Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

ScrollMagic VS Framer Motion

Compare ScrollMagic VS Framer Motion and see what are their differences

ScrollMagic logo ScrollMagic

The jQuery plugin for magical scroll interactions.

Framer Motion logo Framer Motion

A truly simple production-ready React animation library
Not present
  • Framer Motion Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-28

ScrollMagic features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    ScrollMagic provides a straightforward API that allows developers to easily create scroll-based animations and interactions without extensive knowledge of complex animation frameworks.
  • Flexible Animation Triggers
    It supports flexible animation trigger points and scroll positions, enabling precise control over when and how animations occur during scrolling.
  • Compatibility
    ScrollMagic is built to work seamlessly with animation libraries such as GSAP and Velocity.js, which can be leveraged to create complex animations.
  • Rich Documentation
    The library comes with detailed documentation and examples, making it easier for developers to understand and implement scroll animations.
  • Extensibility
    ScrollMagic allows for a high degree of customization and extensibility, enabling developers to build unique scroll-triggered animations tailored to project-specific requirements.

Possible disadvantages of ScrollMagic

  • Dependency on Third-party Libraries
    While ScrollMagic itself is lightweight, it often requires third-party libraries like GSAP for more advanced animations, which can increase the overall project size.
  • Limited Built-in Animation Capabilities
    The library focuses on scroll events rather than animations. Developers might need additional libraries to achieve advanced animation effects.
  • Learning Curve for Complex Interactions
    For developers unfamiliar with scroll-based animation, creating highly complex interactions may require a learning curve to fully leverage the library's capabilities.
  • Performance Concerns
    In projects with heavy DOM manipulation or large numbers of elements being animated simultaneously, performance issues might arise, particularly in less modern browsers.
  • Maintenance and Updates
    As of its last release, ScrollMagic might not be as actively maintained as other newer libraries, posing potential issues with future compatibility and bug fixes.

Framer Motion features and specs

  • Declarative API
    Framer Motion provides a straightforward declarative API that allows developers to easily define animations, reducing complexity and improving readability of the code.
  • Intuitive Animation System
    Its animation system is highly intuitive, providing simple configuration options to perform complex animations, ideal for both novice and experienced developers.
  • React Integration
    Framer Motion is built for React, which means it perfectly integrates with React's component model, making it easy for React developers to add animations without extra effort.
  • Advanced Features
    Framer Motion offers advanced features like layout animations, gestures, and shared layouts, empowering developers to create sophisticated animations and interactions.
  • Performance Optimized
    It is designed with performance optimizations that leverage the latest web technologies, ensuring smooth animations even on resource-constrained devices.

Possible disadvantages of Framer Motion

  • Learning Curve
    Beginners may face a steep learning curve initially as they adapt to its animation paradigms and React-based implementation.
  • React Dependency
    Framer Motion is specifically created for React, which means it cannot be used with other frameworks or libraries, limiting its versatility in diverse tech stacks.
  • Limited Customization
    While Framer Motion provides a lot of high-level control, fine-tuning animations for very specific requirements might be challenging for developers.
  • Community and Resources
    Compared to more established animation libraries, Framer Motion has a smaller community, which might limit the availability of external tutorials and resources.
  • Bundle Size
    Including Framer Motion can increase the overall bundle size of your application, which is a critical consideration for performance-conscious developers.

ScrollMagic videos

ScrollMagic 101 - Controller, Scene and triggerElement

More videos:

  • Review - ScrollMagic 101 - A Simple Parallax Effect

Framer Motion videos

Playing with Framer Motion

More videos:

  • Review - Awwwards Rebuilt Episode 2 | Rebuilding Awwwards Websites using React & Framer Motion | Part 1

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to ScrollMagic and Framer Motion)
Animation
53 53%
47% 47
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100
3D
100 100%
0% 0
JavaScript
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare ScrollMagic and Framer Motion

