Comparison
These two are close in size — 9.3 KB against our 10 KB — and easy to mistake for alternatives, but they do different jobs. Locomotive Scroll v5 is a smooth-scroll and scroll-detection layer built on Lenis: it eases the scroll itself and applies classes or progress values as elements pass through the viewport. It does not interpolate SVG paths, split text or scrub video. If you want the momentum feel, you want Locomotive or Lenis. If you want things to animate, you want this.
Short version: Pick Locomotive for smooth scrolling with simple in-view triggers. Pick this for the animation itself — and note you can run both, since v5 is Lenis-based.
01
These are close enough in size that the number is not the argument. What differs is what you get for it: smooth scrolling and triggers, versus an animation engine.
Minified + gzipped at level 9, measured 2026-08-14 against locomotive-scroll 5.0.1 and svg-scroll-draw 2.10.0. locomotive-scroll is MIT.
02
Not something we do or plan to — it is Lenis’s job, and we ship an adapter for it
Ours is exposed as a CSS custom property so you can drive CSS without a callback
Locomotive applies classes and progress; the animating is left to your CSS
data-scroll-sticky covers the basic case
A genuine preference difference, not a defect either way
Locomotive’s bundled build, which includes Lenis
✓ supported · ✗ not supported · ~ partial or requires extra work. Checked against locomotive-scroll 5.0.1.
03
Smooth scrolling
The momentum feel is the entire point of Locomotive and we do not compete with it. If that is what you are after, use Locomotive or Lenis directly.
Attribute-driven setup
data-scroll attributes mean no JavaScript per element. If your team prefers configuration in markup, that is a real advantage.
It is Lenis underneath
v5 rebuilt on Lenis, so you get a well-maintained smooth-scroll core rather than a bespoke scroll hijack.
04
Not really — they solve different problems. Locomotive smooths the scroll and reports when elements enter view; svg-scroll-draw animates SVG paths, text, counters and video against scroll position. Many sites want both.
Yes. Locomotive v5 is built on Lenis, and Lenis v2 and later patch window.scrollY natively, so our engines read the correct value with no adapter. For Lenis v1 there is an adapter at svg-scroll-draw/lenis.
Locomotive Scroll is 9.3 KB and svg-scroll-draw is 10 KB for every API at once, measured at gzip level 9. They are close enough that size should not decide it — scope should.