8 Best React State Management Libraries To Use In 2025

Why and When Use a React State Management Library?

You may need to use a state management library when your application becomes complex. Chances are, you are unable to manage pop-drilling. There could be many different reasons why developers look at state managers, beyond React's built-in tools.

Although useState and useReducer are excellent for managing local state, they work particularly well in small to medium-sized applications. However, when data is deeply interconnected through prop drilling, it becomes challenging to manage the state through data. 

Let's understand it with this example. Suppose you have built a dashboard where multiple components rely on the same user data. In that case, if you fetch it once and make it global, it stops redundant API calls. A popular example is a shopping cart in an e-commerce application that is displayed on multiple pages. 

Benefits of Using React State Managers

1. Centralized Storage: Maintains a single source of truth for application data, reducing duplication and confusion.
2. Predictable Updates: Encourages consistent patterns for updating state, making the application easier to understand and debug.
3. Developer Tools: Many state managers come with built-in devtools for time-travel debugging, logging, and inspection.
4. Performance Optimization: Helps avoid unnecessary re-renders by controlling how and when components access and react to state changes.
5. Team Collaboration: Promotes a standardized approach to state, making it easier for multiple developers to work on the same codebase without conflict.

8 Best React State Management Libraries

There is a multitude of state management libraries that you can use in different kinds of applications. The selection of a library purely depends on your unique needs, as there is no perfect one-size-fits-all option. We've rounded up eight popular libraries. Some are easy to pick up, while others are better suited for advanced use cases.

1. Redux

Redux was created in 2015 by the acclaimed Facebook developer and a core React team member when no other libraries were available. Since then, it has continued to be a renowned library, providing a clean separation between state and actions.

It is inspired by "Flux Architecture" and leverages a centralized store for global state. State updates occur through "actions" and "reducer functions". 

Its maintainability, performance, and testability are highly valued, alongside a rich ecosystem and powerful debugging tools. Redux is well-suited for large-scale applications with complex state logic. However, it can require significant boilerplate and has a steep learning curve, also needing custom implementation for loading/error states.

Pros:

1. Offers maintainability, performance, and testability.
2. Provides a rich ecosystem and powerful debugging tools.
3. Benefits from a large, mature community.

Cons:

1. Can involve significant boilerplate code.
2. Possesses a steep learning curve.
3. Requires custom implementation for managing loading and error states.
4. Some consider it over-engineered for less complex applications.

It features powerful debugging tools and benefits from a large, active community. Its framework-agnostic nature also means its logic can be reused outside of React, and it supports middleware. With its browser DevTools, developers can view the history of state changes, invaluable for complex projects. However, Redux might be overkill for simpler applications.

2. Recoil

Backed by Facebook, Recoil is the latest and newest offering by the React team. It is an experimental library with core concepts that revolve around atoms and selectors. An atom is a shared-state unit that represents a single-state property that components can subscribe to. And selectors are pure functions that derive their values from atoms or other selectors.  This kind of model gives precise control over each part of state. Recoil natively integrates with React Suspense and ErrorBoundary which makes it feel like an extension of React.

Pros:

1. Handles loading states with Suspense and errors with an ErrorBoundary.
2. Very lightweight and highly performant
3. Minimal re-rendering by only re-rendering components when their connected atom or selector changes its value.
4. Less boilerplate code 
5. Intuitive API compared to Redux
6. Integrates with React Suspense
7. Effective for applications requiring shared state 
8. Offers a moderate ease of integration.

Cons:

1. Relatively new.
2. Was not yet recommended for production in late 2022
3. Its long-term stability is unclear.
4. Has a smaller community and ecosystem
5. Developers might struggle to find others with Recoil experience.
6. Can be difficult to integrate into a mature application.
7. Is React-dependent and cannot be reused elsewhere.
8. As of early 2024, some reports indicate it hasn't received updates for over a year

3. Zustand

Based on the flux pattern, Zustand was developed by experts who built Jotai. It is termed as one of the smallest libraries. Designed for small-to-medium-sized applications, it is very easy to use. Its simplicity and minimalism are what make it one of the most popular state management libraries in 2025. It is a go-to option for small apps where every byte counts. 

It utilizes a store to hold the application state. Thus allowing hooks to directly read and modify it. 

Its state is stored externally, enabling updates outside React components. Its core functionality revolves around a create function that returns a hook for components. 

