Syntax highlighting
Modern JavaScript libraries for syntax highlighting code blocks in docs, blogs, and web apps. This list focuses on established projects, but their release cadence and maintenance model vary.
Quick recommendation
Section titled “Quick recommendation”- Use Shiki for static docs and SSR output with VS Code-like quality.
- Use Prism when you need a lightweight client-side highlighter with many plugins.
- Use Highlight.js for easy setup and automatic language detection.
- Use @wooorm/starry-night if you want GitHub-style highlighting based on TextMate grammars.
- Use Sugar High for tiny JS/JSX snippets, or when its limited set of language presets is sufficient.
Package comparison (snapshot 2026-08-17)
Section titled “Package comparison (snapshot 2026-08-17)”| Package | Best for | Latest stable version | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shiki | SSG/SSR docs, MDX pipelines | npm 4.3.1 |
High accuracy with TextMate grammars and VS Code themes; strong for build-time highlighting |
| Prism | Browser-side highlighting | npm 1.30.0 |
Lightweight and extensible; v1 currently accepts security fixes while v2 is in development |
| Highlight.js | Auto-detection and quick integration | npm 11.11.1 |
Mature, widely adopted, and usable in browsers and on servers |
| @wooorm/starry-night | GitHub-like rendering | npm 3.10.0 |
Uses TextMate grammars and produces a HAST syntax tree with GitHub-compatible CSS classes |
| refractor | Prism AST output (rehype/unified) | npm 5.0.0 |
Wraps Prism and returns a HAST syntax tree instead of an HTML string |
| lowlight | highlight.js AST output | npm 3.3.0 |
Returns HAST and works well with virtual DOM and unified pipelines |
| Sugar High | Tiny snippets | npm 1.2.1 |
About 1 kB for JS/JSX, with presets for C, CSS, diff, Go, Java, Python, and Rust |
- For full in-browser editing (not just highlighting), see Embeddable editors.
- For documentation sites, build-time highlighting avoids client-side processing and a flash of unhighlighted code.
Sources
Section titled “Sources”- Shiki documentation — project scope and capabilities (accessed 2026-08-17)
- Prism website — project scope and plugin ecosystem (accessed 2026-08-17)
- Highlight.js website — project scope and usage model (accessed 2026-08-17)
- npm: shiki, npm: prismjs, npm: highlight.js, npm: @wooorm/starry-night, npm: refractor, npm: lowlight, npm: sugar-high — latest stable versions (accessed 2026-08-17)
- GitHub: shikijs/shiki, PrismJS/prism, highlightjs/highlight.js, wooorm/starry-night, wooorm/refractor, wooorm/lowlight, huozhi/sugar-high — project documentation and readmes (accessed 2026-08-17)