Sass vs styled-components

Overview

Sass

Stacks44.8K

Followers32.2K

Votes3.0K

GitHub Stars15.3K

Forks2.2K

styled-components

Stacks2.6K

Followers608

Votes12

GitHub Stars41.0K

Forks2.5K

Sass vs styled-components: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Sass and styled-components

Sass and styled-components are two popular options for styling in web development. However, they have some key differences that make them unique. Here are six key differences between Sass and styled-components:

Syntax: Sass uses its own syntax, which is an extension of CSS with additional features, such as variables, nesting, and mixins. On the other hand, styled-components uses a CSS-in-JS approach, where you write actual CSS code within JavaScript using tagged template literals.
Scoping: In Sass, styles are scoped within the same file where they are defined through nesting. This allows for modular and reusable styles. Styled-components, on the other hand, scopes styles at the component level, ensuring that styles are encapsulated and only apply to the specific component they are defined for.
Dependencies: Sass is a preprocessor that requires a build step to compile Sass code into regular CSS. This means that you need to set up a build process and potentially install additional dependencies. On the contrary, styled-components does not have any build dependencies and can be used directly in the browser without any additional setup.
Dynamic Styling: Sass allows for dynamic styling using variables and mixins, but the dynamic nature is limited to the preprocessor level and requires recompilation to reflect changes. In contrast, styled-components allows for dynamic styling directly within the component's JavaScript code, making it more flexible and powerful.
Component-Based Styling: Styled-components promotes a component-based approach to styling, where each component is responsible for its own styling. This leads to more modular and reusable code. On the other hand, Sass does not have native support for component-based styling, and the responsibility of styling is typically shared between different Sass files.
Tooling Ecosystem: Sass has a mature and extensive tooling ecosystem with a wide range of third-party libraries and frameworks available. This includes build tools, IDE integrations, and code editors with specific support for Sass. In comparison, styled-components, being a relatively newer approach, has a smaller tooling ecosystem but is still actively growing.

In summary, Sass is a popular choice for its powerful preprocessing capabilities and extensive tooling ecosystem, while styled-components offers a modern CSS-in-JS solution that provides component-based styling, scoping, and dynamic styling within JavaScript. The choice between them depends on the specific requirements and preferences of the project.

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Advice on Sass, styled-components

Anonymous

CEO at ME!

Jun 17, 2020

Needs adviceon

Sass

Stylus

PostCSS

Originally, I was going to start using @{Sass}|tool:1171| with Parcel, but then I learned about @{Stylus}|tool:1172|, which looked interesting because it can get the property values of something directly instead of through variables, and @{PostCSS}|tool:3339|, which looked interesting because you can customize your Pre/Post-processing. Which tool would you recommend?

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Detailed Comparison

Sass	styled-components
Sass is an extension of CSS3, adding nested rules, variables, mixins, selector inheritance, and more. It's translated to well-formatted, standard CSS using the command line tool or a web-framework plugin.	Visual primitives for the component age. Use the best bits of ES6 and CSS to style your apps without stress 💅
Statistics
GitHub Stars 15.3K	GitHub Stars 41.0K
GitHub Forks 2.2K	GitHub Forks 2.5K
Stacks 44.8K	Stacks 2.6K
Followers 32.2K	Followers 608
Votes 3.0K	Votes 12
Pros & Cons
Pros 613 Variables 594 Mixins 466 Nested rules 410 Maintainable 300 Functions Cons 6 Needs to be compiled	Pros 11 Very easy to use and integrate 1 Huihui
Integrations
No integrations available	React

What are some alternatives to Sass, styled-components?

Less

Less is a CSS pre-processor, meaning that it extends the CSS language, adding features that allow variables, mixins, functions and many other techniques that allow you to make CSS that is more maintainable, themable and extendable.

Stylus

Stylus is a revolutionary new language, providing an efficient, dynamic, and expressive way to generate CSS. Supporting both an indented syntax and regular CSS style.

Ant Design

An enterprise-class UI design language and React-based implementation. Graceful UI components out of the box, base on React Component. A npm + webpack + babel + dora + dva development framework.

PostCSS

PostCSS is a tool for transforming CSS with JS plugins. These plugins can support variables and mixins, transpile future CSS syntax, inline images, and more.

Angular Universal

It executes on the server, generating static application pages that later get bootstrapped on the client. This means that the application generally renders more quickly, giving users a chance to view the application layout before it becomes fully interactive.

Angular Material

Sprint from Zero to App. Hit the ground running with comprehensive, modern UI components that work across the web, mobile and desktop. It allows to create material styled angular apps fast and easy.

Bourbon

Bourbon is a library of pure sass mixins that are designed to be simple and easy to use. No configuration required. The mixins aim to be as vanilla as possible, meaning they should be as close to the original CSS syntax as possible.

PrimeReact

PrimeReact is a rich set of open source UI Components for React.

React Router

React Router is a complete routing solution designed specifically for React.js. It painlessly synchronizes the components of your application with the URL, with first-class support for nesting, transitions, and server side rendering.

Compass

The compass core framework is a design-agnostic framework that provides common code that would otherwise be duplicated across other frameworks and extensions.

Related Comparisons

Sass vs styled-components: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Sass and styled-components

Syntax: Sass uses its own syntax, which is an extension of CSS with additional features, such as variables, nesting, and mixins. On the other hand, styled-components uses a CSS-in-JS approach, where you write actual CSS code within JavaScript using tagged template literals.
Scoping: In Sass, styles are scoped within the same file where they are defined through nesting. This allows for modular and reusable styles. Styled-components, on the other hand, scopes styles at the component level, ensuring that styles are encapsulated and only apply to the specific component they are defined for.
Dependencies: Sass is a preprocessor that requires a build step to compile Sass code into regular CSS. This means that you need to set up a build process and potentially install additional dependencies. On the contrary, styled-components does not have any build dependencies and can be used directly in the browser without any additional setup.
Dynamic Styling: Sass allows for dynamic styling using variables and mixins, but the dynamic nature is limited to the preprocessor level and requires recompilation to reflect changes. In contrast, styled-components allows for dynamic styling directly within the component's JavaScript code, making it more flexible and powerful.
Component-Based Styling: Styled-components promotes a component-based approach to styling, where each component is responsible for its own styling. This leads to more modular and reusable code. On the other hand, Sass does not have native support for component-based styling, and the responsibility of styling is typically shared between different Sass files.
Tooling Ecosystem: Sass has a mature and extensive tooling ecosystem with a wide range of third-party libraries and frameworks available. This includes build tools, IDE integrations, and code editors with specific support for Sass. In comparison, styled-components, being a relatively newer approach, has a smaller tooling ecosystem but is still actively growing.

Sass vs styled-components

Overview

Sass vs styled-components: What are the differences?