Instead of Lodash: es-toolkit

Why es-toolkit is better

• Bundles shrink. es-toolkit's measurement puts pick at 132 bytes against 9554 bytes from lodash-es, and debounce at 531 bytes against 2901.
• Most functions run faster. es-toolkit's benchmark on Node.js shows omit 3.0x and pick 4.1x faster than Lodash, though a few, such as union, are no faster.
• TypeScript types are built in, where Lodash needs the separate @types/lodash package.
• It has 100% test coverage and is used by Storybook, Recharts, ink, MUI and CKEditor.
• Every compat function also has its own entry point, such as es-toolkit/compat/merge, so code without a bundler can load just what it needs.

When to keep Lodash

Keep Lodash in older code where bundle size and speed do not matter and nobody is touching the call sites. Also check whether you need either library, since modern JavaScript covers many old Lodash uses with built-ins such as structuredClone, Object.groupBy and Array.prototype.flat.

Switching

Change imports from lodash or lodash-es to es-toolkit/compat and run your tests; call sites stay the same. Then move call sites to the stricter es-toolkit entry point over time, and drop deprecated helpers that compat keeps only for parity.

Watch out

Only the compat layer is a drop-in. The main es-toolkit API leaves out implicit type coercion, alternative argument shapes and deprecated helpers, so moving from compat to it changes behavior in edge cases. Compat is slightly larger and slower than the main API. The library is maintained under the toss GitHub organization and is younger than Lodash.

More newer, better libraries, runtimes and developer tools

• Moment.js →, use date-fns
• Axios →, use Ky
• Redux →, use Zustand
• styled-components →, use Tailwind CSS
• Prisma ORM →, use Drizzle ORM
• ImageMagick →, use libvips
• Beautiful Soup →, use selectolax