Stop Using Redux in 2026. Seriously.

I spent two years putting everything in Redux. Global loading states, form inputs, toast notifications — all in the store. Then I ripped it all out in a weekend and my codebase got 40% smaller. Here's why you should too. Redux was the right answer in 2018. It's the wrong answer in 2026 for 90% of projects. Let me explain. The problem isn't Redux itself Redux is well-built, well-documented, and battle-tested. The problem is that developers reach for it by default, like it's a required dependency for React apps. It's not. What Redux actually costs you Boilerplate tax. Even with Redux Toolkit (which is genuinely good), you're still writing slices, selectors, thunks, and connecting everything. For a todo app? That's absurd. For a dashboard with 5 API calls? Still overkill. Bundle size. Redux + Redux Toolkit + React-Redux = ~40KB minified. Zustand is 1.1KB. That's not a typo. Mental overhead. New developers on your team need to understand actions, reducers, dispatch, selectors, middleware,