Datastar
Hacker ApprovedRanked 7 of 21 JavaScript frameworks by recommenders
Recommended as a small, fast alternative to htmx and React for server-driven reactivity with little JavaScript. Critics mainly object to its ID-heavy style and the paid Pro edition.
Recommended as a small, fast alternative to htmx and React for server-driven reactivity with little JavaScript. Critics mainly object to its ID-heavy style and the paid Pro edition.
55 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 45
- criticize it
- 10
- approval share
- 82%
Recommended in 12 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 45 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 12 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Smaller and faster than htmx and Alpine
“It is more powerful, faster and smaller than htmx and alpine combined, and has all sorts of capabilities specifically for multi-player live reactivity.”
Comment from 15 Jul 2026 in “How I use HTMX with Go” “it subsumes the functionality of htmx, is faster, more efficient and fits inside 11 KiB”
Comment from 10 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (February 2026)” “subsumes both, and then does even more. While being smaller, faster and simpler.”
Comment from 18 Jan 2026 in “High-Level Is the Goal” - Comment from 6 Jul 2026 in “Clojure 1.13 adds support for checked keys”
Simpler than React or SPA architectures
“Having used both in anger, I find d* has a lot of very real advantages over react if you care about performance and application stability.”
Comment from 1 Aug 2026 in “Let's Make the Worst Htmx” “with Datastar's SSE approach you can get better than SPA experience with a simpler mental model”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Elena, a library for building Progressive Web Components” “This is SO much more efficient than our previous reactjs & graphql render waterfalls”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “HTML over WebSockets: real-time SPAs with barely any JavaScript” - Comment from 29 Aug 2026 in “Htmx 4.0”
- Comment from 26 May 2026 in “Does Anybody Actually Like React?”
Client-side signals built in
“The part that really sets Datastar apart for me is it holds client-side variables which are included in all requests.”
Comment from 31 Jan 2026 in “htmx: Server Sent Event (SSE) Extension” “I've come to prefer it. Partially because I don't need something like alpine.js to get some frontend goodies”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “</> Htmx – The Fetch()ening” “Datastar has a lean and mean signals implementation that handles all the front-end reactive stuff”
Comment from 1 Aug 2026 in “Let's Make the Worst Htmx” Modular and extensible design
“having a full framework while still allowing super easy way to make whatever API as you see fit”
Comment from 5 Nov 2025 in “</> Htmx – The Fetch()ening” “Everything is a plugin, and you are free to extend it to suite your needs.”
Comment from 1 Aug 2026 in “Let's Make the Worst Htmx” “Datastar is also very explicitly designed to be modular and extensible”
Comment from 19 Dec 2025 in “Please just try HTMX”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Paid Pro edition and licensing worries
“Datastar Pro isn't FOSS, and speaking from a purely probabilistic and historical standpoint, your odds of getting rugpulled”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “</> Htmx – The Fetch()ening” “Datastar have locked this feature behind the”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “</> Htmx – The Fetch()ening” “Pay for the antipatterns?”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “</> Htmx – The Fetch()ening” No history or progressive enhancement
“Last I checked Datastar doesn't support progressive enhancement.”
Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “How I use HTMX with Go” “But I don't see how D* prevents correct urls/history at all”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “</> Htmx – The Fetch()ening” “It doesn't have history support out of the box.”
Comment from 21 Dec 2025 in “Please just try HTMX” Hostile or odd maintainer behavior
“The main guy gets incredibly agitated and starts calling you names if you don't agree with him”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “</> Htmx – The Fetch()ening” “My current plan is to switch to Datastar too, although the devs seem a little odd.”
Comment from 18 Dec 2025 in “Please just try HTMX” Weak docs and LLM support
“Datastar looks interesting, but their guide on how to redirect a user is a joke.”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “</> Htmx – The Fetch()ening” “I want to like it but I find the LLM doesn't program in it well”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “HTML over WebSockets: real-time SPAs with barely any JavaScript”
Other JavaScript frameworks people recommend
The four most recommended other JavaScript frameworks, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 21 JavaScript frameworks, rankedWhat people said
40 of the 116 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Datastar is awesome, but in each Go code base with Datastar I just kept repeating the same code patterns over and over again”
“It seems a lot simpler to me given the slim surface area of the APIs?”
“This is SO much more efficient than our previous reactjs & graphql render waterfalls”
“I want to like it but I find the LLM doesn't program in it well”
“with Datastar's SSE approach you can get better than SPA experience with a simpler mental model”
“Having used both in anger, I find d* has a lot of very real advantages over react if you care about performance and application stability.”
“Everything is a plugin, and you are free to extend it to suite your needs.”
“could be build with Go, Datastar (or htmx), and sqlite and hosted for a fraction of the cost”
“Datastar has a lean and mean signals implementation that handles all the front-end reactive stuff”
“Last I checked Datastar doesn't support progressive enhancement.”
“For my simple apps, I'm extremely happy with how simple both HTMX and Datastar make my logic.”
“It is more powerful, faster and smaller than htmx and alpine combined, and has all sorts of capabilities specifically for multi-player live reactivity.”
“I also prefer Datastar but the new features coming in HTMX4 closes the gap more.”
“Bundle size is 30K gzipped and we spend no time thinking about our build”
“using Datastar (a streaming HTML framework) every action including scrolling roundtrips to the server”
“I wouldn't take React over htmx/data-star and server rendering if that's all I needed”
“Datastar would make this particularly simple - just include whatever menu/nav stuff that you need and show/hide/toggle it with a few signals/attributes.”
“tools I've thrown together (that handle hundreds of MB of data in-browser) load instantly and are blazing fast”
“it subsumes the functionality of htmx, is faster, more efficient and fits inside 11 KiB”
“Datastar is a whole other beast with only a few at most vestigial similarities to HTMX.”
“The part that really sets Datastar apart for me is it holds client-side variables which are included in all requests.”
“it is a bit more complete solution to the problem - giving lightweight primitives for client-side interactivity”
“subsumes both, and then does even more. While being smaller, faster and simpler.”
“I'm switching to Data Star because it feels like it exists in the golden zone between HTMX and React.”
“It doesn't have history support out of the box.”
“Datastar is also very explicitly designed to be modular and extensible”
“My current plan is to switch to Datastar too, although the devs seem a little odd.”
“you might find DataStar more to your liking, it's partway between React and htmx”
“having a full framework while still allowing super easy way to make whatever API as you see fit”
“The Datastar team have done more to push for performance, better UX and the ways of thinking around SPAs and MPAs”
“Datastar looks interesting, but their guide on how to redirect a user is a joke.”
“But I don't see how D* prevents correct urls/history at all”
“The main guy gets incredibly agitated and starts calling you names if you don't agree with him”
“There's fewer mini-languages to learn and the API makes more assumptions about what you want.”
“the MIT code is sitting right there and the changes are not all that significant”
“Pay for the antipatterns?”
“the FOSS code still exists and would take 2 minutes to update to the current plugin API”
“Datastar have locked this feature behind the”
“I've come to prefer it. Partially because I don't need something like alpine.js to get some frontend goodies”
“Datastar Pro isn't FOSS, and speaking from a purely probabilistic and historical standpoint, your odds of getting rugpulled”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.