Pros:

1. Offers a simple and minimalistic API.
2. Has a tiny bundle size (under 1KB or 1.7kb minified).
3. Is more maintainable than Redux.
4. Requires less boilerplate code compared to Redux.
5. Effectively overcomes common React issues like the 'zombie child problem,' React concurrency, and context loss.
6. Ensures components only re-render if their state changes.
7. Provides cleaner, shorter, and more readable code.
8. Natively supports asynchronous functions, simplifying async state management.
9. Can manage transient state updates without re-rendering components.
10. Follows a composition approach familiar to React developers, reducing extra effort.
11. Offers very easy integration.
12. Has a growing and already reasonable community support.

Cons:

1. The documentation of uses should be improved.
2. Has very little middleware support.
3. May be less suitable for applications requiring more advanced state management capabilities, such as undo/redo functionality or structured event handling, due to limited middleware.

4. Jotai

Jotai offers a modern and minimal approach to state management in React. It centers around the idea of atoms, an independent unit of state that can be created, modified, and shared across components.

This design enables precise control, allowing components to subscribe only to the state they rely on. It is another library inspired by Recoil and takes a bottom-up approach. Its core principles are primitive (simple, basic interface like useState) and flexible (derived atoms can combine other atoms and enable useReducer style with side effects). Jotai can be used as a replacement for useState and useContext (React Context). 

It focuses on primitive APIs, similar to Zustand, is TypeScript oriented, and depends on atom object referential identities. 

Pros:

1. Solves the extra re-render issue of React Context and eliminates the need for memoization techniques.
2. Has a tiny bundle size (3kb).
3. Offers a minimal and intuitive API.
4. Provides performance and simplicity.
5. Integrates with React Suspense.
6. Features a cleaner API, greater TypeScript support, and deeper maturity compared to some alternatives.
7. Benefits from garbage collection for optimised memory usage.
8. Allows developers to compose atoms to create reactive state dependencies without excessive boilerplate.
9. Re-renders components only when their specific atom changes.
10. Considered a strong contender for smaller projects that need flexible, reactive, and modular state management.

Cons:

1. Does not have some functionalities that Recoil has.
2. May require additional setup for more complex scenarios, such as global state synchronization across deeply nested components.
3. Its decentralized nature can make state logic scattered and difficult to manage as an application scales.
4. Debugging can become more difficult and time-consuming if developers are not mindful of how their atoms are structured, leading to excessive dependencies.
5. Has a smaller community and ecosystem compared to more established libraries, potentially leading to issues with long-term adoption and finding experienced developers.

5. MobX

It in a UI-agnostic library that can be used not only with React, but also Vue, Angular, and Vanilla.js. Mobx is based on the reactive programming model. It utilizes observables to manage and track state changes. Unlike the actions and reducers approach, it takes a different path, following the OOP paradigm (or observer-observable pattern) to manage the state.

Pros:

1. Exceptionally easy to work with in terms of developer experience.
2. Excels in usability, performance, and scalability.
3. Provides modifiability and reusability.
4. As a mature library, it has no lack of community support or a rich ecosystem of add-ons and tools.
5. Benefits from automatic state tracking, which automates updates without manual action dispatching or reducer updates.
6. Is framework-agnostic and can be used outside of React.
7. Offers a simple API and easy integration.
8. Allows for shorter and less explicit code due to state modifications being instantly reflected.

Cons:

1. The shorter and less explicit code can be a disadvantage for some developers as it takes away some visibility and control.
2. Reactivity issues are fairly common if developers are not very familiar with MobX.
3. Can be harder to maintain large-scale applications if state dependencies are not well-structured.
4. According to one Reddit user in 2024, "MobX for React is dead as underlying proxies are incompatible with React roadmap / suspense".

6. React Context (API)

React's Context API is designed to share data that can be considered "global" for a tree of React components, avoiding the need to manually pass props down through every level. The state resides within the React component tree. It is typically implemented using createContext, Provider, and useContext hooks. While capable of sharing state, it's often described as a dependency injector rather than a full-fledged state manager, offering a lightweight way to make values available to nested components.

Pros:

1. Allows global application state to be shared across the component tree.
2. For mature applications, it does not require significant architectural changes.
3. Useful for simple global state that doesn't update frequently.
4. Understanding Context is important as many other libraries rely on it under the hood.

