@emotion/react vs @stitches/react
@emotion/react is downloaded 22.4× more often than @stitches/react (73,931,629 vs 3,294,994 per month), so it has the larger community and more answered questions online.
| Metric | @emotion/react | @stitches/react |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly downloads | 17,112,239✓ | 849,142 |
| Monthly downloads | 73,931,629✓ | 3,294,994 |
| GitHub stars | — | — |
| Minified size | 20.0 kB | — |
| Minified + gzipped | 7.9 kB | — |
| Dependencies | 8 | — |
| Open issues | — | — |
| Last commit | — | — |
| Latest version | 11.14.0 | 1.2.8 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
When to choose which
@emotion/react
Flexible, performant CSS-in-JS (powers MUI).
Choose it when: You want flexible styling — css prop, object or string styles — and the library behind Material UI.
- + Flexible APIs (css prop/object)
- + Powers MUI
- + Good performance
- - Runtime cost
- - RSC friction like other runtime CIJ
@stitches/react
Near-zero-runtime CSS-in-JS with first-class variants.
Choose it when: Design systems wanting typed variants and tokens — but note the project is no longer actively maintained.
- + First-class variants
- + Near-zero runtime
- + Typed tokens
- - No longer actively maintained
- - Smaller community now
Feature comparison
| Feature | @emotion/react | @stitches/react |
|---|---|---|
| Runtime | Runtime | Near-zero runtime |
| TypeScript | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Authoring style | css prop / object / string | Object + variants |
| SSR support | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Maintenance | Active | Unmaintained |
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[](https://devcompare.dev/compare/emotion-react-vs-stitches-react)Data from npm, Bundlephobia and GitHub. Last updated 2026-06-02.