Comparison

Sprae, Alpine and petite-vue do the same job: add reactivity to HTML you already have, no build step. The differences are size, speed, CSP support and maintenance. Every number below is measured — methodology at the bottom, reproduce it yourself.

At a glance

	sprae	Alpine	petite-vue
CDN build, min+gzip	9.1kb	16.7kb	7.1kb
CPU speed, geometric mean	1.73× faster	baseline	not benchmarked
First paint (1k rows)	83ms	165ms	not benchmarked
Strict CSP / no-eval	full JS expressions	restricted subset	none
Reactivity	pluggable signals (TC39-track)	bundled @vue/reactivity	bundled @vue/reactivity
Keyed lists	automatic (by identity)	manual `:key`	manual `:key`
Debounce, throttle, key filters	built-in modifiers	plugin packages	none
Dependencies	0	0 (Vue reactivity inlined)	0 (Vue reactivity inlined)
Status	active, 0 open issues	active	frozen — last release Jan 2022
License	MIT	MIT	MIT

Performance

Median times in ms (lower is better), js-framework-benchmark keyed suite, sprae v13.3.8 vs Alpine v3.14.7, identical machine and Chrome:

benchmark	sprae	Alpine	ratio
create 1,000 rows	54.6	88.2	1.62×
replace all rows	56.4	109.5	1.94×
partial update (every 10th)	21.4	27.8	1.30×
select row	13.8	50.7	3.67×
swap rows	35.5	35.2	0.99×
remove row	19.3	26.2	1.36×
create 10,000 rows	515.9	883.7	1.71×
append 1,000 rows	59.0	97.9	1.66×
clear rows	32.8	80.9	2.47×
geometric mean			1.73×
first paint	82.6	164.7	1.99×
transferred size (benchmark app)	7.9kb	14.7kb	1.86×

Run it independently: krausest/js-framework-benchmark includes both frameworks.

When Alpine is the better choice

Honesty over conversion:

Laravel Livewire — Alpine ships inside it; use what’s already there.
Official plugins — x-transition sugar, mask, collapse, sort, persist are packaged and documented. Sprae covers most of this with modifiers and CSS, but you assemble it yourself.
Community volume — years of StackOverflow answers, recipes, and tutorials. Sprae trades ecosystem size for engine size.

When petite-vue is the better choice

You want exact Vue template syntax and the smallest possible script, and you accept development frozen since January 2022 (npm).

Migrating

Alpine → sprae — directive-by-directive mapping.
petite-vue → sprae — mostly rename: v-scope→:scope, v-if→:if, v-for→:each, @click→:onclick, v-model→:value.

Methodology

Sizes measured 2026-07-02, default CDN entry of each package:

curl -sL https://unpkg.com/sprae      | gzip -9 | wc -c   # 9096
curl -sL https://unpkg.com/alpinejs   | gzip -9 | wc -c   # 16704
curl -sL https://unpkg.com/petite-vue | gzip -9 | wc -c   # 7075

Performance: js-framework-benchmark official methodology, both frameworks run on the same machine, same Chrome, 15 samples per benchmark, medians reported. Transferred size row is measured by the benchmark harness itself.