When Styled Components officially announced its shift to maintenance mode, it sent waves through the React community. What was once a go-to styling solution — used and loved by developers everywhere — is now being hastily dismissed as outdated or "never a good idea".

But those hot takes miss the real story.

Styled Components isn't being abandoned because it's broken or irrelevant — it's because maintaining it under React's evolving internals has become unsustainably complex. As React introduces concepts like Server Components, streaming, and the React Compiler, libraries that rely on runtime behavior and deep integration with the render lifecycle face serious challenges.

The problem isn't with how you've been using Styled Components — it's with what it now takes to keep it working across all of React's new paradigms.

Let's break down what actually happened, clear up the misconceptions, and help you choose a styling approach that's built for the future.

Styled components isn't just a styling syntax

At a glance, it feels simple:

const Button = styled.button`
  background: blue;
  color: white;
`

But under the hood, Styled Components does a lot:

• Dynamically generates unique class names
• Injects styles into the DOM at runtime
• Uses React Context to propagate themes
• Manages global and scoped style lifecycles
• Supports SSR (Server-Side Rendering) and hydration

In short: Styled Components is deeply tied to how React renders components — not just how they look.

React changed the game

React's architecture has evolved in major ways since Styled Components first launched. These changes are core to the problem:

Styled Components assumes that components render in order and all at once. Those assumptions no longer hold.

What about the Context API?

A key part of Styled Components is ThemeProvider, which uses the Context API to pass themes through the tree:

<ThemeProvider theme={myTheme}>
  <App />
</ThemeProvider>

But Context itself is under pressure. As React experiments with streaming, lazy-loading boundaries, and cache boundaries, the Context API no longer guarantees consistent propagation across render phases or environments (client vs server).

That's a serious issue for something like theme handling — and Styled Components is tightly coupled to it.

Styled components isn't broken — It's expensive to maintain

This is the most important point:

Styled Components isn't in maintenance mode because it stopped working — it's because React's internals now require full-time adaptation work.

Maintaining compatibility now means:

• Understanding unstable, fast-changing React internals
• Adapting to server-first architectures and streaming hydration
• Competing with zero-runtime, compiler-optimized tools that are easier to maintain and scale

This kind of upkeep isn't sustainable for small open source teams — even ones with a successful history.

Misconceptions in the developer community

Let's clear up the biggest myths flying around right now:

It's not that developers were wrong to use it — it's that React has fundamentally changed the rules of engagement.

What to use instead in 2025+

React's future is compiler-first, static-analysis-friendly, and streaming-ready. These libraries are aligned with that future:

Styled Components — Old Way

import styled from 'styled-components';

const Button = styled.button`
  background: #0070f3;
  color: white;
  padding: 12px 20px;
  border-radius: 6px;
`;

export default function App() {
  return <Button>Click me</Button>;
}

vanilla-extract (Static CSS-in-TS)

• Static CSS in TypeScript
• Fully compatible with RSC and React Compiler
• Supports theming, tokens, and variants
• Zero runtime

// styles.css.ts
import { style } from '@vanilla-extract/css';

export const button = style({
  background: '#0070f3',
  color: 'white',
  padding: '12px 20px',
  borderRadius: '6px',
});

// App.tsx
import * as styles from './styles.css';

export default function App() {
  return <button className={styles.button}>Click me</button>;
}

Fully static — styles are extracted at build time, no runtime required.

Linaria (CSS-in-JS with zero runtime)

• styled.div API but compiled at build time
• Familiar syntax, no runtime injection
• Requires Babel or Vite plugins

import { styled } from '@linaria/react';

const Button = styled.button`
  background: #0070f3;
  color: white;
  padding: 12px 20px;
  border-radius: 6px;
`;

export default function App() {
  return <Button>Click me</Button>;
}

Looks just like styled-components, but is compiled away at build time.

Tailwind CSS (Utility-first)

• Utility-first, class-based styling
• No runtime, compiler-optimized
• Massive ecosystem and dev speed

export default function App() {
  return <button className="bg-blue-600 text-white px-5 py-3 rounded-md">Click me</button>;
}

Utility-first, static, JIT compiled — and extremely performant with a huge ecosystem.

UnoCSS (On-demand atomic CSS)

• Atomic CSS with regex-based rules
• Super dynamic, fast, and customizable
• Great with Vite and React

export default function App() {
  return <button className="bg-[#0070f3] text-white px-5 py-3 rounded-md">Click me</button>;
}

No configuration required to start, works great with Vite, and ultra-light bundle size.

Compiled (Drop-in upgrade)

• Drop-in Styled Components / Emotion compatibility
• Compiles styles ahead-of-time
• Maintained by Atlassian

/** @jsxImportSource @compiled/react */
import { styled } from '@compiled/react';

const Button = styled.button`
  background: #0070f3;
  color: white;
  padding: 12px 20px;
  border-radius: 6px;
`;

export default function App() {
  return <Button>Click me</Button>;
}

Looks identical to Styled Components, but compiles to static CSS — backed by Atlassian.