ScrollMagic Reviews

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Framer Motion Reviews

Top 7 React Animation Libraries in 2022
After installation, you can import Framer Motion to your React component like in the following. This example shows how to scale up and down a button on hovering.
Best React animation library: Top 7 libraries compared
Framer Motion is a popular React animation library that makes creating animations easy. It boasts a simplified API that abstracts the complexities behind animations and allows developers to create animations with ease. Even better, it has support for server-side rendering, gestures, and CSS variables.
7 Useful React Animation Libraries for Web Development
A production-ready React library from Framer is called Framer Motion. It offers movements and transitions that are simply created for layout navigation across HTML and SVG elements. Set the values for the animate prop, and Motion will take care of the animation coding for you—you don't need to write any code or utilize a timeline.
Source: www.atatus.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, ScrollMagic should be more popular than Framer Motion. It has been mentiond 25 times since March 2021. 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.

ScrollMagic mentions (25)

  • Top 10 JavaScript Animation Libraries
    ScrollMagic (14.8k ⭐) — A library for creating scroll interactions with JavaScript and CSS. It can trigger animations based on scroll position and pin elements within the viewport. It has over 11K stars on GitHub. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Implementing scroll-aware UI state with CSS
    Several libraries and frameworks can help with this task, such as ScrollTrigger, ScrollMagic, Framer Motion, and the good ol’ Intersection Observer API. These tools provide more options and flexibility to create complex and interactive scroll-driven animations with ease. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • How achieve this SVG/CSS Animation?
    By checking their source code, it looks like they're using DrawSvgPlugin for the SVG animations and ScrollMagic for the animations when scrolling. I'd start by checking these two libraries. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • How to re-create a vertical Card Slider, similar to Refokus
    One library is called https://scrollmagic.io/ but you'll find plenty of tutorials and videos that implement this kind of scrolling. Source: about 2 years ago
  • What's the name of this? Or how can I recreate it?
    ScrollMagic (there's a scrollMagic port for react too). These libraries take advantage of the intersection observer API (a standard built-in js web api). You may also be interested in the scroll event. Source: over 2 years ago
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Framer Motion mentions (7)

  • Using Intersection Observer API in React
    My personal top two animation libraries for React are Framer Motion and GSAP. These libraries are hands down the best out there right now, in my opinion, and are more than capable of bringing wild creative imaginations to life. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • How AnimatePresence in framer-motion works
    The two most popular choices now (circa Jan 2024) are React Transition Group, started in 2016, and Framer Motion, started in 2018. I'm not too familiar with the former, so this article solely dives into the workings of AnimatePresence from Framer Motion and how it's able to enable exit animations. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • I built an interactive landing page for my side project
    FWIW, I built the site using amazing OSS libraries like cobe.vercel.app, airbnb.io/visx, framer.com/motion, radix-ui.com, tailwindcss.com, and many more – so maybe you can refer to those to build something similar! Source: over 2 years ago
  • I built an interactive landing page for my side project
    Not really – the globe was made with cobe.vercel.app, the graphs with airbnb.io/visx, the animations with framer.com/motion – all of which are really amazing open-source libraries! Source: over 2 years ago
  • I made an interactive landing page for my open-source side project
    Thank you so much! I can't take all the credits however – I'm building on top of the shoulder of giants/amazing OSS libraries like cobe.vercel.app, airbnb.io/visx, framer.com/motion, radix-ui.com, tailwindcss.com, and many more! :). Source: over 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing ScrollMagic and Framer Motion, you can also consider the following products

WOW.js - Animate elements on-scroll to catch attention. Such Magic.

React Spring - Bring your components to life with simple spring animation primitives for React

ScrollReveal - ScrollReveal is a tool to add scroll animations for web and mobile browsers.

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

Lax.js - Create beautiful & smooth animations when you scroll

React Transition Group - React Transition Group exposes transition stages, manages classes and group elements and manipulates the DOM in useful ways, making the implementation of actual visual transitions much easier.