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Preact

⚛️ Fast 3kB React alternative with the same modern API. Components & Virtual DOM.

From preactjs·Updated June 13, 2026·View on GitHub·

> [!NOTE] > This is the branch for the upcoming release, for patches to v10 you need the [v10.x branch](https://github.com/preactjs/preact/tree/v10.x) The project is written primarily in JavaScript, distributed under the MIT License license, first published in 2015. It has gained significant community traction with 38,693 stars and 2,036 forks on GitHub. Key topics include: components, dom, jsx, preact, react.

Latest release: 10.29.2
May 17, 2026View Changelog →

[!NOTE]
This is the branch for the upcoming release, for patches to v10 you need the v10.x branch

<p align="center"> <a href="https://preactjs.com" target="_blank">

Preact

</a> </p> <p align="center">Fast <b>4kB</b> alternative to React with the same modern API.</p>

All the power of Virtual DOM components, without the overhead:

  • Familiar React API & patterns: ES6 Class, hooks, and Functional Components
  • Extensive React compatibility via a simple preact/compat alias
  • Everything you need: JSX, <abbr title="Virtual DOM">VDOM</abbr>, DevTools, <abbr title="Hot Module Replacement">HMR</abbr>, <abbr title="Server-Side Rendering">SSR</abbr>.
  • Highly optimized diff algorithm and seamless hydration from Server Side Rendering
  • Supports all modern browsers
  • Transparent asynchronous rendering with a pluggable scheduler

💁 More information at the Preact Website ➞

<table border="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td>

npm
Preact Slack Community
OpenCollective Backers
OpenCollective Sponsors

coveralls
gzip size
brotli size

</td> </tr> </tbody> </table>

You can find some awesome libraries in the awesome-preact list :sunglasses:


Getting Started

💁 Note: You don't need ES2015 to use Preact... but give it a try!

Tutorial: Building UI with Preact

With Preact, you create user interfaces by assembling trees of components and elements. Components are functions or classes that return a description of what their tree should output. These descriptions are typically written in JSX (shown underneath), or HTM which leverages standard JavaScript Tagged Templates. Both syntaxes can express trees of elements with "props" (similar to HTML attributes) and children.

To get started using Preact, first look at the render() function. This function accepts a tree description and creates the structure described. Next, it appends this structure to a parent DOM element provided as the second argument. Future calls to render() will reuse the existing tree and update it in-place in the DOM. Internally, render() will calculate the difference from previous outputted structures in an attempt to perform as few DOM operations as possible.

js
import { h, render } from 'preact'; // Tells babel to use h for JSX. It's better to configure this globally. // See https://babeljs.io/docs/en/babel-plugin-transform-react-jsx#usage // In tsconfig you can specify this with the jsxFactory /** @jsx h */ // create our tree and append it to document.body: render( <main> <h1>Hello</h1> </main>, document.body ); // update the tree in-place: render( <main> <h1>Hello World!</h1> </main>, document.body ); // ^ this second invocation of render(...) will use a single DOM call to update the text of the <h1>

Hooray! render() has taken our structure and output a User Interface! This approach demonstrates a simple case, but would be difficult to use as an application grows in complexity. Each change would be forced to calculate the difference between the current and updated structure for the entire application. Components can help here – by dividing the User Interface into nested Components each can calculate their difference from their mounted point. Here's an example:

js
import { render, h } from 'preact'; import { useState } from 'preact/hooks'; /** @jsx h */ const App = () => { const [input, setInput] = useState(''); return ( <div> <p>Do you agree to the statement: "Preact is awesome"?</p> <input value={input} onInput={e => setInput(e.target.value)} /> </div> ); }; render(<App />, document.body);

Sponsors

Become a sponsor and get your logo on our README on GitHub with a link to your site. [Become a sponsor]

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Backers

Support us with a monthly donation and help us continue our activities. [Become a backer]

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License

MIT

Preact

Contributors

Showing top 12 contributors by commit count.

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This article is auto-generated from preactjs/preact via the GitHub API.Last fetched: 6/13/2026