Best jQuery Alternatives 2022 – Updated 2023

jQuery is a popular JavaScript library for the last 15 years that has served the world with ideal features for web development with simplified components that were not implementable like this before its release. jQuery is basically the cross-browser JS library used for simplifying the client-side HTML. While its code is reusable with JavaScript that we can use as many times as we want.  It’s built on the principle of ‘write less, do more’ as the main focal objective. 

jQuery is an open source project so anyone can use it. It’s very versatile and provides developers with an easy way to upscale their JavaScript usage easily. 

jQuery is very small in size, quick to implement and has a tremendous amount of features. It basically helps the developers to use JavaScript for their websites and its API lets them deploy cross browser compatibility without any hassle. That’s the reason it’s widely used for the most popular platforms such as Reddit, Uber, LinkedIn, Twitter and hundreds of more small or large scale platforms. 

jQuery has remained a very popular name among the developers as the top priority, it’s simple to use and makes web pages load faster. 

jQuery exists for the reason of providing following features to the websites. 

• HTML, DOM, and CSS 
• HTML event methods and handling
• AJAX
• Utilities
• Event Handling
• Animations
• Effects
• DOM Element Selection 

What Is jQuery Used For?

If you are a web developer and have not used it until now, try it. The developers love to add tons of functionalities to their projects. It processes HTML documents and manipulates them being the top JavaScript library. 

Some developers look beyond jQuery and want to get more exposure than jQuery. We have listed some of the best jQuery alternatives 2022 – updated 2023 that you ought to try:

• Cash
• Zepto
• Syncfusion Essential JS2
• UmbrellaJS
• jQuery Slim
• JavaScript
• ReactJS
• ExtJS
• AngularJS
• Vue.js
• D3.js
• Chibi JS
• Flux
• MooTools

Cash 

If you are looking for the best jQuery alternative, we suggest trying Cash. The best plugin so far that works with top notch today’s browsers giving websites extreme efficiency. It lets you easily manipulate DOM and is very light. You can get support for TypeScript, namespaced events and latest releases. 

It manipulates DOM with ease owing to its minimalistic syntax due to the functional JavaScript library to handle events and is lightweight in size. However, for jQuery complete features it relies on modern JavaScript. 

Zepto 

Zepto is another great alternative to jQuery released under the MIT license. It’s an open source library that comes with a fully functional massive API compatible with jQuery that does the job for jQuery features. Zepto’s chief concern is to speed up functionality with the help of these APIs to provide speedy user experience. 

If you are experienced with jQuery you can handle Zepto with the same prowess. Many expert developers prefer Zepto APIs against jQuery due to its lightness and cheesy execution speed. Zepto supports popular browsers including IE10+ and also allows you to resize its modular assembly. 

Syncfusion Essential JS2

Syncfusion Essential JS2 is written in TypeScript and is a trendy JavaScript library to control user interface and its functionality. It also supports tons of frameworks including Vue, Angular and React etc. It’s a very lightweight, modular library with least overhead to provide greater user experience by enhancing web apps. 

Its core functionality is to provide responsiveness to the websites to provide mobile users a great experience and also business apps with schedulers, grids, charts. You can create tons of top notch web apps using its HTML5 JavaScript features. 

UmbrellaJS

UmbrellaJS is a well documented and very intuitive jQuery alternative with almost similar Syntax. Umbrella selectors let developers make the best use of native JavaScript features. 

UmbrellaJS is very small in size as compared to jQuery’s and helps to manipulate AJAX and DOM uses MIT license. It ensures speedy load speed due to being just 3kbs and an exclusive package at the same time despite this small. It works smoothly to provide a great user experience on mobile devices. Its deployment is reusable that developers truly value it for. 

jQuery Slim

If you want to use jQuery but worry about its size at the same time, jQuery Slim is the thing for you to go for. It lacks AJAX and is the useful jQuery library subset that effectively reduces the file size. 

For animation creation and implementation jQuery Slim is the best jQuery alternative. It is very similar to jQuery except the AJAX part and effects modules and also lacks deprecated code. The sole purpose of jQuery Slim custom build was reducing its size to make the best use of jQuery. 

JavaScript

If you are looking for the closest to jQuery alternative then try native JavaScript. It has been ruling everything regarding web development next to HTML and CSS. Its features such as web controls, client-side calculations, dealing with arrows and browser detection etc. 

