Preact

Preact is a free, open-source JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It offers the same modern programming model as React from Meta Platforms (components, JSX and hooks) in a package of about 3 kB once compressed, a small fraction of React's size, so pages that use it download and start faster. A compatibility layer, preact/compat, lets most libraries written for React run on Preact unchanged. It is released under the MIT License.

History

Preact was created by the developer Jason Miller and first published to npm in September 2015, as a lightweight alternative to React, which was created by Jordan Walke. Preact X (version 10), released in October 2019, added hooks and fragments and brought it closely in line with modern React. In 2022 the team released Preact Signals, a way to manage changing data so that only the parts of a page that depend on it re-render; Signals also works with React and other libraries. Preact 11.0, its first new major version in seven years, was released on 30 September 2026. By October 2026 the preact package was downloaded more than 40 million times a week from npm.

Use

Preact is popular where page weight matters, such as embedded widgets, "islands" of interactivity in otherwise static pages, and lightweight app runtimes. The Fresh web framework from Deno is built on it. The agent-native app platform Lakebed uses Preact for every app's user interface, written in TypeScript and styled with Tailwind CSS, and the entry editor on Verified Handles itself is built with Preact.