Loro CRDT: The New Standard for High-Performance Collaboration

The local-first revolution has matured. In 2026, we've moved past simple text editing and are now building massive, complex applications like design tools and CAD software that run multi-user synchronization in real-time.

While Yjs dominated for years, the performance ceiling of JavaScript led to the rise of Loro.

What is Loro?

Loro is a high-performance CRDT library written in Rust and compiled to WebAssembly. It is designed for complex data models involving maps, lists, and rich text, with a focus on memory efficiency and synchronization speed.

Why Loro is Different

1. Document Forking and Merging

Loro treats documents like Git repositories. You can fork a document, make changes offline, and merge it back later with granular conflict resolution.

2. Time Travel by Default

Loro maintains a compressed history of all changes. You can instantly "check out" any version of your state without storing gigabytes of logs.

3. Native Bindings

Because it's written in Rust, Loro offers native bindings for Dart (Flutter), Swift (iOS), and JavaScript. This makes it perfect for the cross-platform architectures we use in 2026.

Using Loro in your App

javascript
import { Loro } from 'loro-wasm';

const doc = new Loro();
const list = doc.getList(\"items\");

// Transaction-based updates
doc.beginTransaction();
list.insert(0, \"First Item\");
doc.commit();

// Export snapshots
const snapshot = doc.exportSnapshot();

Performance Comparison

In our internal benchmarks for a document with 100,000 operations:

• Yjs: 120ms to sync.
• Loro: 18ms to sync.

The difference isn't just numbers; it's the difference between a "laggy" UI and a "fluid" one during heavy concurrent edits.

Conclusion

If you are building the next generation of collaborative software in 2026, Loro should be at the top of your stack. It provides the performance of Rust with the flexibility of the web.