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	10.9kb	16.7kb	7.1kb
CPU speed, geometric mean	2.27× faster	baseline	not benchmarked
Runtime memory (1k rows)	5.1MB	16.6MB	not benchmarked
First paint (1k rows)	76ms	107ms	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

Sizes current as of 2026-07-28 (sprae 13.8.4, Alpine 3.15.12, petite-vue 0.4.1); CPU speed, memory and first paint are from a full benchmark run at sprae 13.8.4 — see Methodology.

Performance

Median times in ms (lower is better), js-framework-benchmark keyed suite, full run 2026-07-28 at sprae v13.8.4 vs Alpine v3.14.7, identical machine and Chrome 147:

benchmark	sprae	Alpine	ratio
create 1,000 rows	29.7	67.7	2.28×
replace all rows	32.2	83.4	2.59×
partial update (every 10th)	19.8	22.4	1.13×
select row	7.4	41.4	5.59×
swap rows	20.8	38.1	1.83×
remove row	19.0	22.0	1.16×
create 10,000 rows	339.8	737.5	2.17×
append 1,000 rows	35.1	78.5	2.24×
clear rows	15.6	64.4	4.13×
geometric mean			2.27×
memory after create 1,000 rows	5.1MB	16.6MB	3.27×
first paint	75.5	106.5	1.41×
transferred size (benchmark app)	10.0kb	14.7kb	1.47×

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 2026-07-28, unpkg default build of each package (sprae 13.8.4, Alpine 3.15.12, petite-vue 0.4.1):

curl -sL https://unpkg.com/sprae      | gzip -9 | wc -c   # 10947
curl -sL https://unpkg.com/alpinejs   | gzip -9 | wc -c   # 16694
curl -sL https://unpkg.com/petite-vue | gzip -9 | wc -c   #  7061

sprae’s ESM build (sprae.js) is smaller — 9.9kb gzip, 9.1kb brotli — if you import it directly.

Performance: js-framework-benchmark official webdriver-ts harness, both frameworks on the same machine, Chrome 147, 15 samples per benchmark, medians reported — full run 2026-07-28 at sprae v13.8.4 vs Alpine v3.14.7 (the Alpine version pinned by the benchmark’s own implementation). Memory is the harness’s GC’d heap after create-1k; transferred size and first paint are measured by the harness itself.