Tag

#2026

58 posts tagged.

react-day-picker vs react-datepicker vs MUI X Date Pickers in 2026

Three React date pickers measured against live registry, repository and tarball state on 7 October 2026. One is what shadcn installs for you, one is a single pre-bundled module your bundler cannot take apart, and one will not start until you have adopted a design system and picked one of eight date adapters. Plus three corrections to our own accessibility instrument, all of which had been wrong in the same direction.

October 7, 202612 min read4

SaaS stacks

lucide-react vs Heroicons vs Tabler Icons: the Next.js import surface, measured (2026)

Three React icon libraries that differ less in their icons than in their import surface. Read from the npm registry, the published tarballs, the GitHub API and the Next.js source on 4 October 2026: one of them has a 525-byte root entry, one ships a 478 KB barrel, and the registry's size figures rank all three in the wrong order.

October 4, 202613 min read78

SaaS stacks

react-easy-crop vs react-image-crop vs react-advanced-cropper: choosing a Next.js image cropper in 2026

Three React image croppers whose received wisdom is three months out of date. Read from the npm registry, the published tarballs and the GitHub API on 1 October 2026: the library everyone calls selection-only now writes the canvas code for you, the most downloaded one still ships zero canvas code, and the package npm reports as smallest is actually the heaviest.

October 1, 202612 min read64

SaaS stacks

tsup vs unbuild vs bunchee: TypeScript package bundlers in 2026

Three zero-config bundlers for shipping a TypeScript package, measured against live registry and repository state on 28 September 2026. One carries a maintainer deprecation notice, one has not released in over a year, and one requires Node 22.12. Plus what Vercel's turborepo actually uses, which is not what the usual citation says.

September 28, 202611 min read97

SaaS stacks

react-virtuoso vs TanStack Virtual vs react-window: the 2026 Next.js comparison

All three shipped a release in September 2026 and all three are MIT. What separates them is how much of the component they hand you: five prebuilt components, two, or none at all. The library everyone quotes as 5KB is measured here at eleven times that.

September 26, 20269 min read153

SaaS stacks

Sonner vs react-hot-toast vs react-toastify for Next.js in 2026

Three React toast libraries whose reputations are all slightly wrong. Read from the npm registry, the published tarballs, the GitHub API and the live shadcn registry on 23 September 2026: the most downloaded one is the heaviest, the one with the steepest search decline shipped a release seven days ago, and the oldest has the best accessibility.

September 23, 202612 min read146

SaaS stacks

GSAP vs Framer Motion vs React Spring for Next.js in 2026

Motion ships 67 files carrying a use client directive, GSAP ships zero across 117, and the rename everyone tells you to migrate for turns out to be a 35 byte alias. Measured from the npm registry and the published tarballs.

September 21, 202611 min read168

SaaS stacks

react-hook-form vs TanStack Form vs Formik: the 2026 Next.js comparison

Two of these three repositories were pushed to on the day we ran the check. The third was last pushed 312 days earlier, and the prerelease tag npm still advertises for it was published in December 2020.

September 18, 20269 min read164

SaaS stacks

dnd-kit vs Pragmatic drag and drop vs react-beautiful-dnd for Next.js in 2026

Three React drag and drop libraries, three different stages of life. Read from the npm registry, the published tarballs and the GitHub API on 16 September 2026: one is archived, one is quietly split in two, and one is not a React library at all.

September 16, 202612 min read153

SaaS stacks

Tiptap vs Lexical vs Plate: the Next.js App Router rich text editor decision (2026)

All three are MIT and all three shipped stable releases this month, so maintenance is not the deciding question. Who holds the copyright and what renders on the server is. Measured from the npm registry and the published tarballs.

September 13, 202612 min read135

SaaS stacks

Docusaurus vs Nextra vs Mintlify: what you own in 2026

Two MIT frameworks and one source-available platform. The licence split is the half everyone writes about; the release log is the half that decides more projects.

September 11, 20268 min read96

SaaS stacks

SigNoz vs Grafana vs OpenObserve: what you actually run (2026)

Three self-hosted observability backends that all claim to be open source. We read the licence files, opened the enterprise directories and measured every container image on September 8, 2026, and the licence, the visibility and the footprint each land in the opposite place to the reputation.

September 8, 202613 min read208