Size Limit
Size Limit is a performance budget tool for JavaScript. It checks every commit on CI, calculates the real cost of your JS for end-users and throws an error if the cost exceeds the limit.
- ES modules and tree-shaking support.
- Add Size Limit to Travis CI, Circle CI, GitHub Actions or another CI system to know if a pull request adds a massive dependency.
- Modular to fit different use cases: big JS applications that use their own bundler or small npm libraries with many files.
- Can calculate the time it would take a browser to download and execute your JS. Time is a much more accurate and understandable metric compared to the size in bytes.
- Calculations include all dependencies and polyfills used in your JS.
With GitHub action Size Limit will post bundle size changes as a comment in pull request discussion.
With --why
, Size Limit can tell you why your library is of this size
and show the real cost of all your internal dependencies.
We are using Statoscope for this analysis.
Who Uses Size Limit
- MobX
- Material-UI
- Autoprefixer
- PostCSS reduced 25% of the size.
- Browserslist reduced 25% of the size.
- EmojiMart reduced 20% of the size
- nanoid reduced 33% of the size.
- React Focus Lock reduced 32% of the size.
- Logux reduced 90% of the size.
How It Works
- Size Limit contains a CLI tool, 3 plugins (
file
,webpack
,time
) and 3 plugin presets for popular use cases (app
,big-lib
,small-lib
). A CLI tool finds plugins inpackage.json
and loads the config. - If you use the
webpack
plugin, Size Limit will bundle your JS files into a single file. It is important to track dependencies and webpack polyfills. It is also useful for small libraries with many small files and without a bundler. - The
webpack
plugin creates an empty webpack project, adds your library and looks for the bundle size difference. - The
time
plugin compares the current machine performance with that of a low-priced Android devices to calculate the CPU throttling rate. - Then the
time
plugin runs headless Chrome (or desktop Chrome if it’s available) to track the time a browser takes to compile and execute your JS. Note that these measurements depend on available resources and might be unstable. See here for more details.
Usage
JS Applications
Suitable for applications that have their own bundler and send the JS bundle directly to a client (without publishing it to npm). Think of a user-facing app or website, like an email client, a CRM, a landing page or a blog with interactive elements, using React/Vue/Svelte lib or vanilla JS.
Show instructions
-
Install the preset:
$ npm install --save-dev size-limit @size-limit/file
-
Add the
size-limit
section and thesize
script to yourpackage.json
:+ "size-limit": [ + { + "path": "dist/app-*.js" + } + ], "scripts": { "build": "webpack ./webpack.config.js", + "size": "npm run build && size-limit", "test": "jest && eslint ." }
-
Here’s how you can get the size for your current project:
$ npm run size Package size: 30.08 kB with all dependencies, minified and gzipped
-
Now, let’s set the limit. Add 25% to the current total size and use that as the limit in your
package.json
:"size-limit": [ { + "limit": "35 kB", "path": "dist/app-*.js" } ],
-
Add the
size
script to your test suite:"scripts": { "build": "webpack ./webpack.config.js", "size": "npm run build && size-limit", - "test": "jest && eslint ." + "test": "jest && eslint . && npm run size" }
-
If you don’t have a continuous integration service running, don’t forget to add one — start with Travis CI.
JS Application and Time-based Limit
File size limit (in kB) is not the best way to describe your JS application cost for developers. Developers will compare the size of the JS bundle with the size of images. But browsers need much more time to parse 100 kB of JS than 100 kB of an image since JS compilers are very complex.
This is why Size Limit support time-based limit. It runs headless Chrome to track the time a browser takes to compile and execute your JS.
