Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

React Router VS styled-components

Compare React Router VS styled-components and see what are their differences

React Router logo React Router

React Router is a routing for React.js, that synchronizes the components of application with the URL & supports server side rendering.

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.
  • React Router Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-26
  • styled-components Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-27

React Router features and specs

  • Declarative Routing
    React Router allows developers to define their routes in a declarative fashion using JSX, making the code more readable and easier to manage.
  • Dynamic Routing
    React Router enables dynamic route configuration, allowing routes to be created and changed at runtime based on application state.
  • Nested Routes
    It supports nested routes, allowing developers to build complex user interfaces with different layout components easily.
  • Components First
    Since routes are expressed as components, React Router integrates seamlessly with the rest of the React ecosystem, fostering a component-first development approach.
  • Rich Feature Set
    Offers a rich set of features, including route parameters, query strings, programmatic navigation, and route guards.
  • Community and Ecosystem
    Being a popular routing library, React Router is backed by a strong community with extensive resources, plugins, and third-party solutions.
  • Active Maintenance
    Continuously maintained and updated by Remix Software, ensuring compatibility with the latest React features and improvements.

Possible disadvantages of React Router

  • Learning Curve
    Although powerful, React Router has a relatively steep learning curve, especially for beginners who are new to React.
  • Complexity
    Implementing certain advanced features or configurations, like authentication guards or nested dynamic routes, can become complex and may lead to overly verbose code.
  • State Management Limitations
    React Router handles routing, but it needs to be integrated with a state management solution for handling application state across different routes, which can add complexity.
  • Overhead for Small Projects
    For smaller projects or simple applications, React Router might introduce unnecessary complexity, and a simpler routing solution may be more appropriate.
  • Dependency on React
    As a library specifically for React, it cannot be used with other frameworks or libraries directly, limiting flexibility if you wish to switch from React in the future.

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.

React Router videos

React Router v5: Philosophy and Introduction

More videos:

  • Review - React router with hooks ( useHistory useParam useLocation )
  • Review - Nested routes with React Router v5

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 React Router and styled-components)
Javascript UI Libraries
27 27%
73% 73
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100
JS Library
100 100%
0% 0
Design Tools
13 13%
87% 87

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare React Router and styled-components

React Router Reviews

React UI Components Libraries: Our Top Picks for 2023
React Router comes with documentation that you can refer to know how to get started with this tool. You can also access the tutorial available on the official home page to learn more. It has 2.4 million GitHub users, 3..6 million npm downloads, and boasts 600+ contributors from across the world.
Source: kinsta.com

styled-components Reviews

We have no reviews of styled-components yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, styled-components seems to be a lot more popular than React Router. While we know about 169 links to styled-components, we've tracked only 11 mentions of React Router. 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.

React Router mentions (11)

  • I Built an App with Remix in 30 Minutes
    Remix is built on top of React Router, which is an easy-to-use routing library that integrates seamlessly into your React applications. React Router supports nested routes, so you can render the layout for child routes inside parent layouts. This is one of the things I love. Done this way, routing just makes sense. It’s easy and intuitive to implement. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • 13 Must Know Libraries for a React Developer
    React Router is the most popular library to implement routing in React apps. It has more than 50K stars on GitHub and more than 10 million weekly downloads on NPM and it's built by the same team behind the popular Remix framework of React. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Few static pages and react for dashboard setup
    This would be easiest with a router library, like react-router (the most popular one for React apps). Here's a good tutorial for implementing authenticated routes that includes industry-standard details like if the user opens the app to an authenticated route and gets redirected to the login page and then logs in, redirect them back to the authenticated page they first attempted to access. Source: over 2 years ago
  • The Complete Guide for Setting Up React App from Scratch (feat. TypeScript)
    React-router-dom(v6.4.4): contains bindings for using React Router in web applications. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Does anyone know where I can find good examples of documentation for GitHub repositories, frameworks, or developer tools? I am looking for material that I can study so that I can create good writing samples.
    I suggest you look at React Router. It's a stable and popular routing library. The tutorial is great. I taught myself React and I absolutely loved this library's documentation. Source: over 2 years ago
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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 / 21 days 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 / 22 days 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 / 3 months ago
  • Top 20 Modern React Libraries To Supercharge Your Next Big Project
    Resource: Styled Components Documentation. - Source: dev.to / 2 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 / 3 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

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

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

Vue.js - Reactive Components for Modern Web Interfaces

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.

AngularJS - AngularJS lets you extend HTML vocabulary for your application. The resulting environment is extraordinarily expressive, readable, and quick to develop.

Sass - Syntatically Awesome Style Sheets