Evan You Announces Vue JSX Vapor 3.1: JSX Performance Beats React, Shaking the Frontend Landscape

Vue author Evan You retweeted an announcement introducing vue-jsx-vapor 3.1 , the latest iteration of Vue’s experimental Vapor Mode.

What is Vapor Mode?

Vapor Mode is a rendering strategy that eliminates the Virtual DOM, directly compiling components into fine‑grained DOM operations inspired by SolidJS, aiming for extreme runtime performance.

Key breakthroughs in version 3.1

Oxc driver : the underlying compiler now uses Oxc, a high‑performance Rust‑based JavaScript/TypeScript parser, dramatically speeding up compilation.

Dual‑mode support : the compiler can generate both Virtual DOM and Vapor DOM outputs.

Full directive support : all Vue directives such as v-if and v-for, including modifiers, work inside JSX.

Seamless integration : the compiled output aligns perfectly with Vue’s official template compiler, allowing JSX code to achieve performance comparable to hand‑optimized template code.

Performance benchmark

The article cites the JS Framework Benchmark chart, highlighting the weighted geometric mean scores:

Baseline (vue‑js‑vapor native) is set to 1.00. vue-jsx-vapor 3.1 scores 1.01, indicating virtually no performance loss compared to native Vapor.

SolidJS scores 1.09, showing that Vue JSX Vapor can be faster than Solid in certain scenarios.

React Hooks v19 scores 1.39; on the “Swap Rows” test it is 6.74× slower than the baseline, while Vue JSX Vapor remains stable.

Conclusion : In pure runtime performance, JSX under Vue’s Vapor mode leaves React far behind.

Technical deep dive: why keep Virtual DOM support?

Although Vapor Mode removes the Virtual DOM for client‑side speed, supporting Virtual DOM generation enables future server‑side rendering (SSR). A quoted tweet states: “The next step is to use the Virtual DOM to enable SSR for Vapor.”

"The next step is to use the Virtual DOM to enable SSR for Vapor."

Current Vapor Mode excels in client performance but lacks mature SSR. By reusing Vue’s existing SSR infrastructure (which relies on Virtual DOM), the team can avoid rewriting server‑rendering logic, allow mixed usage (Vapor DOM for interactive parts, Virtual DOM for SEO‑critical parts), and lay groundwork for hydration strategies.

Overall, Vue’s strategy with JSX Vapor 3.1 is to combine extreme client‑side speed with a pragmatic path toward full‑stack rendering capabilities.