Other libraries worth exploring

These are promising or emerging options that may fit specific needs in modern React environments:

Astro's Scoped Styles (w/ React)

• Not a styling library per se, but Astro allows using <style scoped> with React
• Great for co-located CSS without runtime

Stitches (also in maintenance, but still solid)

• Loved by design system teams
• Static extraction, theming, variants — zero-runtime like Linaria
• Note: also nearing maintenance mode due to React evolution

StyleX by Meta

• Facebook's internal CSS-in-JS library — now open
• Compiler-first, zero runtime, optimized for RSC and streaming
• Still early-stage for external devs, but promising future

Treat (by Seek)

• Another CSS-in-TypeScript approach
• Used internally by large design systems
• Focused on co-location and performance

My personal recommendation: Consider StyleX by Meta

After exploring the landscape of CSS-in-JS and static styling solutions, my personal opinion is that StyleX by Meta is the most future-proof choice for React projects heading into 2025 and beyond.

StyleX was created to handle complex, large-scale applications like Facebook and Instagram — and it does so with zero runtime cost and incredible performance. It's built from the ground up to work seamlessly with:

• Server Components
• Streaming and React Suspense
• The upcoming React Compiler
• Large-scale apps where runtime performance and bundle size matter

If you're building a React app that needs to stay ahead of the curve, StyleX is one of the best options for long-term maintainability and performance.

Why StyleX by Meta makes sense

• Built for the future of React
  StyleX is specifically designed to support React's most cutting-edge features, like Server Components, the React Compiler, and streaming. It's ready to scale with React's most complex, next-gen paradigms.
• Zero-runtime, compiler-first
  Like vanilla-extract or Linaria, StyleX compiles everything at build time, meaning you don't pay any runtime performance costs. The result? Faster initial loads, minimal CSS on the client, and no hydration mismatch issues.
• Battle-tested at scale
  Meta uses StyleX in production for its largest applications, which means it's built to handle real-world complexity and performance at scale.
• Atomic, but type-safe
  StyleX generates atomic CSS styles but integrates seamlessly with TypeScript, giving you fine-grained control over responsive design and theming without adding complexity to your workflow.
• Great for co-located styles
  You still write styles alongside your components, but they’re compiled ahead of time, ensuring minimal CSS shipped with your app.

Why I'm choosing StyleX

If you're building a modern React app that needs to scale and stay compatible with React's future direction, StyleX is a compelling choice. It's not as easy to use out-of-the-box as Tailwind or styled-components, but it's far more aligned with what's coming in React. With zero runtime, fantastic performance, and a forward-thinking architecture, it's built for longevity and maintainability.

Here's a simple usage example:

// styles.ts
import { create } from 'stylex';

export const styles = create({
  button: {
    backgroundColor: '#0070f3',
    color: 'white',
    padding: '12px 20px',
    borderRadius: '6px',
    ':hover': {
      backgroundColor: '#0051c3',
    },
  },
});

// App.tsx
import { styles } from './styles';
import * as stylex from 'stylex';

export default function App() {
  return <button {...stylex.props(styles.button)}>Click me</button>;
}

While StyleX is still maturing for public use, especially for non-Meta developers, it's certainly worth keeping an eye on as React evolves.

Key takeaways

• Styled Components was a powerful and popular tool — and it still works well in many cases.
• The reason for its maintenance mode isn't that it's broken — it's that maintaining it has become increasingly difficult due to React's evolving internals.
• React is moving towards a static, compiler-first model that makes runtime styling less viable. This shift emphasizes build-time optimizations, which are challenging for libraries that rely on runtime processing like Styled Components.
• You don't need to panic-migrate. If you're maintaining a legacy app or don't need to rely on the latest React features, Styled Components is still a perfectly viable option. However, if you're starting a new app or planning for long-term support, it's time to explore modern styling solutions, such as StyleX by Meta, UnoCSS, or vanilla-extract.

Final word

Styled Components helped define how we think about co-located styles, theming, and scoped design systems in React. It earned its place in frontend history. But as React's trajectory has shifted towards compiler optimizations and server-driven rendering, the runtime-based nature of Styled Components is increasingly at odds with this evolution.

That's not a failure of Styled Components — it's simply a reality of platform evolution. And now, we have a new generation of tools ready to carry us forward, such as StyleX by Meta, UnoCSS, and vanilla-extract, which are better aligned with the future of React.

As we embrace these modern approaches, the frontend ecosystem moves closer to a more optimized and performant future, where static styles are generated ahead of time and serve the needs of next-gen applications.