# Preact

35 Hacker News commenters recommended Preact and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** A very small library for building user interfaces with a React-like API, recommended for lightweight front ends and as a smaller alternative to React. One critic says a different library performs noticeably better.

## Why people recommend it

- Very small bundle size (7 comments): "I don't use React itself when I can use the lighter Preact library instead, which provides signals as an escape hatch." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48274352)) "you can switch to Preact (4kb) most of the time without changes if filesize is an issue" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47032098)) "Preact have been fairly faithful to being <10k (compressed)!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45801147))
- Pairs well with other tools (5 comments): "My preferred SPA stack these days involves Porsager’s Postgres library, a simple RPC stack with Zod schemas, and Preact" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48620833)) "I've used bun + preact_render_to_string for server side JSX templates before and it was nice" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47361655)) "I've found the perfect balance to be Astro with Preact" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49166863))
- Covers most front-end needs (4 comments): "provides a pretty comprehensive and common set of solutions to the majority of front end problems" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079064)) "Preact did vdom-diffing for me and mounting/unmounting which was enough for my need." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49086462)) "So far haven't run into any limitations." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49167433))
- Simple and quick to use (3 comments): "It's simple, it's very easy, and I get things done quickly without over-thinking it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46670011)) "I agree Preact is the simpler and preferable of the two." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46691766)) "React is not simple (preact is)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46691268))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [React](https://hackerapproved.com/p/react.md): 482 recommend
- [htmx](https://hackerapproved.com/p/htmx.md): 320 recommend
- [Svelte](https://hackerapproved.com/p/svelte.md): 151 recommend
- [Vue](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vue.md): 121 recommend
- [Angular](https://hackerapproved.com/p/angular.md): 82 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Preact", https://hackerapproved.com/p/preact/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).