Why is Biome better than Prettier?

Biome's benchmark formats 171,127 lines of code in 2,104 files about 35x faster than Prettier on the same laptop. Output is close to Prettier's by design. Biome scores 97% compatibility and lists every intentional difference, such as unquoting all valid ES2015 identifiers as object keys. It ships as one native binary, also installable without npm, instead of a Node package with a plugin per extra language. The same tool lints with 755 rules taken from ESLint, typescript-eslint and other sources, configured in the same biome.json. It can format code that has syntax errors while you type in the editor.

Instead of Prettier: Biome

Use Biome. It formats JavaScript, TypeScript, JSX, JSON, CSS, HTML, GraphQL, YAML and Markdown, scores 97% compatibility with Prettier, and its own benchmark shows it about 35x faster. It is also a linter, so one tool and one config file can replace both Prettier and ESLint.

Old Prettier ★ 52k MIT JavaScript Pushed today prettier.io

Instead Biome ★ 26k Apache-2.0 Rust Pushed today biomejs.dev

Both are for formatting JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS and other web code to one consistent style.

Why Biome is better

Biome's benchmark formats 171,127 lines of code in 2,104 files about 35x faster than Prettier on the same laptop.
Output is close to Prettier's by design. Biome scores 97% compatibility and lists every intentional difference, such as unquoting all valid ES2015 identifiers as object keys.
It ships as one native binary, also installable without npm, instead of a Node package with a plugin per extra language.
The same tool lints with 755 rules taken from ESLint, typescript-eslint and other sources, configured in the same biome.json.
It can format code that has syntax errors while you type in the editor.

When to keep Prettier

Keep Prettier when you rely on Prettier plugins, on a language or framework Biome does not format yet, or when your team needs output identical to Prettier's. Prettier is still the standard, used by 9,295 State of JS 2025 respondents, against 1,762 for Biome.

Switching

Install @biomejs/biome and run biome migrate prettier --write to carry your Prettier options into biome.json, then reformat the whole codebase in one commit so the diff stays out of feature work. Watch the indent style. Biome defaults to tabs, while Prettier's useTabs defaults to false, so set indentStyle to space if your Prettier config relied on the default.

Watch out

The remaining 3% shows up as small diffs in edge cases, and Biome deliberately differs from Prettier in a few documented places. It does not run Prettier plugins. Language coverage is narrower than Prettier's plugin ecosystem, so check Biome's language support page for anything beyond JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS and JSON.

Also worth a look

Oxfmt Oxc's formatter, which its own benchmark puts at about 30x faster than Prettier and 2x faster than Biome, with import and Tailwind class sorting built in; it is still on 0.x versions with breaking changes between releases.

More newer, better linters, formatters and type checkers

Sources

Judged on 2026-11-06. See every linters, formatters and type checkers, or all 66 replacements.