Storybook

Storybook is the industry standard for building and documenting UI components in isolation. At 89k stars with 200+ addons, it's what every design system team reaches for — React, Vue, Angular, Svelte, it supports them all. Component-driven development isn't optional in 2026, and Storybook is how most teams do it.

Ladle is 10-50x faster to start (React-only, pure Vite) and compelling if Storybook's cold start time is killing your flow. Histoire is the Vite-native choice for Vue teams. But neither has Storybook's addon ecosystem, Chromatic integration, or visual regression testing story.

Use Storybook if your team builds reusable components and needs documentation, visual testing, and stakeholder review. The Vite builder in v8 fixed most performance complaints.

The catch: configuration can be a maze. The plugin system is powerful but adds complexity, and getting Storybook to play nicely with custom webpack configs or monorepos still requires patience. For small projects with a handful of components, it's overhead you don't need.