Preact — Fast 3kB Alternative to React

Overview

Preact implements the same component model and hooks API as React in roughly 3kB (minified + gzipped), against React+ReactDOM's ~40kB+. It ships its own virtual DOM diffing, so most React code — useState, useEffect, useRef, useMemo, JSX — runs unchanged. On top of that, @preact/signals adds fine-grained reactive state: a signal's value can be read directly in JSX, and only the DOM text node that depends on it updates, skipping Preact's own diffing for that subtree. preact/compat is a shim that maps react and react-dom imports onto Preact, so most React component libraries (synthetic-event quirks aside) work without modification.

Instructions

Install

npm init preact my-app        # scaffold a new Vite + Preact project (TS/router/ESLint prompts)
cd my-app && npm install
npm run dev

To add Preact to an existing Vite project instead: