Features
- Built on native Web Components standards
- Reactive properties with automatic re-rendering
- Lit HTML tagged template literals for efficient rendering
- Declarative event handling and styling
- Tiny runtime (~5kb gzipped)
Pros
- Framework-agnostic — works everywhere Web Components work
- No build step required for development
- Standards-based with excellent browser support
- Interoperable with any framework (React, Vue, Angular)
Cons
- Web Components have SSR limitations
- Shadow DOM styling can be restrictive
- Smaller community compared to React/Vue ecosystem
Overview
Lit is a simple library for building fast, lightweight Web Components, developed by Google. It builds on top of the Web Components standards (Custom Elements, Shadow DOM, HTML Templates) and adds just enough to make them productive: reactive properties, declarative templates, and a tiny footprint.
Lit’s templating system uses tagged template literals (html) to create efficient, expressive templates that only update the parts of the DOM that actually changed. Because Lit components are standard Web Components, they work with any framework or no framework at all — making them ideal for design systems and shared component libraries.
When to Use
Lit is the right choice when you need components that work across different frameworks, when building a shared design system for an organization with multiple tech stacks, or when you want to leverage native Web Components standards with minimal abstraction. It’s also great for micro-frontends where different teams use different frameworks.
Getting Started
npm create vite@latest my-app -- --template lit-ts
cd my-app && npm install && npm run devimport { LitElement, html, css } from "lit";
import { customElement, property } from "lit/decorators.js";
@customElement("my-counter")
class MyCounter extends LitElement {
@property({ type: Number }) count = 0;
render() {
return html`<button @click=${() => this.count++}>Count: ${this.count}</button>`;
}
}