React.js and Vue.js are popular frontend technologies for building fast and highly interactive websites. Just like any technology, they have their pros and cons. If you are trying to figure out which one is the best fit for your next web project, this post is for you.
Before developing a business application or website, there are many important decisions to make concerning the budget, resources, time, and other aspects. One of the first items on the manager’s to-do list is also selecting an appropriate technology stack.
These days, software developers can use a multitude of libraries, frameworks, programming languages, and other tools to create applications of all kinds and levels of complexity. Some of those don’t pass the test of time and are soon forgotten. Others take off and remain super popular for many years.
Two such technologies are Vue.js and React.js, an efficient and robust JavaScript (JS) framework and library respectively, for creating user interfaces (for the difference between libraries and frameworks read here). They’re very similar in their purposes and approaches. So, deciding which one to pick for your next web project can be a challenging task.
We want to help you make the right choice without getting into too many technical details. Below, we’ve listed the key points to consider when facing the Vue vs React dilemma. Of course, it’s all case-specific, but these considerations can serve as a basis for your ultimate decision.
Vue.js is the smallest kid in the big family of JS frameworks. It was only in 2014 that Evan You, formerly of Google as a creative technologist with Angular and React, presented his brainchild. Since then, this “progressive” (as Evan You calls it) framework has been steadily gaining a following within the worldwide open-source community.
What makes Vue.js so attractive to web developers is its easy-to-understand and well-structured documentation. It was created by You himself jointly with Dan Abramov, one of the people behind React. The resulting guides and API description should make learning Vue a breeze for everyone who is well-versed in the main web technologies.
This Facebook-powered framework is a bit older. The open-source fans got access to it in 2013. The tech giant has created a team whose function is to build new React features, fix bugs, and make enhancements.
The documentation the team produces is very detailed and covers every aspect of using this JS library. That being said, it is somewhat lacking in structure and organization. This makes its learning curve a bit steeper than that of Vue.js.
A large and helpful React JS development community means that bugs in a framework will be fixed more promptly. Developers can also quickly find answers to their questions and solve problems more easily. This is an area where both Vue and React shine. With Facebook standing behind React’s back, though, this library enjoys more trust and greater popularity among many well-known companies.
Good documentation is important too. If it has a clear structure and understandable language, developers can quickly come to grips with new technology and join in project work within a shorter time. In this respect, Vue has a slight edge over React.
Several aspects determine the ultimate cost, including the development speed and license.
The development speed is almost identical since both technologies make use of supplementary libraries and packages that can significantly speed up the building process. For example, both React and Vue developers can take advantage of the Redux library for state management. So, basically, it boils down to the developer’s level of expertise. The lower it is, the more time it takes to complete a project. Just like with any other technology, for that matter.
You’ll have no licensing issues with the two technologies, either. Both are MIT-licensed. Thus, you can use Vue or React for building commercial applications.
So, the cost of Vue or React development is comparatively similar, with React projects, perhaps, being just slightly more expensive.
This framework is great when it comes to building web UIs and clearly loses to React when it comes to creating mobile applications. That said, Weex — a framework for making mobile apps — is one of the ways to bypass Vue’s mobile-unfriendliness.
Another method is to use Vue.js together with a cross-platform solution for native mobile development — NativeScript. However, as this diagram shows, NativeScript is far less popular than React Native — React’s framework for building mobile apps.
React Native enables developers to create applications for Android and iOS with just React and JS. This means that React programmers don’t have to master new technologies, fully leveraging what they already know and are able to do. The result? The speed and better performance of mobile apps.
If you’re planning to deploy your application across platforms, you should probably go the React route. At least, for the time being. Who knows? Perhaps, we will see “Vue Native” in the future. For now, though, Vue’s battleground is mainly limited to the regular webspace.
The technologies used to build a framework or library can significantly affect the development speed and the size of the learning curve. Here’s just a brief comparison of Vue and React in this respect.
This framework follows the traditional approach to web development, clearly separating the code in HTML, CSS, and JS, and using templates on top of regular HTML. Vue also has components with their own lifecycles and operates on the virtual DOM (Document Object Model). The virtual DOM is a copy of the actual DOM. Normally, every time something changes on a web page, the entire DOM is reloaded. The virtual DOM, by contrast, allows developers to update only the portion of the DOM that has been modified, improving the website’s performance.
Facebook has opted to travel a different road. In React, HTML is written inside JS code. This is known as JSX (JavaScript Expressions). Everything in React is treated as a component, just like in Vue, with their lifecycles and functions to manipulate the components. However, these lifecycles are less simple than those used in Vue. React takes advantage of the Virtual DOM approach too.
React is a bit harder to master than Vue for the average web developer who has only worked with the principal web technologies before and is unfamiliar with the JSX syntax. The greater simplicity of Vue contributes to an increase in the number of Vue developers that you can hire for your project, although the number of React developers is currently larger. Whichever of these two technologies you select for your project, though, GetDevDone always provides enough high-quality resources for React and Vue development alike.
Vue is the best choice for simple applications that need to be created fast since templates are easy to master.
Although Vue.js is not the smallest JS framework, it’s still rather slim — just 18-21KB at the time of writing. React.js, on the other hand, weighs around 60KB at the time of writing. It means that users can download Vue in no time and that, on average, it performs faster than the majority of its competitors, including React.
React is more popular than Vue both among developers and among companies. Why’s that? There are several reasons. One of the most cited is Facebook’s backing. That adds credibility and trust to the library. A survey from last year showed that over 64% of developers used React and would use it again, while only about 29% preferred Vue. The same statistics, though, showed that Vue was more popular than other JS frameworks like Angular.
It means that React developers are readily available, although, as we said above, the simplicity of Vue contributes to the growth in the number of programmers who make this framework their specialty. Again, by working with GetDevDone, you can always count on a sufficient number of both React and Vue developers regardless of your project’s complexity or specifics.
Business owners don’t have to worry that either of the technologies will soon vanish forever. Both Vue and React are being actively developed. For example, the latest version of React.js at the moment of writing this post — 16.12.0 — was released on November 14, 2019.
Also, there shouldn’t be any concerns that one version of the framework or library will be radically different from the other, rendering the previous code useless. For instance, the Vue team retained as much as 90% of the first version’s API in the second version. The React team is careful about their updates too since, as we mentioned earlier, the library is used by some big market players such as Adobe and eBay.
As you can see, React.js and Vue.js are very similar in many aspects. Still, based on their characteristics, we can give some general recommendations on when one is more suitable than the other, or when both are good.
No matter which of these two tools you finally choose, you can get in touch with GetDevDone for both Vue and React development. We’ve been front-end experts since 2005. GetDevDone builds Vue and React web applications, PWAs, and mobile apps based on React Native.
We’re always ready to help you both with React and Vue development. Our skilled software professionals have wide experience working on the most complex projects. You’ll also have a dedicated PM assigned to your project, and we can arrange any workflow to meet all of your needs.
Just share your ideas with us and get back a feature-rich, interactive React or Vue website!
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