Cons:

1. Requires custom code to handle loading and error states wherever APIs are called.
2. Not recommended for data that updates frequently due to re-mounting children when contexts are dynamically added/deleted.
3. Can cause extra re-renders if not combined with memoization.
4. Managing multiple contexts can become a hassle.
5. Is not a state manager but a dependency injector, making it difficult to "reinvent the wheel" for complex state.
6. Some developers have "bad things about Context".

7. XState

XState doesn’t just manage state, it structures it. By using state machines and statecharts, it enforces clear, well-defined transitions between states, which makes application behavior more predictable and easier to reason about.

This approach really shines in complex, state-heavy interfaces like multi-step forms, onboarding flows, or anything with conditional logic and timing. It also gives you a visual map of your state, so you can actually see how things change, which is a huge help when debugging. For larger apps, XState supports nested and hierarchical machines, keeping things organized without turning into a tangle of conditionals.

Pros:

1. Provides a clear visualisation of state transitions, aiding in tracking and debugging.
2. Enforces finite state management, ensuring each state is well-defined.
3. Supports hierarchical state machines for structuring intricate logic in large applications.
4. Works well with any frontend framework, offering flexibility beyond React.
5. Offers excellent scalability for complex state.

Cons:

1. Has a steep learning curve due to its unique conceptual model of state machines and statecharts.
2. Can be overkill for simpler applications, unnecessarily complicating things.

8. Valtio

Valtio takes a different route from typical state management libraries. Instead of relying on immutable structures or boilerplate-heavy patterns, it uses JavaScript proxies to let you work with state directly, just like regular objects.

But behind the scenes, it keeps track of what changes and which components need to update. You don’t have to define actions or reducers. The result is a lightweight, reactive system that feels natural to use. Valtio also supports derived state and snapshots, making it easier to handle complex logic or temporary data without clutter.

Pros:

1. Offers a minimalistic API
2. Being proxy-based, it features no boilerplate-heavy state updates, making it intuitive.
3. Supports automatic reactivity
4. Provides derived state and snapshot features for efficient state computation and storage of transient data.
5. Is very easy to integrate

Cons:

1. Has a smaller community and ecosystem compared to more established libraries, meaning fewer third-party tools or extensive documentation.
2. Its flexibility can potentially lead to unexpected behaviour if state is not managed carefully.
3. Less suitable for large-scale applications requiring strict state organisation or extensive middleware support.

How To Choose the Right React State Manager

For many, picking the right React state manager can be confusing. The reality is that no perfect solution exists. When choosing a library, consider the following factors to find the most suitable one. It depends on your or your team's expertise, experience, and familiarity with different concepts—and most importantly, the type of project you're building. Below is the guide to help you choose the right option for your next project.

1. Project Complexity

The scale and architecture of your application should be key factors when selecting a library for state management

1. Small apps: Local state (useState, useReducer) or lightweight libraries like Zustand or Jotai are often sufficient. 
2. Medium apps: Tools like Recoil or MobX work well for managing more interdependent data with less setup than Redux.
3. Large-scale applications: Libraries like Redux Toolkit, XState, or Akita are better options.

2. Performance Needs

State updates and re-renders can have a significant impact on application speed and responsiveness.

1. Libraries like Zustand, Jotai, and Effector excel at minimizing unnecessary re-renders. 
2. MobX's reactive model provides high performance through automatic dependency tracking.
3. Zustand has a bundle size under 1KB (gzipped), ideal for performance-sensitive apps.

3. Team Expertise

The learning curve of a React state manager can affect both productivity and onboarding speed.

1. Redux has excellent documentation but concept-heavy.
2. Recoil and Zustand offer React-friendly APIs that align closely with how developers already use hooks.
3. XState introduces state machines, powerful, but require a different mindset.

As the React ecosystem evolves, so does the way we think about managing state. One of the biggest shifts in recent years is the introduction of React Server Components (RSC), which challenge traditional ideas.

With React leaning into async rendering, Suspense, and concurrent features, state management libraries are evolving in response. There's growing momentum behind patterns like atomic and scoped state, reactive data graphs, and state machines.

Conclusion

Choosing the right state management approach is a crucial decision. Simpler tools like Zustand or Jotai can be effective in early stages, while libraries such as Redux Toolkit, XState, or Akita provide structure for more complex needs. The point is to align your state management with your app's architecture, team expertise, and long-term goals.

At Brilworks, we've helped engineering teams build scalable, maintainable React applications by selecting and implementing the right state patterns from the start. If you're evaluating your options or facing growing pains in your current setup, it might be time to rethink your approach.