When comparing JQuery vs Preact, the Slant community recommends Preact for most people. In the question“What are the best JavaScript libraries for building a UI?” Preact is ranked 16th while JQuery is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose Preact is:
The size when gzipped is only 3kb, and performance is as good as (or even faster than) React itself.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Easy to use
Much easier to use than traditional JavaScript. Allows a lot of features and function to be completed with less lines of code.
Pro Cross-browser support
jQuery works on all modern browsers, although there may be some issues with old versions of each browser.
Pro Strong community
The open source community has really embraced jQuery and it has many readily available plugins to help speed up the development process. In addition to this, it has great documentation and tutorials
Pro Lightweight
The size when gzipped is only 3kb, and performance is as good as (or even faster than) React itself.
Pro Same API as react
Avoids having to learn an entire new paradigm, and makes it easy to switch between the two libraries later on.
Pro Lots of examples and libraries
They have a bunch of examples and addon libraries.
Pro Awesome CLI
Preact CLI gives you a perfect scoring PWA out-of-the-box with no configuration.
Cons
Con It is not a framework, but rather a library.
Frameworks allow you to handle page routing, authentication, and services. jQuery is not a framework, but rather a library of DOM tools for websites.
e.g.: You cannot write page routing logic within jQuery.
Con Script download
As opposed to just using raw JavaScript, users will (automatically) download the jQuery script to their local computers in order for it to work. This results in more overhead on the initial page visit, regardless of how lightweight the framework is.
Con Difficult to learn
You need to be good in React JS first to learn Preact. Documentation is not rich. And some of the examples given on site are not working. Developers are not much active on Stack Overflow as well.