Preact Has a Free API You Should Know About

Preact is a 3KB alternative to React with the same modern API. It's the fastest way to build interactive web apps when bundle size matters.

Why Preact Over React

An e-commerce site had a React bundle of 140KB affecting their Core Web Vitals score. They switched to Preact — same components, same hooks — and the bundle dropped to 45KB. LCP improved by 1.2 seconds.

Key Features:

• 3KB gzipped — Smallest React-compatible library
• React Compatible — Drop-in replacement via preact/compat
• Hooks Support — useState, useEffect, useContext, and all standard hooks
• Signals — Built-in fine-grained reactivity
• Fast — Minimal overhead, direct DOM manipulation

Quick Start

npm init preact

Same as React

import { useState } from "preact/hooks"

function Counter() {
  const [count, setCount] = useState(0)
  return <button onClick={() => setCount(c => c + 1)}>Count: {count}</button>
}

Signals (Unique to Preact)

import { signal, computed } from "@preact/signals"

const count = signal(0)
const doubled = computed(() => count.value * 2)

function Counter() {
  return (
    <div>
      <button onClick={() => count.value++}>{count}</button>
      <p>Doubled: {doubled}</p>
    </div>
  )
}

Why Choose Preact

1. 95% smaller than React — better Core Web Vitals
2. Same API — migrate existing React apps easily
3. Signals — fine-grained reactivity without re-renders

Check out Preact docs to get started.

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