Bad <Link> performance on large datasets

[teidesu]

Which project does this relate to?

Router

Describe the bug

when rendering a lot of <Link>s at once, some take up to 8ms to render, resulting in ui stutters

Your Example Website or App

https://stackblitz.com/edit/vitejs-vite-q4irqygh

Steps to Reproduce the Bug or Issue

1. open the linked repro
2. click "show many"
3. notice how it takes a bit of time for stuff to render
4. try replacing tanstack router links with simple manual <a> links, notice how everything becomes instant

Screen.Recording.2025-11-12.at.01.54.43.mov

Expected behavior

i expect tanstack router to not have that much of overhead over manual <a> elements with an onClick

Screenshots or Videos

No response

Platform

• Router / Start Version: 1.135.2
• OS: macOS (M3 Max)
• Browser: Chrome
• Browser Version: 141
• Bundler: vite
• Bundler Version: 7.2.2

Additional context

trace from chrome performance tab: Trace-20251112T014637.json

[schiller-manuel]

is this only on solid? or does this affect react as well

[teidesu]

not sure, i didn't test, i dont use react :c

[birkskyum]

@schiller-manuel I ported the repro to React, which show the same behavior

• https://stackblitz.com/~/github.com/birkskyum/tanstack-router-many-link-stutter?file=package.json
• https://github.com/birkskyum/tanstack-router-many-link-stutter

[schiller-manuel]

i am not surprised that this is not a solid issue. a Link does much more work, e.g. checking whether it is active. for this we need to perform route matching.

this might get sped up by this PR: #5722

when this landed we should revisit and benchmark to identify the (remaining) bottlenecks

[Sheraff]

@teidesu we just merged a performance improvement of the routing itself (not of the Link component). Would you mind getting another performance trace to asses the remaining issues?

[teidesu]

updated the solid repro to 1.136.5
https://stackblitz.com/edit/vitejs-vite-n9tipj8u
(not sure how to make a fork of that react one without making a github repo :c)

doesn't feel like it improved a ton :c

traces:

• solid: Trace-20251115T181926.json.gz
• react: Trace-20251115T182434-react.json.gz

[Sheraff]

Are you running the traces on a built app? Or in dev mode?

[teidesu]

those were in dev, though in prod the issue persists

traces from prod build (with minify: false, vite build && node start.js in repro):

Trace-20251115T191237.json.gz

[kompot]

Probable path to optimise — update only 2 links immediately. Previous one and next one. And try to defer updating all others.

[schiller-manuel]

we recently optimized link performance so its worth checking this again