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Enzyme VS styled-components

Compare Enzyme VS styled-components and see what are their differences

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Enzyme logo Enzyme

Enzyme is a JavaScript testing utility for React.

styled-components logo styled-components

styled-components is a visual primitive for the component age that also helps the user to use the ES6 and CSS to style apps.
  • Enzyme Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-16
  • styled-components Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-27

Enzyme features and specs

  • Shallow Rendering
    Allows you to render a component without its children, which speeds up tests and isolates the component being tested.
  • Rich API
    Provides a comprehensive set of APIs that enable deep rendering, traversing, and manipulating of components, making it flexible and powerful for various testing needs.
  • Compatibility with Mocha and Jest
    Easily integrates with popular testing frameworks like Mocha and Jest, ensuring a smooth setup process.
  • Simulate Events
    Supports simulation of user events such as clicks, enabling more realistic interaction testing.
  • Selector Support
    Allows for selecting and finding elements using CSS selectors or component constructors, making it easier to target specific elements in tests.
  • Active Community
    Has a large and active community, which can be a valuable resource for support, plugins, and best practices.

Possible disadvantages of Enzyme

  • Complex Setup
    The initial setup and configuration can be complex, especially for beginners, requiring additional libraries and configurations.
  • Limited Support for New React Features
    Often lags behind in supporting new React features, such as Hooks or the latest Context API, compared to other testing frameworks.
  • Deprecation Warnings
    Issues with deprecation warnings and updates can arise, causing frustrations during maintenance and upgrades.
  • Performance Overhead
    Can be slower compared to other testing libraries, especially when using deep rendering for large components.
  • Inconsistent API
    Some users find the API inconsistent or unintuitive, requiring more effort to learn and use effectively.

styled-components features and specs

  • Component-Scoped Styling
    Styles are encapsulated within components, ensuring that styles do not leak or conflict with other parts of the application.
  • Dynamic Styling
    Enables dynamic styling with the help of JavaScript variables and props, allowing for highly customizable components.
  • CSS Syntax
    Allows developers to write actual CSS code within JavaScript, making it easier for those familiar with CSS to adapt.
  • Automatic Vendor Prefixing
    Automatically adds vendor prefixes to CSS properties, ensuring cross-browser compatibility without additional configuration.
  • Theming Support
    Provides a built-in theming solution, making it easier to implement and switch between different themes in the application.
  • Server-Side Rendering
    Supports server-side rendering, improving initial page load times and SEO.

Possible disadvantages of styled-components

  • Bundle Size
    Styled-components can add to the overall bundle size, potentially affecting performance, especially in large projects.
  • Learning Curve
    Requires developers to learn the styled-components library and its API, which can be a hurdle for new team members or those unfamiliar with CSS-in-JS.
  • Performance Overhead
    The runtime cost of parsing and injecting styles can impact performance, particularly in larger applications or with frequent style changes.
  • Tooling and Ecosystem
    While improving, the ecosystem around styled-components (e.g., linting, debugging) is not as mature as traditional CSS or CSS preprocessor tools.
  • CSS-in-JS Limitations
    Some CSS features, like advanced selectors or cascading, may be more cumbersome or less intuitive to implement compared to traditional CSS approaches.

Analysis of Enzyme

Overall verdict

  • Enzyme is generally considered a good tool for testing React applications, especially among developers familiar with its API. However, it is worth noting that there has been a shift towards using React Testing Library, which has gained popularity for its focus on testing the application as users would interact with it.

Why this product is good

  • Enzyme is a popular JavaScript testing utility for React that makes it easier to assert, manipulate, and traverse your React Components' output. It provides methods for rendering components, interacting with them, and testing their lifecycle methods, which are essential for writing comprehensive tests for your React applications.

Recommended for

    Enzyme is recommended for developers who are working on React applications and prefer a testing library that provides a more detailed inspection of component internals, or for those maintaining legacy codebases that already rely on Enzyme. If you value testing that emphasizes implementation details, Enzyme can be a good choice.

