redux vs react-redux vs mobx vs recoil vs kea
State Management Libraries for React Comparison
1 Year
reduxreact-reduxmobxrecoilkeaSimilar Packages:
What's State Management Libraries for React?

State management libraries are essential tools in React applications, helping developers manage and share state across components efficiently. They provide a structured way to handle application state, making it easier to maintain and debug. Each library has its unique approach to state management, catering to different use cases and developer preferences. Understanding these differences is crucial for selecting the right library for your project, as they can significantly impact the architecture, performance, and scalability of your application.

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redux12,121,71161,145290 kB41a year agoMIT
react-redux9,093,93023,483823 kB264 months agoMIT
mobx1,765,54627,8264.33 MB6525 days agoMIT
recoil519,94119,6192.21 MB3242 years agoMIT
kea12,7861,953369 kB7a year agoMIT
Feature Comparison: redux vs react-redux vs mobx vs recoil vs kea

State Management Approach

  • redux:

    Redux follows a unidirectional data flow, where the entire application state is stored in a single store. Actions are dispatched to modify the state, making it predictable and easier to debug.

  • react-redux:

    React-Redux connects Redux's centralized state management with React components, allowing for efficient state access and updates. It uses a provider pattern to make the Redux store available to all components in the application.

  • mobx:

    MobX utilizes observable state and reactions, enabling automatic UI updates when the state changes. This reactive programming model simplifies state management by reducing the need for manual updates and boilerplate code.

  • recoil:

    Recoil provides a novel way to manage state in React applications, allowing for both global and local state management. It introduces atoms and selectors, enabling fine-grained control over state updates and derived state.

  • kea:

    Kea adopts a modular and declarative approach, allowing developers to define state and logic together. It emphasizes a clear structure and separation of concerns, making it easy to manage complex state interactions.

Learning Curve

  • redux:

    Redux has a steep learning curve due to its concepts of actions, reducers, and middleware. However, mastering it can lead to a solid understanding of state management principles.

  • react-redux:

    React-Redux has a steeper learning curve than some alternatives due to Redux's complexity. However, once understood, it provides powerful tools for managing state in large applications.

  • mobx:

    MobX is relatively easy to learn due to its intuitive API and minimal boilerplate. Developers can quickly grasp its concepts of observables and reactions, making it accessible for beginners.

  • recoil:

    Recoil has a gentle learning curve, especially for those familiar with React. Its API is designed to be intuitive, making it easy to adopt for new projects.

  • kea:

    Kea has a moderate learning curve, especially for developers familiar with React hooks. Its modular approach may require some adjustment but is generally straightforward for those accustomed to React.

Performance

  • redux:

    Redux can face performance challenges in large applications due to frequent state updates. However, using techniques like memoization and selective rendering can mitigate these issues.

  • react-redux:

    React-Redux is efficient in performance, as it minimizes re-renders by using a shallow equality check to determine if components need to update based on state changes.

  • mobx:

    MobX excels in performance due to its fine-grained reactivity. Only components that observe changed state will re-render, minimizing performance overhead and improving responsiveness.

  • recoil:

    Recoil offers excellent performance by allowing components to subscribe to specific pieces of state. This granular subscription model ensures that only affected components re-render, optimizing rendering efficiency.

  • kea:

    Kea is optimized for performance, as it only updates components that depend on the changed state. Its modular architecture helps in reducing unnecessary re-renders, enhancing overall application performance.

Extensibility

  • redux:

    Redux is highly extensible through middleware and enhancers, enabling developers to add custom functionality such as logging, asynchronous actions, and more.

  • react-redux:

    React-Redux can be extended with middleware, allowing for custom behavior during state updates. This extensibility makes it adaptable to various application requirements.

  • mobx:

    MobX is extensible through its decorators and utilities, enabling developers to create custom observables and reactions. This flexibility allows for tailored solutions to specific state management needs.

  • recoil:

    Recoil is designed to be extensible, with the ability to create custom atoms and selectors. This allows developers to build complex state management solutions that fit their application's needs.

  • kea:

    Kea is highly extensible, allowing developers to create custom logic and plugins to enhance functionality. Its modular design supports easy integration with other libraries and tools.

Community and Ecosystem

  • redux:

    Redux has a mature and robust ecosystem, with a vast array of middleware, tools, and community support. Its long-standing presence in the React community ensures a wealth of resources for developers.

  • react-redux:

    React-Redux benefits from the large Redux community, providing extensive resources, middleware, and tools that integrate well with React applications.

  • mobx:

    MobX has a strong community and a wealth of resources available, including documentation, tutorials, and third-party libraries that enhance its capabilities.

  • recoil:

    Recoil is backed by Facebook and has a rapidly growing community. Its ecosystem is expanding with various tools and libraries designed to work seamlessly with Recoil.

  • kea:

    Kea has a growing community and ecosystem, with increasing adoption among developers. Its documentation and examples are improving, making it easier for newcomers to get started.

How to Choose: redux vs react-redux vs mobx vs recoil vs kea
  • redux:

    Choose Redux if you need a predictable state container for JavaScript applications. Redux is particularly beneficial for large applications with complex state logic, as it enforces a unidirectional data flow and provides powerful middleware capabilities.

  • react-redux:

    Choose React-Redux if you are already using Redux and want to integrate it seamlessly with React. React-Redux provides bindings that simplify the process of connecting Redux state to React components, making it a solid choice for large applications with complex state management needs.

