React vs Vue: Comparison of the Best JavaScript Frameworks at a Glance!

Quick Overview: React and Vue are the most popular technologies for developing JavaScript web applications. But which one will you choose for your project? Let’s clear your doubts about knowing the difference between React and Vue. We will talk about the upsides and downsides of each, providing tips for choosing which to use.

Being in the development industry, we have to play around with different technologies and focus on understanding their nitty-gritty throughout most of our profession. And sometimes, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed by the vast technicalities emerging in the industry.

Eventually, software applications stopped being straightforward games or digital assistants and transformed into highly complicated lines of code. Businesses started innovating more and more ways to turn their projects into successful products.

Hence, your job now, as an enterprise owner, is not only to hire a team of competent developers but also to select the right tech stack for your project.

We are here to make it easier.

Today, we decided to compare and contrast two of the most popular JavaScript frameworks that you will probably end up stuck between – React vs Vue.

TL;DR

• The prime difference between React vs Vue, Vue uses HTML templates except for JSX, whereas react uses JSX exceptionally.
• Considering React vs Vue, React is a library; on the other hand, Vue is a framework.
• Talking about Vue vs React, React has component architecture, DOM manipulation, and component state management. In comparison, Vue has a plethora of tools and libraries and many third-party tools.
• Comparing React vs Vue, React requires a thorough understanding of JavaScript, while Vue requires a basic knowledge of coding.

However, there are a lot of other factors to consider if you want to burst through the fuzzy cloud of this technology showdown. Stay with us to know more!

A Little Background Check on React vs Vue

React came to the forefront in 2011 when a Facebook software engineer named Jordan Walke created this library. This open-source UI tool powers most of the products and services of the tech giant.

When React came out in the JavaScript development world, it was a bit of change compared to the existing frameworks of that time like Angular 1, Backbone.js, or jQuery. Most importantly, React gave a mass-market appeal to Virtual DOM (we will talk about it soon) and introduced a new syntax called JavaScript XML (JSX) to help developers write HTML in JavaScript.

Currently, a total of 10,630,448 live websites are running on ReactJS. The most popular ones are Cloudflare, Adroll, Airbnb, Asana, Dropbox, BBC, Facebook, Flipboard, Mattermark, etc.

On the other hand, Vue came into existence through the hands of an ex-Google developer named Evan You. His goal was to build a framework that combined the best of Angular, Ember, and React for enhanced coding and additional features.

Vue aims to address the same issues as React but in a different way. It uses a template system with regular HTML, which you can easily integrate into existing code. Instead of a large corporation, Vue has a robust community of developers who are constantly maintaining and improving this framework to push it forward.

As of now, 1,936,822 live websites are using VueJS.

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Why React and Vue are Climbing the Charts

According to the Jet Brains DevEcosystem 2021 Survey, React and Vue are the top two JavaScript frameworks developers regularly use.

And behind the popularity of these platforms in the development landscape, there are quite a few similarities between Vue JS vs React in spite of having some differences in their stories.

Let's go over what these two have in common and what makes them the top choices for creating dynamic front-end development experiences.

• Virtual DOM (Document Object Model)

Unlike regular DOM, both Vue and React use virtual DOM that updates only the changed components instead of the entire page. This leads to the saving of resources and time that heavy DOM usage would otherwise consume.

• Component-Based Architecture

Between React JS vs Vue JS, both have a component-based architecture to facilitate the optimization of their modularity. This allows developers to refactor and reuse code, leading to an accelerated development process and improved productivity of developers.

• Build Tools

To get your app up and running quickly within the IDE (Integrated Development Environment), both Vue and React offer Bootstrap build tools and project templates as per the latest web development trends. While Vue offers vue-cli, React has create-react-app.

• Chrome Devtools

Whether you are using React or Vue, both support out-of-the-box Chrom extensions to help developers debug. You will be able to inspect your app and review the React and Vue versions of the markup. Chrome devtools also let you see real-time updates and application state data.

• Official Component Library

A component library is available in both Vue and React for developing mobile apps. In Vue, it's vue-native-core, and in React, it's react-native. However, the former is a wrapper around the latter's APIs, enabling you to create a Vue app with a native look and feel.

React vs Vue: An In-Depth Comparison

To help you understand the difference between Reactjs vs Vuejs, the best approach is to compare them on certain parameters – which platform is easier to learn? Which has better performance? Which comes with decent scalability?

We will answer all of these questions below with unbiased details.

1. Performance in React vs Vue

Performance is not a great concern in this comparison as Vue and React have a similar-sized architecture using virtual DOM. Vue currently takes about 80 kb, whereas React is around 100 kb. Hence, the Vue-based TezJS framework leverages the same approach as VueJS and stands up to its expectations.

For example, as you can go through our discussion on Angular vs React vs Vue, the former tool wights almost 500 kb and lags in performance as it uses a regular DOM.

