In this rapidly changing digital world, tech professionals frequently wonder whether to utilize Vue or React for their next web development project. Well, given the amazing features of these frameworks, it can be challenging to choose among the several options available.
VueJS and ReactJS are two of the best JavaScript frameworks for building web applications. The amount that these JS frameworks have evolved makes it challenging to keep up with all of the latest trends and technologies.
Talking about Vue or React, both frontend frameworks are easy to understand, provide excellent performance, have a large community to support your development efforts, and offer a fantastic development experience. So, picking one based on your needs can be a bit tricky!
In this article, we’ll compare Vue and React side by side to help you choose which one is better for you.
What is React JS?
React is a JavaScript package that is free to use and open source and can be used to build simple user interfaces for web applications. Faster development times are made possible by React’s ability to build reusable custom components. Furthermore, by making it more search engine friendly, its ability to load web pages becomes smoother. It’s a fantastic library that supports the development of both primary and complex enterprise applications.
Key Features of React
- Enables the use of libraries from third parties
- Time-saving simplicity and composable
- Facebook offers complete support
- Enhanced user experience
- One-directional data binding for faster development and code stability
Advantages of React
- Incredibly Fast: React virtual DOM approach results in lightweight and quick page renders. It reduces the amount of change that occurs within the DOM tree. The app’s navbar, for example, does not redraw whenever a modal is changed.
- Code with No Restrictions: React-neutral approach to codebase organization makes it flexible and convenient for developers to create complicated websites with specialized demands.
- Huge Community: Thousands of tools and extra libraries are available to ReactJS developers, which can be easily integrated into React websites. There are numerous alternatives available for standard user interface components, including file pickers, time pickers, markdown editors, and sliders. Prebuilt React components are typically included with third-party libraries in addition to their official JavaScript vanilla libraries.
- Simplified Debugging: Developers need to troubleshoot improperly configured states or views using React, as it is declarative and doesn’t require incremental renders.
- Components on the Server Side: Although both React and Vue support server-side rendering, only React permits server-side logic to occur within components—a clever design pattern that enables you to include the output of backend-only logic into your front end.
Disadvantages of React
- Learning Curve: React often has a lower learning curve than more prescriptive frameworks like Angular, which is one of its advantages. But other people believe that learning React requires a bit more work than learning Vue, especially since Vue can be incorporated straight into an HTML project that already exists. However, if the developer intends to utilize Vue extensively, there is a smaller learning curve between the two for a product that is being developed from scratch.
- More Limited Alteration of the Data: This is an argument in favor of React, according to its supporters, but other developers may find it uncomfortable with React directional data paradigm, particularly if they are switching from two-way data binding frameworks like Angular.
Why Should You Use React?
React is an excellent option because of its large community and virtual DOM for quick updates. Because of its component-based architecture, which enables modular and reuse code, it is perfect for developing intricate applications. Using JSX, React offers flexibility that makes it appropriate for online and mobile development. It also has the support of Facebook and Instagram, which guarantees ongoing growth and a wealth of resources, such as tools and libraries.
Who Uses React?
Some top companies that use React are as follows:
- Netflix
- Yahoo
- New York Times
- Discord
- Dropbox
- UberEATS
- Atlassian
What Is Vue JS?
Vue is a lightweight, adaptable JavaScript framework that provides robust web tools for creating modern, frontend web applications. Because it permits modifications to an application’s code without compromising any essential functionality, Vue is also recognized as a flexible and evolving JavaScript framework that makes it possible to design progressive user interfaces. Vue offers excellent flexibility, due to which the functionality of the web application can also be expanded with custom modules and graphic elements.
Key Features of Vue
- Optimizes DOM updates for speed.
- Keeps data and UI in sync effortlessly.
- Enables modular, reusable code.
- Auto-updates based on data changes.
- Adds smooth animations.
- Monitors data changes, ideal for async actions.
Advantages of Vue
- Simple Learning Curve: Vue’s ability to add interactivity to stock HTML makes it a very user-friendly tool for developers who are new to working with JavaScript libraries.
- Bidirectional Data Binding: Two-way data binding is appealing to some developers who value ease of use and adaptability over strict structure, despite its drawbacks for others (Vue also allows for one-way data binding).
- Incorporations: Because of its open-source nature, Vue may be easily coupled with other JavaScript libraries, such as React and Angular. Because of this, Vue is excellent for output that might be isolated from the more extensive logic of the application.
- Vite: The creator of Vue created Vite, a much-liked tooling framework that is incredibly quick and works well with Vue. Although Vite may be used with other libraries, such as React, its support for HMR (hot module replacement) makes it a favorite among developers. Modules can be added and withdrawn from HMR without having to restart the program.
Disadvantages of Vue
- Open-Source: Although some may view this as a benefit, Vue projects might have wildly different aesthetics due to its open-source architecture, which can make beginner developers more difficult as Vue projects expand. However, the Vue documents do provide a few best practices that can help with this.
- Responsive Intricacy: Each component has a watcher that automatically updates itself with new data. Nevertheless, this is limited to the particular data that the user has modified. Developers may become confused by this as to when data mutations are reactive and when they are not.
- Reduced Availability of Plugins: Vue has a smaller developer community than older frameworks like Angular and large libraries like React. As a result, few plugins and external libraries are providing smaller specialized functionalities in Vue.
Why Should You Use Vue JS?
Vue’s simplicity and ease of integration into already-existing projects make it highly valued. Because of its gentle learning curve, developers of various skill levels can use it. The component-based architecture, integrated state management, and two-way data binding of Vue make application development easier.
