. Its approach ensures that only the necessary styles are applied, which can lead to faster rendering times in applications.

Learning Curve

  • styled-components:

    Styled-components are known for their intuitive syntax, making it easy for developers to grasp the concepts quickly. The community support and extensive documentation further ease the learning process, making it accessible for beginners.

  • emotion:

    Emotion's learning curve is moderate, as it offers multiple ways to style components (object styles and template literals). Developers may need some time to explore its full capabilities, but its flexibility is a significant advantage.

  • aphrodite:

    Aphrodite has a relatively gentle learning curve, especially for developers familiar with inline styles in React. Its API is straightforward, making it easy to get started with minimal setup.

Community and Ecosystem

  • styled-components:

    Styled-components have a large and active community, with extensive documentation, tutorials, and third-party libraries available. This strong ecosystem makes it easier for developers to find solutions and best practices.

  • emotion:

    Emotion boasts a growing community and ecosystem, with numerous plugins and integrations available. Its flexibility and feature set have made it a popular choice among developers, leading to a wealth of resources and community support.

  • aphrodite:

    Aphrodite has a smaller community compared to Emotion and styled-components, which may result in fewer resources and third-party integrations. However, it is still a solid choice for projects that prioritize performance and simplicity.

How to Choose: styled-components vs emotion vs aphrodite
  • styled-components:

    Opt for styled-components if you want a popular, community-driven solution that emphasizes developer experience and ease of use. It allows you to create styled components with a clean syntax and supports theming, making it a great choice for React applications that prioritize maintainability and readability.

  • emotion:

    Select Emotion if you need a highly flexible library that supports both styled components and traditional CSS syntax. It excels in theming and offers powerful features like dynamic styling and a robust caching mechanism, making it ideal for complex applications that require extensive styling capabilities.

  • aphrodite:

    Choose Aphrodite if you prefer a lightweight solution with a focus on performance and server-side rendering. It provides a straightforward API and generates unique class names to avoid conflicts, making it suitable for projects that require minimal overhead.

README for styled-components

Visual primitives for the component age. Use the best bits of ES6 and CSS to style your apps without stress 💅

downloads: 600k/month Discord gzip size module formats: umd, cjs, esm Code Coverage

Upgrading from v5? See the migration guide.

Utilizing tagged template literals (a recent addition to JavaScript) and the power of CSS, styled-components allow you to write actual CSS code to style your components. It also removes the mapping between components and styles – using components as a low-level styling construct could not be easier!

const Button = styled.button`
  color: grey;
`;

Alternatively, you may use style objects. This allows for easy porting of CSS from inline styles, while still supporting the more advanced styled-components capabilities like component selectors and media queries.

const Button = styled.button({
  color: 'grey',
});

Equivalent to:

const Button = styled.button`
  color: grey;
`;

styled-components is compatible with both React (for web) and React Native – meaning it's the perfect choice even for truly universal apps! See the documentation about React Native for more information.

Supported by Front End Center. Thank you for making this possible!


Docs

See the documentation at styled-components.com/docs for more information about using styled-components!

Quicklinks to some of the most-visited pages:


Example

import React from 'react';

import styled from 'styled-components';

// Create a <Title> react component that renders an <h1> which is
// centered, palevioletred and sized at 1.5em
const Title = styled.h1`
  font-size: 1.5em;
  text-align: center;
  color: palevioletred;
`;

// Create a <Wrapper> react component that renders a <section> with
// some padding and a papayawhip background
const Wrapper = styled.section`
  padding: 4em;
  background: papayawhip;
`;

function MyUI() {
  return (
    // Use them like any other React component – except they're styled!
    <Wrapper>
      <Title>Hello World, this is my first styled component!</Title>
    </Wrapper>
  );
}

This is what you'll see in your browser:


Looking for v5?

The main branch is for the most-current version of styled-components, currently v6. For changes targeting v5, please point your PRs at the legacy-v5 branch.


Built with styled-components

A lot of hard work goes into community libraries, projects, and guides. A lot of them make it easier to get started or help you with your next project! There are also a whole lot of interesting apps and sites that people have built using styled-components.

Make sure to head over to awesome-styled-components to see them all! And please contribute and add your own work to the list so others can find it.


Contributing

If you want to contribute to styled-components please see our contributing and community guidelines, they'll help you get set up locally and explain the whole process.

Please also note that all repositories under the styled-components organization follow our Code of Conduct, make sure to review and follow it.


Badge

Let everyone know you're using styled-componentsstyle: styled-components

[![style: styled-components](https://img.shields.io/badge/style-%F0%9F%92%85%20styled--components-orange.svg?colorB=daa357&colorA=db748e)](https://github.com/styled-components/styled-components)

Contributors

This project exists thanks to all the people who contribute. [Contribute].


Backers

Thank you to all our backers! 🙏 [Become a backer]


Sponsors

Support this project by becoming a sponsor. Your logo will show up here with a link to your website. [Become a sponsor]


License

Licensed under the MIT License, Copyright © 2016-present Glen Maddern and Maximilian Stoiber.

See LICENSE for more information.


Acknowledgements

This project builds on a long line of earlier work by clever folks all around the world. We'd like to thank Charlie Somerville, Nik Graf, Sunil Pai, Michael Chan, Andrey Popp, Jed Watson & Andrey Sitnik who contributed ideas, code or inspiration.

Special thanks to @okonet for the fantastic logo.