JS performs faster for DOM manipulation and quells overhead that jQuery users have to bear all along. JS is used for client side and you need to add code a little more for browser compatibility. 

ReactJS

After native JS, ReactJS library is the next big jQuery alternative specializing in creating a smooth UI. The developers can make changes and see rendering on every stage in the main app and see the changes. The regular updates with actual components on each stage makes the job for developers very easy. The best thing about ReactJS is it’s component driven that manages their own core state. 

You can learn ReactJS once and employ it wherever you want. You can add features without overdoing code again. It works with all the contemporary technologies for server-side rendering, expressivity, abstraction and using components smartly for right composition. 

AngularJS

AngularJS is a very extensible open source framework based on JS. It is easily deployable with other libraries. Nowadays, AngularJS is being used for tons of web development reasons such as eCommerce, web apps with CMS and IoT. It is also used for popular social media websites, APIs and Business analysis. 

There are tons of reasons that developers prefer Angular over others for quick deployment, code reusability, extensive approach, no coding hassle being simplistic, HTML templates and much more. What’s surprisingly outstanding about Angular is it’s best for single-page apps. Its community is very supportive for the new comments, suggestions and problem solving. 

Vue.js

Vue.js framework is one of top jQuery alternatives preferred by developers. It’s completely open source, MVVM, ideal for frontend and best for single-page-apps. You can create the best user interfaces with it for mobile and desktop. It serves best for all types of interfaces, desktop and apps. 

Vue.js is a very versatile framework that can be used to represent components beautifully like virtual DOM, data binding, event handling, animations, transitions, Vue-CLI, and routing to name a few. 

Vue.js lets developers add flexibility to their projects by writing templates in HTML, JS with the help of virtual nodes as it has a very powerful and faster library.

ExtJS

ExtJS stands for Extended JavaScript, Sencha offers it so it relies on YahooUserInterface. The developers make its better use by creating data-centric HTML5 apps using JS. 

It offers high-end widgets that can be customized according to the needs for creating high performing cross platform web and mobile apps to run errorlessly on any modern device. 

All popular browsers fully support it as it comes with a high performing UI toolkit and uses MVC/MVVM architecture. There are countless extensions offered by Sencha community for developers and its library has all the necessary features such as grid, pivot, exporter, charts, layouts and adapters for D2. 

Bootstrap

Bootstrap has been used for a long time to create mobile first apps being the well renowned HTML, CSS, JS framework to add flavor of high responsiveness to the apps. It’s light, highly customizable, comprehensible, custom templates, responsive utility classes and so on.

It’s used for front end development due to its flexible features developers use it for smooth responsive apps due to its grid, powerful JS plug-ins, SaaS variables and mixins responsive features. 

Bootstrap provides developers with a complete toolkit as it consists of CSS and JS design templates. You can use them to add features such as forms, buttons, typography, dropdowns and navigation, etc. 

Chibi JS

ChibiJS is also a small size library and has all the jQuery components to make use of. Except animation it supports most of the top notch features including browsers. 

Chibi JS, known as the tiniest JS library with a storage of only 7KB, fully comes with CSS support for frontend development. It truly serves single page applications that spares developers the pain of HTTP requests. 

Flux

Do you know how to create a Facebook-like UI? Facebook uses Flux to create web apps and UI for client-side using Flux. Infact, for any type of data flow app architecture you can use it to perform close coordination between different apps. Flux is specifically designed for that. 

It controls and validates events and its components have assigned roles and actions to perform. Its components include action creators, triggers, dispatcher, stores and controller views and perform actions accordingly.  

D3.js

It’s a very popular JS library that lets developers manipulate dataset documents and also helps them utilize the true potential of HTML, CSS and SVG due to its handy modern tech utilities like high quality visuals, DOM manipulation, great browser compatibility and other competitive core features to stand as a highly desirable library. 

D3.js offers flexibility, ease and pacy which lets developers deal with massive datasets with declarative programming. The code can be written, modified and reused with generated snippets. So as a whole package it serves all purposes required to compete against today’s trendy requirements. 

MooTools

For the compact JavaScript framework, MooTools serves the purpose well being light and provides APIs for coding that helps devs enjoy its flexible coding nature. It lets developers select custom utilities that contain functionality for every level of developer. 

It’s open source and free by using MIT license with better docs. support and DOM enhancements. The developers can easily edit, modify or delete DOM components.