Analysis of styled-components

Overall verdict

  • Styled-components is considered a good choice for many React projects, especially for large applications where modularity and maintainability of styles are important. It has a strong community, extensive documentation, and is widely adopted in the industry.

Why this product is good

  • Styled-components is a popular library for styling React applications. It allows developers to write CSS-in-JS, which means that styles are written in JavaScript and scoped to individual components. This approach offers several benefits, such as easier style management, dynamic styling capabilities, and the ability to leverage JavaScript's full power for styles. Styled-components also supports theming, making it easier to develop consistent design systems.

Recommended for

  • Developers looking to implement a consistent design system with theming capabilities
  • Large-scale React applications where component-based styling is essential
  • Projects that require dynamic styling based on props or state
  • Teams familiar with or willing to adopt a CSS-in-JS approach

Enzyme videos

+ Add

Enzymes (Updated)

More videos:

  • Review - Enzymes
  • Review - Over-the-Counter Enzyme Supplements Explained: Mayo Clinic Physician Explains Pros, Cons

styled-components videos

No styled-components videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Enzyme and styled-components)

Enzyme

styled-components

Developer Tools
24 24%
Developer Tools
76% 76
Design Tools
19 19%
Design Tools
81% 81
Front End Package Manager
100 100%
Front End Package Manager
0% 0
Javascript UI Libraries
0 0%
Javascript UI Libraries
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, styled-components seems to be a lot more popular than Enzyme. While we know about 169 links to styled-components, we've tracked only 3 mentions of Enzyme. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Enzyme mentions (3)

  • Top React Testing Libraries in 2025
    Enzyme is a widely-used testing utility that provides robust tools for interacting with and inspecting React components. Its API supports shallow, full, and static rendering, enabling developers to test components in isolation or with their child components. Enzyme also allows testing lifecycle methods, making it ideal for applications with complex state and props interactions. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • How we have managed to run Enzyme tests with React 18 app.
    Like many other companies with mature software, we found ourselves at a crossroads with our React application. The app, initially developed in early 2019, was built with React 16 and used Enzyme for unit testing. Over the past five years, the app grew, evolved, gained new features, and went though minor and major refactorings. Obviously, as responsible engineers we always maintained unit test coverage around... - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • What would you consider to be a must for a modern 2022 dev stack?
    React testing library instead of enzyme for testing react UIs. I'll never go back. Source: about 3 years ago

styled-components mentions (169)

  • 11 Interview Questions You Should Know as a React Native Developer in 2025 📈🚀
    Using the same CSS-in-JS approach as React, you can use libraries like Styled Components to style your components. This allows you to write CSS directly in your JavaScript files (personally not a fan of using these). - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • CSS-in-JS: Pros and cons
    The 2016 release of styled-components popularized the approach, offering a clean syntax and React integration. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Woovi monorepos best practices
    This detail implies if any dependencies can be resolved correctly and if not have a version conflict. As the example we have the styled-components lib, it can have a problem with type Symbol reference where the library doesn´t find your properties of themes because, in your internal code, it uses the symbolObject which is a unique object that refers your set configs. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Top 20 Modern React Libraries To Supercharge Your Next Big Project
    Resource: Styled Components Documentation. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • How to Use Styled-Components for Elegant React UI Design
    Styled-Components is a library that allows you to write CSS directly within your JavaScript files (CSS-in-JS), ensuring that your styles are scoped to individual components. Rather than managing separate CSS files, you define your styles alongside your component logic. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Enzyme and styled-components, you can also consider the following products

Ava - Making conversations accessible for the deaf

Tailwind CSS - A utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom user interfaces.

react-testing-library - [`React Testing Library`][gh] builds on top of `DOM Testing Library` by adding

Ant Design - An enterprise-class UI design language and React implementation with a set of high-quality React components, one of best React UI library for enterprises

EyeJS - A JavaScript testing framework for the real world.

Storybook - Storybook is an open source tool for developing UI components in isolation for React, Vue, and Angular. It makes building stunning UIs organized and efficient.

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