LWC vs Aura in 2026: Which Should You Build On?
Lightning Web Components vs Aura in 2026 — performance, tooling, skills and migration. A straight answer for teams deciding where to invest their Salesforce UI effort.
If you are starting new Salesforce UI work in 2026, the question of LWC versus Aura has a short answer: build on LWC. The longer answer — and what to do with the Aura you already have — is worth a few minutes.
Why LWC is the default now
Lightning Web Components are built on modern web standards, which gives them real advantages over the older Aura framework.
- Performance: LWC renders faster and ships less framework overhead than Aura
- Standards: it uses native web components, so the skills transfer beyond Salesforce
- Tooling: better testing with Jest and a cleaner developer experience
- Investment: Salesforce continues to invest in LWC as the strategic direction
Where Aura still shows up
Aura is not gone. You will still see it in existing orgs, and a handful of older features historically required Aura. But for new work, those gaps have largely closed, and starting fresh in Aura today means building on a framework you will eventually migrate away from.
Should you migrate existing Aura?
Not necessarily all at once. A pragmatic approach is to stop writing new Aura, wrap or replace Aura components with LWC as you touch them, and prioritise migration where performance or maintenance pain is highest. A big-bang rewrite is rarely worth it; incremental migration during normal work usually is.
- Freeze new Aura development — build all new components in LWC
- Migrate high-traffic or slow components first
- Reuse migration as an opportunity to add tests and accessibility
- Keep a simple inventory of remaining Aura so the backlog stays visible
AgentExchange builds new LWC and migrates legacy Aura components for teams that want to modernise without a risky rewrite. If you have Aura you would like to move off, email us and we will map a migration path.