Nevertheless, Vue and React carry out the same manipulations within almost the same timeframe (just a few milliseconds of difference).

2. Market Position in React vs Vue

It's totally normal for you to know whether other companies are using the same technology as you're planning to and how. And you cannot comprehend it in a better way than knowing what other websites and successful companies are using these frameworks.

Some of the organizations that decided to use Vue are Xiaomi, Nintendo, Grammarly, Facebook, Trivago, and GitLab. When it comes to React, the list includes Atlassian, Netflix, Dropbox, New York Times, Skype, Airbnb, etc.

3. Flexibility in React vs Vue

React gives you the freedom to install any components of your choice, while Vue suggests particular components to create application features.

Hence, between React vs VueJS, experienced developers usually enjoy the flexibility of React, whereas newbie developers might have a preference for Vue's approachability. Although both have a component-based structure, using React.js for front-end development gets an edge over using Vue.

React also has a bigger community of developers than Vue, which results in an extensive list of components as well as solutions for development needs.

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4. Scalability in React vs Vue

The biggest difference between Vue and React.js is their approach to HTML:

• React is more scalable as it allows developers to write template code in JavaScript
• Vue comes with less scalability as it uses regular-old HTML for templating

The different approaches of these platforms to implementing HTML in the code influence their learning curves as well. Between Vue JS vs React, Vue enables developers to freely use CSS and HTML in standard forms and hence, is more comprehensible for beginners.

Contrastingly, React uses a syntax extension (JSX) that allows you to integrate HTML with JavaScript code. Although the process might seem difficult at first look, the code performs better for its conciseness, leading to scalable app performance.

5. Mobile Development in React vs Vue

React allows developers to seamlessly build Android and iOS native apps with React Native App Development, while Vue has paired with NativeScript to create cross-platform apps. Furthermore, you can read the NativeScript vs React Native in-depth comparison in our previous blog.

Facebook released React Native with a strict focus on mobile app development. Developers often consider it as one of the best cross-platform frameworks as you can share up to 90% of the code for multiple operating systems.

On the contrary, Vue can hardly be a good alternative to React Native. Although it supports some mobile app frameworks like Weex or Native script, it’s not as recognized as Facebook’s creation is.

Moreover, we have also covered a detailed comparison between React vs React Native. Hence, you can have a clear idea about these emerging technologies.

6. Community and Popularity in React vs Vue

When it comes to interest and satisfaction between React vs Vue, React marginally beats its competitor. On GitHub, it has more than 189k stars, and there are over 331,000 #reactjs questions on StackOverflow. React also has a larger community of developers compared to Vue, but it's kind of fragmentary as well. This leads to a huge volume of questions and underlying confusion.

Vue development, on the flip side, is a progressively growing best front-end framework that also has a promising future. Evan You and his team manage this framework, making it a lot easier and welcoming to learn and use. Vue has over 196k stars on GitHub and more than 74,000 questions on StackOverflow.

Here is the number of npm packages downloads of React and Vue:

(Source : Npmtrends)

7. Application Size in React vs Vue

Between React vs Vue JS, the size of simple React apps is comparatively bigger (1-2 Mb), while Vue apps usually come in smaller sizes (50-100 kb).

Although React is a library and not a full-scale framework, it does not make smaller apps. However, the React team has been working on this issue and successfully reduced the app size by 30% in the latest version.

On the contrary, the size of Vue apps is extremely small as the framework itself is very lightweight. Developers can break the code into smaller parts with lazy loading components and optimize the load time.

What Should You Choose Between Vue JS vs React?

Vue or React or all other JavaScript frameworks are really cool if we take a look at their own use cases. If you want to pick a clear winner in this case, the best solution is to identify your use case and outline it within the nuances of these platforms.

Go for Vue if you:

• Need to work on a smaller project that you want to learn and complete fast
• Plan to create progressive web apps and single-page apps.
• Want to scale up the functionalities of the current app

Go for React if you:

• Want to facilitate your project with thousands of tools and libraries
• Have to build a large app with higher complexity and shorter time to market
• Need to create an app with beautiful components and high responsiveness

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Bottom Line Choosing the best frontend framework for your development project is pretty challenging as it depends on a myriad of factors – your project needs, features of the framework, developers' availability, etc. This makes us believe that every business leader should focus on which framework fits and adjusts to your project requirements rather than diving into a pool of online resources and meddling in their minds.Additionally, there are other variables to consider as well, such as project complexity and size, that can have a great impact on your final selection. Both React vs Vue have their own benefits and drawbacks, and the expertise of your developers will play a crucial role here as well.So, if this article still cannot help you pick a framework, Radixweb got you covered. Reach out to our seasoned front-end development experts to help you build a quality product and fulfill your requirements. Let's talk!