Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

TanStack Table VS styled-components

Compare TanStack Table VS styled-components and see what are their differences

TanStack Table logo TanStack Table

Headless UI for building powerful tables & datagrids with TS/JS, React, Solid, Svelte and Vue

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.
  • TanStack Table Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-03
  • styled-components Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-27

TanStack Table features and specs

  • Performance
    TanStack Table is designed for high performance, capable of handling large datasets efficiently through features like virtualized scrolling, which only renders visible rows.
  • Customization
    Provides extensive customization options for UI and behavior, allowing developers to tailor the table to specific needs with hooks and plugins.
  • Lightweight
    The core library is minimal and can be extended with plugins, making it lightweight by default and allowing developers to include only the features they need.
  • Headless Design
    Being headless, TanStack Table focuses solely on offering functionality, leaving the implementation of styles and appearance completely to the developer, which provides flexibility.
  • Community and Documentation
    The library has an active community and comprehensive documentation, which helps developers quickly understand and implement features.

Possible disadvantages of TanStack Table

  • Complexity
    With its headless nature and high level of customization, there can be a steep learning curve for developers unfamiliar with its approach or those new to React.
  • Lack of Built-in Styles
    Since it does not include built-in styles or components, additional work is required to implement design aspects, which may be a drawback for projects that need a quick setup.
  • React Dependency
    It is specifically designed for React, which makes it unsuitable for projects built with other frameworks.
  • Fragmentation
    Due to its plugin-based architecture, essential features can sometimes depend on third-party solutions, leading to possible fragmentation or inconsistency in updates and support.

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 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

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to TanStack Table and styled-components)
Developer Tools
10 10%
90% 90
Design Tools
11 11%
89% 89
Data Grid
100 100%
0% 0
Javascript UI Libraries
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

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

TanStack Table Reviews

Using AG Grid in React: Guide and alternatives
Implementing pagination can be a little trickier. But one of the benefits of TanStack Table is that we have complete control over the functionality. Letโ€™s implement server-side pagination with TanStack Table and see how it works.
The Best React Data Grid/Table Libraries with Material Design in 2023 - MRT Blog
The main advantage of this project is that it is also built on top of TanStack Table v8 (formerly known as React Table) and TanStack Virtual v3 (formerly known as React Virtual), which are powerful headless UI libraries for efficiently rendering react table components with virtualization. This also means the the APIs to customize the behavior of the table are standardized...
Best Free and Open-Source JavaScript Data Grid Libraries and Widgets
The TanStack Table library is a modern and up-to-date library for creating powerful tables and data grids. This is actually a headless library, so it won't ship with components, markup, or styles.

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 TanStack Table. While we know about 174 links to styled-components, we've tracked only 6 mentions of TanStack Table. 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.

TanStack Table mentions (6)

  • Building a Google Sheetsโ€“Like Table Component with TanStack Table, Zod, and ShadCN/UI
    TanStack Table for the core table logic. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • What are headless UI libraries?
    UI libraries aside, the whole headless rave has spread to packages and libraries for standalone components, headless text editors like Tiptap and Platejs, headless table components like Tanstack table, and more out there to explore. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Task tracker application using NextJS and SurrealDB
    To create the task table I have used [@tanstack/react-table](https://tanstack.com/table/v8) as it has many features like searching, pagination, sorting, and filtering. As it is a Headless table library it handles most of the complex tasks on its own. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • React Ecosystem inย 2024
    If you're looking for information about tables in React, you can explore the TanStack Table documentation for version 8 at tanstack.com/table/v8. TanStack Table is a headless UI library that allows you to build powerful tables and datagrids in various frameworks like TS/JS, React, Vue, Solid, and Svelte while retaining control over markup and styles. The documentation will provide you with detailed information on... - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • โšก Best Open Source React framework and libraries for Building Enterprise B2B apps
    Refer to TanStack Table documentation. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
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styled-components mentions (174)

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What are some alternatives?

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

AG Grid - The best HTML5 datagrid in the world

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

MUI X Data Grid - A fast and extensible React data table and React data grid, with filtering, sorting, aggregation, and more.

Sass - Syntatically Awesome Style Sheets

Mantine - React library, 60+ hooks and components with dark theme support and focus on accessibility

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