Is event delegation slower than individual listeners?
Slightly. Delegation checks e.target on every click (a matches() or closest() call). But this is negligible compared to the memory and initialization savings. For 20+ items, delegation is almost always better.
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More FAQs in Event Delegation Performance Benefits
Less memory (1 listener and 1 closure vs 100), faster initialization (1 addEventListener vs 100), and no extra work for dynamically added elements. The per-click overhead (e.target check) is negligible.
For 100 items: individual listeners use 100 closures (one per listener). Delegation uses 1 closure. For 1000 items: 1000 vs 1. The memory savings scale with the number of items.
For 20+ similar items, use delegation. For < 20 items, individual listeners are fine. The exact threshold depends on the use case, but 20 is a reasonable cutoff.
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