@emotion/react vs styled-components
@emotion/react is downloaded 1.8× more often than styled-components (73,931,629 vs 40,345,140 per month), so it has the larger community and more answered questions online. @emotion/react ships 37% less gzipped JavaScript (7.9 kB vs 12.6 kB), which matters if bundle size is a priority.
| Metric | @emotion/react | styled-components |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly downloads | 17,112,239✓ | 10,079,059 |
| Monthly downloads | 73,931,629✓ | 40,345,140 |
| GitHub stars | — | — |
| Minified size | 20.0 kB✓ | 32.2 kB |
| Minified + gzipped | 7.9 kB✓ | 12.6 kB |
| Dependencies | 8 | 4✓ |
| Open issues | — | — |
| Last commit | — | — |
| Latest version | 11.14.0 | 6.4.2 |
| 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
styled-components
The classic component-scoped CSS-in-JS library.
Choose it when: Component-scoped styles with tagged template literals in classic React (client components) and a large ecosystem.
- + Component-scoped styles
- + Mature & popular
- + Theming
- - Runtime cost
- - Friction with React Server Components
Feature comparison
| Feature | @emotion/react | styled-components |
|---|---|---|
| Runtime | Runtime | Runtime |
| TypeScript | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Authoring style | css prop / object / string | Tagged templates |
| SSR support | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Maintenance | Active | Active |
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[](https://devcompare.dev/compare/emotion-react-vs-styled-components)Data from npm, Bundlephobia and GitHub. Last updated 2026-06-02.