Vite + Svelte for Small Projects: Performance and Development Experience Compared with Vue

When developing small‑scale front‑end projects, traditional frameworks such as Vue or React can feel overly heavy. This article, written by Wei Xing from the Vivo Internet Front‑End team, explains why the Vite + Svelte combination is a lightweight alternative and provides a detailed performance comparison with Vue.

Background

Front‑end teams often standardise on a single framework to improve collaboration and reduce learning costs. In many Chinese teams Vue and React dominate, and the author’s team also uses Vue for most of its component libraries and tooling. However, for very small projects the bundled runtime code (virtual DOM, reactivity, state management) becomes redundant, inflating bundle size and slowing start‑up.

Problems with heavy frameworks

Framework overhead: small pages carry unnecessary runtime code, increasing bundle size and start‑up time.

Slow build speed: Vue CLI (Webpack‑based) is slower than modern tools like Vite or esbuild.

The proposed solution is to adopt the lighter stack Vite + Svelte , which the article demonstrates step‑by‑step.

2.1 Vite

Vite, created by Evan You, is a fast build tool. In development it uses esbuild for pre‑bundling and serves native ESM modules directly to the browser, giving near‑instant hot updates. In production it relies on Rollup, which provides efficient tree‑shaking and typically smaller bundles.

2.2 Svelte

Svelte, authored by Rich Harris, compiles components to pure JavaScript at build time, eliminating a runtime. This results in smaller bundles and faster execution, especially noticeable in small projects.

3. Setting up a Vite + Svelte project

Install Vite globally:

npm install vite -g

Create a new Svelte project with Vite’s scaffolding:

npm create vite@latest

During the interactive prompt select Svelte and the JavaScript variant. The resulting command‑line output looks like:

✔ Project name: vite-svelte-demo
? Select a framework: › - Use arrow‑keys. Return to submit.
Vanilla
Vue
React
Preact
Lit
❯   Svelte
Solid
Qwik
Others
? Select a variant: › - Use arrow‑keys. Return to submit.
TypeScript
❯   JavaScript
SvelteKit ↗

Run the project:

cd vite-svelte-demo
npm install
npm run dev

The generated directory structure mirrors a typical Vue project, with .svelte components and two configuration files:

|-node_modules
|-public
|   |-vite.svg
|-src
|   |-assets
|   |-lib
|   |-App.svelte  // root component
|   |-app.css
|   |-main.js    // entry file
|-.gitignore
|-index.html
|-package.json
|-vite.config.js
|-.svelte.config.js

Basic vite.config.js :

import { defineConfig } from 'vite';
import { svelte } from '@sveltejs/vite-plugin-svelte';
export default defineConfig({
plugins: [svelte()],
});

Basic svelte.config.js :

import { vitePreprocess } from '@sveltejs/vite-plugin-svelte';
export default {
preprocess: vitePreprocess(),
};

If legacy browser support is required, add @vitejs/plugin-legacy :

import legacy from '@vitejs/plugin-legacy';
export default defineConfig({
plugins: [
svelte(),
legacy({
targets: ["Android >= 4.4", "iOS >= 9", "ie >= 11", "not Android < 4.4", "not iOS < 9", "not ie < 11"],
additionalLegacyPolyfills: ["regenerator-runtime/runtime"],
renderLegacyChunks: true,
}),
],
});

4. Development experience

Vite’s hot‑module replacement is near‑instant compared with Webpack’s full rebuilds, dramatically improving developer productivity. Svelte’s syntax is similar to Vue but more concise (single‑brace interpolation, no explicit ref for reactivity, $: reactive statements).

Example Svelte component:

<script>
let count = 0;
const increment = () => { count += 1; }
</script>
<button on:click={increment}>count is {count}</button>
<style>
...
</style>

5. Performance comparison

Bundle size (gzip) : Vue ≈ 124 KB, Svelte ≈ 77 KB (≈ 38 % reduction). Uncompressed sizes: Vue ≈ 360 KB, Svelte ≈ 207 KB (≈ 42.5 % reduction).

First‑Contentful‑Paint (FCP) – local tests : Svelte consistently beats Vue by 40‑50 ms across multiple runs, averaging a 46 % speed‑up.

Online startup speed (AB‑Test) : Vue ≈ 2493 ms, Svelte ≈ 2132 ms, a 14.5 % improvement.

Loading‑process analysis using Chrome DevTools shows two main time savings for Svelte:

Smaller JS bundle → faster network transfer.

Almost no runtime → quicker HTML/JS parsing and execution.

6. Summary

For small projects, Vite + Svelte offers a “lightweight and agile” solution: faster builds, smaller bundles, quicker start‑up, and a gentle learning curve (2‑3 days to get productive). The author also encourages teams to explore new technologies rather than sticking to a single “tech ceiling”, as innovation keeps developers motivated and teams technically vibrant.