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styled-components VS Sass

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

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.

Sass logo Sass

Syntatically Awesome Style Sheets
  • styled-components Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-27
  • Sass Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-19

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.

Sass features and specs

  • Nesting
    Sass allows for nested syntax, making it easier to target specific elements and providing a clear, hierarchical structure to CSS code.
  • Variables
    Sass supports variables that can store values such as colors, fonts, or any CSS value, making it simple to maintain and update styles.
  • Mixins
    Mixins in Sass enable reusable chunks of code, which can dramatically reduce redundancy and simplify complex CSS.
  • Partials and Import
    With Sass, CSS can be split into smaller, more manageable partial files which are then imported into a central stylesheet, enhancing modularity and organization.
  • Control Directives
    Sass includes control directives (such as @if, @for, @each) that allow for conditional logic and loops, providing more dynamic CSS generation.
  • Built-in Functions
    Sass offers a variety of built-in functions for manipulating colors, strings, and other values, empowering developers to create more sophisticated styles.
  • Compass and Other Frameworks
    Sass can be extended with frameworks such as Compass, which provides additional mixins and functionality, speeding up development.
  • Community and Documentation
    Sass has a strong community and comprehensive documentation, which makes it easier to find solutions to problems and learn best practices.

Possible disadvantages of Sass

  • Learning Curve
    Sass introduces various features and syntax that may require additional time and resources to learn and adopt, especially for developers new to pre-processors.
  • Dependency on Compilation
    Sass needs to be compiled into standard CSS, which requires build tools and adds an extra step in the development workflow.
  • Tooling Requirements
    Using Sass effectively often involves additional tools like Node.js, npm, and task runners (e.g., Gulp, Grunt), which can complicate setup and maintenance.
  • Performance
    In large projects, the compilation time for Sass can become noticeable, potentially slowing down the development process, especially when dealing with extensive stylesheets.
  • Compatibility
    Older projects or those not built with modern development tools might face compatibility issues when integrating Sass, requiring significant refactoring.
  • Overhead
    For smaller projects, the overhead of setting up and maintaining Sass and its related tools may not be justified compared to the benefits gained.

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

Analysis of Sass

Overall verdict

  • Sass is considered a valuable tool for web developers looking to streamline their CSS writing process, maintain scalability, and enhance productivity.

Why this product is good

  • Sass is a powerful CSS preprocessor that extends CSS with features like variables, nested rules, mixins, and functions. It helps maintain large stylesheets by providing more dynamic and reusable code structures compared to plain CSS.

Recommended for

  • Front-end developers aiming to improve code maintainability.
  • Projects with large, complex stylesheets.
  • Teams that work collaboratively on front-end projects.
  • Developers transitioning from design to development who require easier CSS management.

styled-components videos

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Sass videos

The Armalite AR10 Super SASS

More videos:

  • Review - Armalite Super SASS
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  • Review - Anatomy of the Semi Automatic Sniper System (SASS): Featuring the Lone Star Armory TX10 DM Heavy
  • Review - ArmaLite XM110 Rifle to AR10 Super SASS

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to styled-components and Sass)
Developer Tools
42 42%
58% 58
Design Tools
45 45%
55% 55
Javascript UI Libraries
57 57%
43% 43
CSS Framework
28 28%
72% 72

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

styled-components might be a bit more popular than Sass. We know about 169 links to it since March 2021 and only 145 links to Sass. 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.

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 / 3 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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Sass mentions (145)

  • Sass-lang dev embeds "Free Palestine" site alert
    Top of https://sass-lang.com/ says "free palestine" since March 2024 and previously it said "black lives matter" since at least 2023. Plenty of websites had or have Ukrainian flags showing support. The web isn't apolitical. I don't see how the website affects the (installable, open source) software. - Source: Hacker News / 9 days ago
  • Storybook Starter Guide: Learn Design System Principles
    For example, at CKEditor, we use a hybrid approach — Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets (Sass) preprocessor and CSS variables:. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Build Content Management System with React and Node: Beginning Project Setup
    SASS - Sass, or Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets, is a CSS preprocessor that extends the functionality of CSS with features like variables, nesting, and mixins. Integrating Sass with React allows for more maintainable and modular styling by enabling the use of these advanced CSS features within React components. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Chapter 1: setup, CSS, version control and SASS
    In addition to this, we might want to use some of the power of SASS on our site. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Minimalist blog with Zola, AWS CDK, and Tailwind CSS - Part 1
    This command will prompt a few questions, among them if you want to use SaSS compilation and if you would like to have a search enabled. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

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

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

PostCSS - Increase code readability. Add vendor prefixes to CSS rules using values from Can I Use. Autoprefixer will use the data based on current browser popularity and property support to apply prefixes for you.

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

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.

Stylus - EXPRESSIVE, DYNAMIC, ROBUST CSS

Next.js - A small framework for server-rendered universal JavaScript apps