Show instructions
-
Install the preset:
$ npm install --save-dev size-limit @size-limit/preset-app
-
Add the
size-limit
section and thesize
script to yourpackage.json
:+ "size-limit": [ + { + "path": "dist/app-*.js" + } + ], "scripts": { "build": "webpack ./webpack.config.js", + "size": "npm run build && size-limit", "test": "jest && eslint ." }
-
Here’s how you can get the size for your current project:
$ npm run size Package size: 30.08 kB with all dependencies, minified and gzipped Loading time: 602 ms on slow 3G Running time: 214 ms on Snapdragon 410 Total time: 815 ms
-
Now, let’s set the limit. Add 25% to the current total time and use that as the limit in your
package.json
:"size-limit": [ { + "limit": "1 s", "path": "dist/app-*.js" } ],
-
Add the
size
script to your test suite:"scripts": { "build": "webpack ./webpack.config.js", "size": "npm run build && size-limit", - "test": "jest && eslint ." + "test": "jest && eslint . && npm run size" }
-
If you don’t have a continuous integration service running, don’t forget to add one — start with Travis CI.
Big Libraries
JS libraries > 10 kB in size.
This preset includes headless Chrome, and will measure your lib’s execution time. You likely don’t need this overhead for a small 2 kB lib, but for larger ones the execution time is a more accurate and understandable metric that the size in bytes. Library like React is a good example for this preset.
Show instructions
-
Install preset:
$ npm install --save-dev size-limit @size-limit/preset-big-lib
-
Add the
size-limit
section and thesize
script to yourpackage.json
:+ "size-limit": [ + { + "path": "dist/react.production-*.js" + } + ], "scripts": { "build": "webpack ./scripts/rollup/build.js", + "size": "npm run build && size-limit", "test": "jest && eslint ." }
-
If you use ES modules you can test the size after tree-shaking with
import
option:"size-limit": [ { "path": "dist/react.production-*.js", + "import": "{ createComponent }" } ],
-
Here’s how you can get the size for your current project:
$ npm run size Package size: 30.08 kB with all dependencies, minified and gzipped Loading time: 602 ms on slow 3G Running time: 214 ms on Snapdragon 410 Total time: 815 ms
-
Now, let’s set the limit. Add 25% to the current total time and use that as the limit in your
package.json
:"size-limit": [ { + "limit": "1 s", "path": "dist/react.production-*.js" } ],
-
Add a
size
script to your test suite:"scripts": { "build": "rollup ./scripts/rollup/build.js", "size": "npm run build && size-limit", - "test": "jest && eslint ." + "test": "jest && eslint . && npm run size" }
-
If you don’t have a continuous integration service running, don’t forget to add one — start with Travis CI.
-
Add the library size to docs, it will help users to choose your project:
# Project Name Short project description * **Fast.** 10% faster than competitor. + * **Small.** 15 kB (minified and gzipped). + [Size Limit](https://github.com/ai/size-limit) controls the size.
Small Libraries
JS libraries < 10 kB in size.
This preset will only measure the size, without the execution time, so it’s suitable for small libraries. If your library is larger, you likely want the Big Libraries preset above. Nano ID or Storeon are good examples for this preset.
Show instructions
-
First, install
size-limit
:$ npm install --save-dev size-limit @size-limit/preset-small-lib
-
Add the
size-limit
section and thesize
script to yourpackage.json
:+ "size-limit": [ + { + "path": "index.js" + } + ], "scripts": { + "size": "size-limit", "test": "jest && eslint ." }
-
Here’s how you can get the size for your current project:
$ npm run size Package size: 177 B with all dependencies, minified and gzipped
-
If your project size starts to look bloated, run
--why
for analysis:$ npm run size -- --why
We use Statoscope as bundle analyzer.
-
Now, let’s set the limit. Determine the current size of your library, add just a little bit (a kilobyte, maybe) and use that as the limit in your
package.json
:"size-limit": [ { + "limit": "9 kB", "path": "index.js" } ],
-
Add the
size
script to your test suite:"scripts": { "size": "size-limit", - "test": "jest && eslint ." + "test": "jest && eslint . && npm run size" }
-
If you don’t have a continuous integration service running, don’t forget to add one — start with Travis CI.
