Zustand

Zustand is React state management that gets out of your way. At ~1KB gzipped, it's 15x smaller than Redux Toolkit, requires zero boilerplate, and you define state and actions in one place — no action types, no reducers, no providers wrapping your app tree. 57k stars because developers are tired of ceremony.

Redux Toolkit is still the enterprise standard for large teams needing strict patterns and time-travel debugging. Jotai (from the same team, pmndrs) is atom-based — better for fine-grained reactivity with lots of derived state. React's built-in Context is fine for simple cases but re-renders everything.

Use Zustand as your default for any React app. It handles 90% of state management needs with 10% of Redux's complexity. The API is a single `create` function.

The catch: Zustand's simplicity is also its limit. No built-in devtools (though middleware exists), no enforced patterns for large teams, and the "just a store" approach means you'll build your own conventions for complex state logic. For 10+ developer teams, Redux Toolkit's strict structure prevents chaos. For everyone else, Zustand is the answer.