Why I'd use zustand instead of redux for most usecases

If you’ve ever dealt with Redux in a React project, you know the pain boilerplate, action types, reducers, thunk/saga setup just to manage a bit of state. Let me talk about Zustand, a minimal, flexible, and way more enjoyable state management library.

Why Zustand is way better than Redux:

1. Zero Boilerplate
   With Redux, you write actions, reducers, action creators, and maybe middleware to handle async logic.
   With Zustand, you just define a store — no magic strings, no switch statements.

    tsxCopyEdit// Zustand example
    const useStore = create((set) => ({
      count: 0,
      increment: () => set((state) => ({ count: state.count + 1 })),
    }));
   

2. Hooks-Based and Intuitive
   Zustand uses React hooks out of the box. No need for connect, mapStateToProps, or context wrappers.

    tsxCopyEditconst count = useStore((state) => state.count);
   

3. No Provider Needed
   Unlike Redux, you don't have to wrap your app in a provider. The store is global, yet isolated per hook call, which also makes it test-friendly.

4. Async Made Easy
   Redux often requires middleware like redux-thunk or redux-saga for async.
   Zustand just lets you call async code inside your store:

    tsxCopyEditfetchData: async () => {
      const data = await fetch(...).then(res => res.json());
      set({ data });
    }
   

5. Built-in Devtools Support
   Zustand supports Redux DevTools, so you don’t lose time-travel debugging or inspecting state changes.

6. Smaller Bundle Size & Better Performance
   Zustand is tiny (<1kB gzipped) compared to Redux + Toolkit + DevTools + Thunk. And because it avoids unnecessary re-renders, it's very performant by default.

7. Flexible and Scalable
   Zustand scales beautifully for small to medium-large apps. It’s perfect for local component state, shared global state, or anything in between — without the complexity Redux adds.

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When Redux might still make sense:

• You already use Redux Toolkit and have a large codebase built on it.

• You need strict structure and patterns for a large team to follow.

• You rely heavily on middleware and side-effect handling like sagas.

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Summary

So I think that zustand brings the simplicity of useState to global state and that’s a big win.
Unless you're maintaining a legacy Redux app or need very specific middleware, Zustand is the modern way to manage state in React.