pre-commit is a framework to run hooks written in many languages, and it manages the
language toolchain and dependencies for running the hooks.

prek is a reimagined version of pre-commit, built in Rust.
It is designed to be a faster, dependency-free and drop-in alternative for it,
while also providing some additional long-requested features.

> [!NOTE]
> Although prek is pretty new, it’s already powering real‑world projects like CPython, Apache Airflow, FastAPI, and more projects are picking it up—see Who is using prek?. If you’re looking for an alternative to pre-commit, please give it a try—we’d love your feedback!
>
> Please note that some languages are not yet supported for full drop‑in parity with pre-commit. See Language Support for current status.

Features

- A single binary with no dependencies, does not require Python or any other runtime.
- Faster than pre-commit and more efficient in disk space usage.
- Fully compatible with the original pre-commit configurations and hooks.
- Built-in support for monorepos (i.e. workspace mode).
- Integration with uv for managing Python virtual environments and dependencies.
- Improved toolchain installations for Python, Node.js, Bun, Go, Rust and Ruby, shared between hooks.
- Built-in Rust-native implementation of some common hooks.

Table of contents

- Installation
- Quick start
- Why prek?
- Who is using prek?
- Acknowledgements

Installation

If installed via the standalone installer, prek can update itself to the latest version:

`bash
prek self update
`

Quick start

- I already use pre-commit: follow the short migration checklist in the quickstart guide to swap in prek safely.
- I'm new to pre-commit-style tools: learn the basics—creating a config, running hooks, and installing git hooks—in the beginner quickstart walkthrough.

Why prek?

$3

- It is multiple times faster than pre-commit and takes up half the disk space.
- It redesigned how hook environments and toolchains are managed, they are all shared between hooks, which reduces the disk space usage and speeds up the installation process.
- Repositories are cloned in parallel, and hooks are installed in parallel if their dependencies are disjoint.
- Hooks can run in parallel by priority (hooks with the same priority may run concurrently), reducing end-to-end runtime.
- It uses uv for creating Python virtualenvs and installing dependencies, which is known for its speed and efficiency.
- It implements some common hooks in Rust, built in prek, which are faster than their Python counterparts.
- It supports repo: builtin for offline, zero-setup hooks, which is not available in pre-commit.

$3

- No need to install Python or any other runtime, just download a single binary.
- No hassle with your Python version or virtual environments, prek automatically installs the required Python version and creates a virtual environment for you.
- Built-in support for workspaces (or monorepos), each subproject can have its own .pre-commit-config.yaml file.
- prek run has some nifty improvements over pre-commit run, such as:
- prek run --directory