If you’ve ever tried wrangling an async state in Vue, you’ll know the drill: set up a store, keep track of loading, error, and data, try not to duplicate requests, and then bodge together some cache logic that never quite works as you’d like.

That was us. Then along came Pinia Colada.

It’s a neat little tool that sits on top of Pinia and makes server state management far less of a hassle. If you’ve ever used TanStack Query in React, it’ll feel familiar straight away, but here it’s shaped to fit nicely in our Vue ecosystem.

 

Why we gave it a whirl

Our codebase had reached the point where data fetching was starting to drag us down. Too much boilerplate and too many accidental double-requests.

Pinia Colada promised to sort all that out with:

• Built-in caching and deduplication

• Background refreshing so things don’t go stale

• Optimistic updates (so the UI feels instant)

• SSR support without jumping through hoops

Basically, all the boring stuff was handled, so we could stop reinventing the wheel.

 

From the dev side (our lives got simpler)

As developers, here’s what we noticed straight away:

• Much less boilerplate – code is shorter, cleaner, and easier to reason about.

• Predictable async flows – no more mystery duplicate requests.

• Types that just line up – which is a relief when you’re juggling APIs.

• Plugins – retries, persistence, logging, you name it.

• Onboarding is simpler – new devs can actually get on with features instead of memorising workarounds.

It’s not glamorous work, but having this stuff sorted frees us up for the interesting bits.

 

From the user side (they get smoother apps)

End users couldn’t care less what library we’re using, but they definitely notice when:

• Pages load quicker because of caching

• There’s less flickering and fewer spinners

• Things feel instant (thanks to optimistic updates)

• Data stays consistent as they click around

They don’t see Pinia Colada, they just get a nicer experience.

 

How it compares to TanStack Query

If you’ve worked with TanStack Query before, you’ll recognise the mental model: queries, mutations, background refetching, sensible caching. It’s the same spirit.

But where TanStack Query is multi-framework and quite broad, Pinia Colada feels purpose-built for Vue and Pinia. For us, that made it a more natural fit… no square pegs in round holes.

 

A few things we learnt along the way

• Don’t cache everything forever. Stale data is still wrong data.

• Keep your queries organised, or it’ll get messy.

• SSR works fine, but test it early before you ship.

• Stop thinking ‘manual fetches’ and start thinking ‘queries and mutations’. Once that clicked, everything fell into place.

 

Switching to Pinia Colada has been one of those rare changes where both developers and users come out happier. Our code is tidier, our apps run faster, and we spend far less time fighting with data fetching.

If you’re running Vue and Pinia, it’s definitely worth a go. We’ve certainly found having a Pinia Colada improves our work day.

At The49, we’re always looking for tools that simplify the complex and improve the end experience. If you’d like to find out more about working with us, reach out.