The answer
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.
Event Delegation Performance Benefits
Is event delegation slower than individual listeners?
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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