SolidJS vs. React: The Go-to Guide

On the surface, SolidJS and React appear to be closely related. The client-side frameworks are mutually intelligible and are both used to create single-page applications (SPAs). While the developer experience is nearly identical for both, the underlying mechanisms of each framework are a remarkable contrast.

Both SPA frameworks are responsible for compartmentalizing an app’s webpage structure and functionality, but in a browser, these frameworks manipulate pages’ HTML elements differently to deliver the desired user experience. SolidJS and React diverge in their use of the Document Object Model (DOM). Let’s expand on how React and SolidJS components allow application logic to mimic a multi-page website.

A Brief Comparison

I am a firm believer in a TL;DR approach, so I’ve boiled down and presented React and SolidJS’s main differences in the following table:

Now we’ll go into more detail on the similarities and differences between React and SolidJS.

Component Structure

React and SolidJS have exactly the same programmatic structures and support for components (individual, reusable pieces of code).

In both modern React and SolidJS, a component consists of a render function with properties as arguments. Together with each component’s JSX, the code is tight and succinct. JSX is easy to grok, and allows experienced developers to visually describe a component’s model in its definition.

React and SolidJS offer the same components, but each framework has a unique rendering approach. React components render every time (barring memoization use), while SolidJS components only render once.

Another difference between the two frameworks is their varying features that enable component functionality.

Component Functionality

A component without functionality is just markup. So how do React and SolidJS make components operational? Their approaches are similar:

Under the hood, both hooks and reactive primitives are a way to connect into the respective React and SolidJS change management systems. Overall, the two frameworks handle component functions in a similar manner, but employ different methods or nomenclatures to do so.

Let’s explore more complex functionality differences: state, memoization, and effects.

State

At times, a framework will need to track information and certain properties tied to a component. This concept is known as state, and can be accessed in React with the useState function. In SolidJS, this concept is known as signal, and its corresponding creation function is createSignal.

States and signals house component data (in the form of props), enabling the framework to track value changes. And when the framework detects a change, the component is rendered with the according value(s).

Effect

An effect is a special function that is a core building block in both React and SolidJS. Instead of responding to a direct user interaction with the browser, an effect is triggered when a component state changes, akin to a callback or event listener.

React defines an effect with the useEffect function, while SolidJS uses the createEffect function.

Memoization

Memoization optimizes framework performance by caching expensiֵve component render results, and using cached values when appropriate as opposed to recomputing values. In React, we implement memoization by using one of three hooks:

Historically, React depended on manual memoization for applications to render quickly. That changed with the React Compiler, which reached stable v1.0 in October 2025 and is now wired into Next.js, Expo, and TanStack Start by default. The compiler analyzes your code at build time and inserts memoization automatically, so the three hooks above are increasingly treated as a fallback for unusual cases rather than the default workflow. In contrast, SolidJS’s optimized change tracking and DOM usage mean it rarely requires explicit memoization at all. For edge cases in which component prop changes do not entail a rendering update, SolidJS manages memoization through a single method called createMemo.

Performance

SolidsJS and React have performance differences that reach beyond their approaches to memoization. The two languages approach HTML manipulation in very different ways. The focal point of this difference is how each updates the browser DOM.

React’s founder gave it a lightweight virtual DOM to interface with the browser’s actual DOM. React’s code causes its own virtual DOM to update as components render. React then compares the updated virtual DOM against the browser’s DOM, and the identified changes bleed through into the actual page structure (i.e., the DOM).

Because React re-renders components by default and relies on virtual DOM diffing to determine what actually changed in the real DOM, it is, in a sense, doing its work twice. Historically, this made manual memoization a frequent necessity. With the React Compiler now handling that automatically at build time, the practical performance gap has narrowed considerably for typical applications, though SolidJS still leads on raw benchmarks where every microsecond counts.

In contrast, SolidJS’s founder managed to dodge all of this round-tripping. By using a mechanism called fine-grained reactivity to directly manipulate the browser’s DOM, SolidJS delivers a much lighter memory footprint and a blazingly fast application of page edits and injected code.

Fine-grained reactivity tracks variable interdependencies. Based on variable dependency and edit chains, SolidJS limits our page structure updates to reflect only what has changed, bypassing unnecessary component renders. This results in a meaningful performance edge over React, especially in update-heavy workloads.

Speed alone, though, is not the whole story. It is worth looking at how the two frameworks compare on developer efficiency before drawing conclusions.

Developer Productivity

There are a few key considerations when we consider developer productivity in React versus SolidJS:

A review of your project’s specific use cases can reveal which framework is a better choice, productivity-wise.

Meta-frameworks and Production Use

Today, very few teams ship raw React or raw SolidJS. Both libraries are typically used through a meta-framework that handles routing, server-side rendering, data loading, and bundling.

For React, Next.js is the dominant choice and the de facto reference implementation for React Server Components (RSC), which became stable in React 19. RSC lets parts of your component tree render on the server with zero client JavaScript shipped, which can meaningfully reduce bundle size for content-heavy pages. Remix and TanStack Start are credible alternatives that take different positions on data loading and caching.

SolidJS’s official meta-framework is SolidStart, which supports SSR, streaming, and islands-style rendering, and pairs naturally with Solid’s fine-grained reactivity. It does not currently have a direct equivalent to RSC, though server functions and createAsync cover overlapping ground.

If you are choosing between these stacks for production work, the meta-framework comparison (Next.js versus SolidStart) often matters more than the React-versus-Solid comparison itself.

SolidJS vs. React

I have considerable experience with both SolidJS and React, and I find a lot to like in Solid. It matches React on power and features, and its fine-grained reactivity still delivers a snappier baseline experience for end users on raw benchmarks.

The choice is more balanced than it might first appear. The React Compiler closes much of the auto-memoization gap, and React Server Components are a genuinely different rendering model that SolidStart does not directly replicate. The path from React to Solid is shorter than most framework switches, but it is not friction-free: you have to internalize that components run once, props are reactive getters, and casual destructuring is a trap. If your app is performance-sensitive or you value a smaller mental model, Solid is well worth a serious look. If you need RSC, the largest ecosystem, or the broadest hiring pool, React still has the edge.

The editorial team of the Toptal Engineering Blog extends its gratitude to Yonatan Bendahan for reviewing the technical content presented in this article.