Lodash
Shares rank 11 of 24 JavaScript libraries by recommenders
Widely used JavaScript utility library of collection and object helpers, trusted for reliability and functional-style transforms. Critics note bundling and ESM compatibility problems, and that it's heavy to drop.
Widely used JavaScript utility library of collection and object helpers, trusted for reliability and functional-style transforms. Critics note bundling and ESM compatibility problems, and that it's heavy to drop.
17 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 59%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 9 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
Many useful small utility functions
“The best outcome was things like jquery and then lodash where a whole collection of small util functions get rolled in to one package.”
Comment from 16 Nov 2025 in “The fate of "small" open source” “a larger suite of utility functions (say, most of Lodash / es-toolkit”
Comment from 20 Aug 2026 in “Bun 1.4” “there's still a lot of useful utilities in lodash”
Comment from 17 Nov 2025 in “The fate of "small" open source” - Comment from 14 Aug 2026 in “Choose Boring Technology (2015)”
Well-tested, reliable, established library
“Lodash or Moment.js, those are actual bona fide libraries”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Avoid Mini-Frameworks” “well-known/tested/reliable utility libraries like lodash”
Comment from 15 Feb 2026 in “Stoat removes all LLM-generated code following user criticism” Functional collection transform helpers
“It's like reduce, but expressly for transforming one collection to another.”
Comment from 17 Sep 2026 in “Anecdotally, programmers dislike "reduce"” “who very much likes using RxJS and the functional flavour of lodash”
Comment from 6 Jun 2026 in “No Let, No Rec, No Problem: A Gentler Introduction to the Y and Z Combinators”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Bundler and ESM compatibility problems
“lodash-es doesn’t ESM lodash/fp, which means there is no straightforward way of using it with Vite after version 5”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: What did you find out or explore today?” “lodash/fp doesn't deduplicate with lodash when bundled”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: What did you find out or explore today?” “without tree shaking, lodash is such a blight”
Comment from 17 Nov 2025 in “The fate of "small" open source” Hard to remove from projects
“it's a long journey to fully get rid of something like Lodash from an old project”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “GitLab discovers widespread NPM supply chain attack” “without tree shaking, lodash is such a blight”
Comment from 17 Nov 2025 in “The fate of "small" open source”
Other JavaScript libraries people recommend
The four most recommended other JavaScript libraries, 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.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| jQuery | 111 | 48 | 70% | 12 | 16 yrs8 owners | Approved |
| Picknplace.js | 58 | 26 | 69% | 1 | — | — |
| Alpine.js | 50 | 16 | 76% | 11 | 1 yr4 owners | Approved |
| Effect (TypeScript library) | 38 | 16 | 70% | 10 | 2 yrs3 owners | Approved |
| LodashThis page | 10 | 7 | 59% | 9 | — | — |
What people said
16 of the 18 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It's like reduce, but expressly for transforming one collection to another.”
“a larger suite of utility functions (say, most of Lodash / es-toolkit”
“Express, Lodash, jQuery, require still works.”
“who very much likes using RxJS and the functional flavour of lodash”
“Shipping Protobuf, YAML, Lodash (hashing, unicode, collections)”
“needing lodash external package”
“well-known/tested/reliable utility libraries like lodash”
“lodash/fp doesn't deduplicate with lodash when bundled”
“lodash-es doesn’t ESM lodash/fp, which means there is no straightforward way of using it with Vite after version 5”
“Lodash or Moment.js, those are actual bona fide libraries”
“it's a long journey to fully get rid of something like Lodash from an old project”
“Not wanting to use well constructed, well tested, well distributed libraries to make code simpler and more robust is not motivated by any practical engineering concern.”
“keyBy is just Array.map -> Object.fromEntries”
“there's still a lot of useful utilities in lodash”
“without tree shaking, lodash is such a blight”
“The best outcome was things like jquery and then lodash where a whole collection of small util functions get rolled in to one package.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.