-
Add the library size to docs, it will help users to choose your project:
# Project Name Short project description * **Fast.** 10% faster than competitor. + * **Small.** 500 bytes (minified and gzipped). No dependencies. + [Size Limit](https://github.com/ai/size-limit) controls the size.
Reports
Size Limit has a GitHub action that comments and rejects pull requests based on Size Limit output.
- Install and configure Size Limit as shown above.
- Add the following action inside
.github/workflows/size-limit.yml
name: "size"
on:
pull_request:
branches:
- master
jobs:
size:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
env:
CI_JOB_NUMBER: 1
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v1
- uses: andresz1/size-limit-action@v1
with:
github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
Config
Size Limits supports three ways to define config.
-
size-limit
section inpackage.json
:"size-limit": [ { "path": "index.js", "import": "{ createStore }", "limit": "500 ms" } ]
-
or a separate
.size-limit.json
config file:[ { "path": "index.js", "import": "{ createStore }", "limit": "500 ms" } ]
-
or a more flexible
.size-limit.js
or.size-limit.cjs
config file:module.exports = [ { path: "index.js", import: "{ createStore }", limit: "500 ms" } ]
Each section in the config can have these options:
- path: relative paths to files. The only mandatory option.
It could be a path
"index.js"
, a pattern"dist/app-*.js"
or an array["index.js", "dist/app-*.js", "!dist/app-exclude.js"]
. - import: partial import to test tree-shaking. It could be
"{ lib }"
to testimport { lib } from 'lib'
or{ "a.js": "{ a }", "b.js": "{ b }" }
to test multiple files. - limit: size or time limit for files from the
path
option. It should be a string with a number and unit, separated by a space. Format:100 B
,10 kB
,500 ms
,1 s
. - name: the name of the current section. It will only be useful if you have multiple sections.
- entry: when using a custom webpack config, a webpack entry could be given. It could be a string or an array of strings. By default, the total size of all entry points will be checked.
- webpack: with
false
it will disable webpack. - running: with
false
it will disable calculating running time. - gzip: with
false
it will disable gzip compression. - brotli: with
true
it will use brotli compression and disable gzip compression. - config: a path to a custom webpack config.
- ignore: an array of files and dependencies to exclude from the project size calculation.
- modifyWebpackConfig: (.size-limit.js only) function that can be used to do last-minute changes to the webpack config, like adding a plugin.
- compareWith: path to
stats.json
from another build to compare (when--why
is using). - uiReports: custom UI reports list (see Statoscope docs).
If you use Size Limit to track the size of CSS files, make sure to set
webpack: false
. Otherwise, you will get wrong numbers, because webpack
inserts style-loader
runtime (≈2 kB) into the bundle.
Plugins and Presets
Plugins:
@size-limit/file
checks the size of files with Gzip, Brotli or without compression.@size-limit/webpack
adds your library to empty webpack project and prepares bundle file forfile
plugin.@size-limit/webpack-why
adds reports forwebpack
plugin about your library is of this size to show the cost of all your dependencies.@size-limit/webpack-css
adds css support forwebpack
plugin.@size-limit/esbuild
is likewebpack
plugin, but usesesbuild
to be faster and use less space innode_modules
.@size-limit/time
uses headless Chrome to track time to execute JS.@size-limit/dual-publish
compiles files to ES modules withdual-publish
to check size after tree-shaking.
Plugin presets:
@size-limit/preset-app
containsfile
andtime
plugins.@size-limit/preset-big-lib
containswebpack
,file
, andtime
plugins.@size-limit/preset-small-lib
containsesbuild
andfile
plugins.
JS API
const sizeLimit = require('size-limit')
const filePlugin = require('@size-limit/file')
const webpackPlugin = require('@size-limit/webpack')
sizeLimit([filePlugin, webpackPlugin], [filePath]).then(result => {
result //=> { size: 12480 }
})