If you’ve worked on a large frontend codebase, you’ve probably hit scaling issues — long builds, slow teams, tangled responsibilities. Micro frontends aim to fix this by breaking your frontend into smaller, independent pieces.

But is it worth the complexity? Let’s dive in.

🚧 The problem with monolithic frontends

As frontend apps grow, they become harder to maintain:

  • Every change risks affecting unrelated parts.
  • Teams block each other waiting for deployments.
  • CI/CD becomes a bottleneck.
  • Ownership is blurry.

Just like microservices broke backend monoliths, micro frontends attempt to do the same for the UI.

🔍 What are micro frontends?

Micro frontends is an architectural style where a single frontend app is composed of multiple independently built and deployed applications, each owned by different teams.

> Think: "Frontend as a composition of features, not just components."

Each team ships its own feature (e.g. dashboard, settings, checkout) as a self-contained app.

🧱 How it works

You can implement micro frontends in various ways:

1. Iframe-based

  • Simple, but heavy and isolated.
  • Bad for performance and shared state.

2. Build-time integration (module federation)

Using Webpack Module Federation, apps can import remote components at runtime:

// host app
import RemoteLogin from 'authApp/Login';

3. Runtime composition

Use a layout engine to load apps via script tags or APIs.

4. Web components

Apps expose custom elements (<auth-login />) that are framework-agnostic.

🧪 Pros

  • Independent deployments per team.
  • Scalability across teams and domains.
  • Enables tech diversity (React + Vue in the same app? Possible).
  • Improves team ownership and velocity.

❌ Cons

  • Adds complexity (routing, state sharing, auth, versioning).
  • Harder to test end-to-end.
  • Performance can suffer (duplicate libraries, more network requests).
  • Not worth it for small/medium projects.

🧠 When should you use micro frontends?

✅ Use it if:

  • You have multiple teams working on a large app.
  • You want separate deploy pipelines per domain.
  • You need tech flexibility across teams.
  • You have clear domain boundaries (like microservices).

❌ Avoid if:

  • Your team is small.
  • Your app is simple or linear.
  • You don't have strong CI/CD practices.

⚙️ Tools & libraries

  • Webpack Module Federation (most popular approach)
  • Single-SPA (runtime orchestration)
  • Module Federation + Nx for monorepos
  • Vite + Federated Modules (experimental)
  • Web Components (for framework-agnostic solutions)

💬 Final thoughts

Micro frontends are powerful — but they come with real trade-offs.

If you’re working in a large organization with multiple teams and bounded UI domains, it can drastically improve independence and delivery speed.

But if you’re forcing it into a small project? You’ll just add unnecessary complexity.