  • mobx:

    Choose MobX if you want a simple and intuitive way to manage state with minimal boilerplate. MobX uses observable state and reactions, allowing for automatic updates to the UI when the state changes, making it ideal for applications with dynamic data.

  • recoil:

    Choose Recoil if you are looking for a modern state management solution that integrates well with React's concurrent features. Recoil allows for fine-grained state management and derived state, making it suitable for applications that require a more granular approach to state updates.

  • kea:

    Choose Kea if you prefer a highly modular and declarative approach to state management, where you can define logic and state in a single place. It's particularly useful for complex applications that require a clear separation of concerns and easy testing.

README for redux

Redux Logo

Redux is a predictable state container for JavaScript apps.

It helps you write applications that behave consistently, run in different environments (client, server, and native), and are easy to test. On top of that, it provides a great developer experience, such as live code editing combined with a time traveling debugger.

You can use Redux together with React, or with any other view library. The Redux core is tiny (2kB, including dependencies), and has a rich ecosystem of addons.

Redux Toolkit is our official recommended approach for writing Redux logic. It wraps around the Redux core, and contains packages and functions that we think are essential for building a Redux app. Redux Toolkit builds in our suggested best practices, simplifies most Redux tasks, prevents common mistakes, and makes it easier to write Redux applications.

GitHub Workflow Status npm version npm downloads redux channel on discord

Installation

Create a React Redux App

The recommended way to start new apps with React and Redux Toolkit is by using our official Redux Toolkit + TS template for Vite, or by creating a new Next.js project using Next's with-redux template.

Both of these already have Redux Toolkit and React-Redux configured appropriately for that build tool, and come with a small example app that demonstrates how to use several of Redux Toolkit's features.

# Vite with our Redux+TS template
# (using the `degit` tool to clone and extract the template)
npx degit reduxjs/redux-templates/packages/vite-template-redux my-app

# Next.js using the `with-redux` template
npx create-next-app --example with-redux my-app

We do not currently have official React Native templates, but recommend these templates for standard React Native and for Expo:

  • https://github.com/rahsheen/react-native-template-redux-typescript
  • https://github.com/rahsheen/expo-template-redux-typescript
npm install @reduxjs/toolkit react-redux

For the Redux core library by itself:

npm install redux

For more details, see the Installation docs page.

Documentation

The Redux core docs are located at https://redux.js.org, and include the full Redux tutorials, as well usage guides on general Redux patterns:

The Redux Toolkit docs are available at https://redux-toolkit.js.org, including API references and usage guides for all of the APIs included in Redux Toolkit.

Learn Redux

Redux Essentials Tutorial

The Redux Essentials tutorial is a "top-down" tutorial that teaches "how to use Redux the right way", using our latest recommended APIs and best practices. We recommend starting there.

Redux Fundamentals Tutorial

The Redux Fundamentals tutorial is a "bottom-up" tutorial that teaches "how Redux works" from first principles and without any abstractions, and why standard Redux usage patterns exist.

Help and Discussion

The #redux channel of the Reactiflux Discord community is our official resource for all questions related to learning and using Redux. Reactiflux is a great place to hang out, ask questions, and learn - please come and join us there!

Before Proceeding Further

Redux is a valuable tool for organizing your state, but you should also consider whether it's appropriate for your situation. Please don't use Redux just because someone said you should - instead, please take some time to understand the potential benefits and tradeoffs of using it.

Here are some suggestions on when it makes sense to use Redux:

  • You have reasonable amounts of data changing over time
  • You need a single source of truth for your state
  • You find that keeping all your state in a top-level component is no longer sufficient

Yes, these guidelines are subjective and vague, but this is for a good reason. The point at which you should integrate Redux into your application is different for every user and different for every application.

For more thoughts on how Redux is meant to be used, please see:

Basic Example

The whole global state of your app is stored in an object tree inside a single store. The only way to change the state tree is to create an action, an object describing what happened, and dispatch it to the store. To specify how state gets updated in response to an action, you write pure reducer functions that calculate a new state based on the old state and the action.

Redux Toolkit simplifies the process of writing Redux logic and setting up the store. With Redux Toolkit, the basic app logic looks like:

import { createSlice, configureStore } from '@reduxjs/toolkit'

const counterSlice = createSlice({
  name: 'counter',
  initialState: {
    value: 0
  },
  reducers: {
    incremented: state => {
      // Redux Toolkit allows us to write "mutating" logic in reducers. It
      // doesn't actually mutate the state because it uses the Immer library,
      // which detects changes to a "draft state" and produces a brand new
      // immutable state based off those changes
      state.value += 1
    },
    decremented: state => {
      state.value -= 1
    }
  }
})

export const { incremented, decremented } = counterSlice.actions

const store = configureStore({
  reducer: counterSlice.reducer
})

// Can still subscribe to the store
store.subscribe(() => console.log(store.getState()))

// Still pass action objects to `dispatch`, but they're created for us
store.dispatch(incremented())
// {value: 1}
store.dispatch(incremented())
// {value: 2}
store.dispatch(decremented())
// {value: 1}

Redux Toolkit allows us to write shorter logic that's easier to read, while still following the original core Redux behavior and data flow.

Logo

You can find the official logo on GitHub.

Change Log

This project adheres to Semantic Versioning. Every release, along with the migration instructions, is documented on the GitHub Releases page.

License

MIT