Ajay Rawat

State Management at Scale: Zustand vs Redux

The Mental Model Shift

Redux relies on a single immutable store with a dispatcher. Zustand relies on atomic hooks with a simpler API, but the same fundamental principles apply.

Selector Optimization

The most common performance killer in React state is improper selection.

The Problem

// Re-renders component whenever ANYTHING in store changes
const { bears, fish } = useStore();

The Fix

Select only what you need. Zustand compares strict equality === by default.

const bears = useStore((state) => state.bears);

For objects, use shallow:

import { shallow } from "zustand/shallow";
const { bears, fish } = useStore(
  (state) => ({ bears: state.bears, fish: state.fish }),
  shallow
);

Redux Toolkit (RTK) Query vs React Query

If you use Redux, RTK Query is a no-brainer for server state.

  • Caching: Automatic deduplication of requests.
  • Micro-management: isLoading, isFetching (background), isError flags provided out of the box.

Don't manually useEffect to fetch data and dispatch setUsers. Use the query hook.

Context vs Store

Context is for Dependency Injection (theming, user auth tokens). Stores (Zustand/Redux) are for high-frequency data updates.

Context often triggers re-renders of the entire subtree. Stores allow subscribers to bail out of updates.