Because of its strong performance emphasis and ability to handle complex UI and animations, it’s an excellent option for modest to mid-sized applications when quick development is essential.
In addition, Vue has a thriving community and a variety of official and third-party libraries to expand its functionality.
Who Uses Vue JS?
Some top companies that use Vue are as follows:
- Gitlab
- Grammarly
- Behance
- Nintendo
- Laravel Spark
- Adobe Portfolio
- 9gag
- Font Awesome
Vue vs. React – An In-depth Comparison
Now that you are familiar with the capabilities of these two JavaScript frameworks, it’s time to compare React vs. Vue simultaneously.
Popularity and Community Support – React JS and Vue JS
If we talk about Vue vs React popularity, then according to information on Stack Overflow, there are around 468,482 questions in the #reactJS category. For developers of React.JS, there are also over 50,000 npm packages accessible. At the same time, there are over 14,000 npm packages available for Vue JS developers and about 105,891 questions on Stack Overflow in the #vue.JS category.
The community for ReactJS is substantially larger than that for Vue JS. In reality, React has the best community, support, and knowledge base of any JavaScript toolkit.
Performance and Speed – Vue vs React
You must use JS-framework-benchmark to compare React.Js and Vue.Js in order to check the performance. For instance, React JS uses 187.6 ± 4.3 ms, and Vue JS uses 169.2 ± 3.6 ms to create 1000 rows once the page has loaded. With five warm-up iterations, React JS takes 19.6 ± 4.7 ms to swap two rows on a 1K table, whereas Vue JS takes 21.8 ± 4.5 ms.
React offers excellent performance. Although in some functions, the differences between Vue and React are relatively similar in terms of performance due to slow or speedy development tools.
Learning Curve: Vue vs React
When we compare the learning curves of Vue and React, we can clearly see how they differ from one another. Learning JavaScript libraries like React or Angular can take time and effort. Regretfully, not all technologies navigate the process with equal ease.
It takes only a few hours to less than a week to master Vue, which is the most straightforward JavaScript framework. It is necessary to have programming knowledge of JavaScript and ES6. The documentation for Vue is clear and concise. Those with prior JavaScript skills can also quickly learn React, which facilitates team building. More complicated features, however, could be challenging for inexperienced developers to implement. Only versions subsequent to 16.0 are up to date.
Flexibility and Extensibility: Vue vs React
The most fundamental toolkit for developing an application is used by the dynamic framework Vue JS. It has the following stated functionalities:
- Vue Router for managing URLs in apps
- For state management, use VueX
- When rendering on the server, use the Vue JS Server-Side Renderer.
On the other hand, React JS doesn’t include any state management features. Redux is required to be used as a state management tool. As a React JS partner, MobX is also very well-liked. Another unofficial package that belongs to a third party is the React router. For both small and large apps, Vue is easier to use than React JS.
Development Speed: Vue vs React
The development speed in Vue vs React is based on several factors, including the complexity of the project, team experience, and specific requirements. Here’s a general comparison of development speed for both frameworks:
React:
- React is renowned for its lightning-fast development—particularly for projects of small to medium size.
- Due to its reasonably easy learning curve, even beginners can quickly begin working on projects with it.
- A large ecosystem of Web Development frameworks and components, such as React Native for mobile development, accelerates development.
- Because of React virtual DOM, development can proceed more quickly, and performance can be improved.
Vue:
- Vue is well known for its rapid development and low learning curve, making it appropriate for both novice and seasoned developers.
- Rapid prototyping is made possible by its adaptable and component-based architecture, which streamlines the development process.
- Vue Router and VueX for state management are part of the Vue ecosystem, which speeds up the building of complicated applications.
- The single-file components of Vue combine HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to simplify development.
Pros and Cons
Now, after comparing all the other capabilities, it’s time to compare both the pros and cons of Vue and React.
Vue JS
| Pros | Cons |
| Adaptability | A lower number of plugins and components |
| Outstanding performance in a small size | Some plugins for coding don’t use English. |
| Comprehensive Documentation | Limited features |
| Simple Integration | (Over-)flexibility |
| Easy to Develop | – |
| Lightweight | – |
React JS
| Pros | Cons |
| Cost-effectiveness | Incompleteness |
| Great UX | Lack of proper documentation |
| Popularity | The high pace of development |
| Performance | – |
| SEO-friendliness | – |
| Shortened time to market | – |
Vue vs React: Which One Should You Use?
If we look at the usage scenarios, choosing Vue or React is comparatively easy. Both JavaScript frameworks are pretty awesome. The best course of action in this situation is to identify your use case and describe it in terms of the specifics of these platforms if you want to select a clear winner. Determining your use and details within the specific frontend platforms is the best course of action if you want to select a clear winner in this situation.
Choose Vue if:
- If you want to work on a small project, Vue is easier to understand.
- Make single-page and progressive web app architecture as part of your plan.
- Desire to expand the capabilities of the current application.
Choose React if:
- You want to use thousands of tools and libraries to make your project easier.
- Need to create a large, sophisticated app with a quicker time to market.
- You can create an app with beautiful components and high responsiveness.
In A Nutshell!
Knowledge and personal preferences are the most crucial factors when it comes to choosing between Vue and React for your project.
Whatever path you pick, keep in mind that both React and Vue experts are currently in high demand. These frameworks will continue to remain essential options for developers as long as single-page apps are prevalent. However, if you require help with web or app creation, talk to our professionals right away!
