Redux Toolkit

Redux Toolkit is Redux without the pain. It eliminates the boilerplate that made Redux infamous — createSlice replaces action creators plus reducers, configureStore handles middleware, and RTK Query gives you data fetching with caching built-in. If your team already knows Redux, this is just Redux done right.

If you're building a large-scale React app with multiple developers, strict architecture, and time-travel debugging, Redux Toolkit is still the enterprise standard. Zustand is the lightweight alternative most indie devs prefer in 2026 — 1KB, no Provider wrapper, hooks-based API. Jotai handles atomic state elegantly. TanStack Query owns server state entirely.

The catch: at 15KB, Redux Toolkit is 15x heavier than Zustand. The architecture is inherently more complex — slices, actions, reducers, middleware, selectors. For most indie projects, Zustand plus TanStack Query covers everything you need with less ceremony. Redux Toolkit's value shows at scale with large teams who need enforced patterns, not for solo founders shipping fast.