Framer Motion (now rebranded as Motion) and GSAP represent two fundamentally different approaches to web animation. Framer Motion is a declarative, React-specific animation library that treats animations as component props and state transitions, offering hardware-accelerated performance with gesture support and layout animations. GSAP is an imperative, framework-agnostic animation engine with a powerful timeline system, mature plugin ecosystem, and extensive support for SVG, Canvas, and WebGL animations.
This comparison matters because choosing the wrong tool creates friction: using GSAP in a React project requires imperative ref management that fights React's declarative model, while Framer Motion cannot be used outside React at all. React developers building interactive UIs should evaluate Framer Motion first, while teams working across frameworks, building complex animation sequences, or animating non-DOM targets need GSAP's versatility. Projects animating hundreds of elements simultaneously or requiring precise timeline orchestration also benefit from GSAP's custom rendering engine.
Choose Framer Motion if you're building a React application with typical UI interactions—page transitions, hover effects, drag-and-drop, layout animations, and component mount/unmount transitions. Its declarative API eliminates boilerplate, the hardware acceleration handles most performance needs, and the smaller bundle size matters for user-facing applications. The 'motion' component approach feels natural to React developers and produces maintainable code without ref management overhead. However, if your animations exceed simple state transitions or you need precise timeline control, you'll hit Framer Motion's ceiling quickly.
Choose GSAP for complex animation sequences, multi-framework projects, or anything beyond DOM animations (SVG morphing, Canvas, WebGL). The imperative API and timeline system provide unmatched control for intricate orchestrations, and the performance benefits become measurable when animating hundreds of elements simultaneously. GSAP is also the only choice for non-React projects. Many production applications use both: GSAP for hero sections and complex timelines, Framer Motion for interactive React components. If you must pick one, your framework choice decides—React teams should default to Framer Motion unless they have specific GSAP requirements.