React vs. React Native

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
React
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. React enables users to create interactive UIs. Design simple views for each state in an application, and React will update and render just the right components when data changes. React is available free and open source under the MIT license.N/A
React Native
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
React Native enables users to create native apps for Android and iOS using React. React Native combines native development with React, a JavaScript library for building user interfaces.N/A
Pricing
ReactReact Native
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ReactReact Native
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ReactReact Native
Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Best Alternatives
ReactReact Native
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

React
React
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies

No answers on this topic

React
React
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises

No answers on this topic

React
React
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
ReactReact Native
Likelihood to Recommend
7.2
(13 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
ReactReact Native
Likelihood to Recommend
Open Source
React is a JavaScript user interface construction library that works well for:
  • Developing web apps with dynamic and complicated user interfaces.
  • creating reusable UI elements that may be used in other applications.
  • creating single-page applications with dynamic content updates that don't require a page reload.
  • The Virtual DOM's effective updating mechanism allows it to handle large volumes of data updates.
React, on the other hand, might be less suitable for:
  • Websites that are simple, stagnant, and have no interaction. Other libraries or simple HTML, CSS, and JavaScript may be a better fit in such circumstances.
  • Web sockets may be a better choice for applications that need real-time updates, such as chat or gaming apps.
  • When creating mobile apps, React Native is a better option.
  • Server side rendering only, as React is designed to run on the client side.
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Open Source
We are implementing React Native framework for the development of the Front-End for the machine learning models maintenance and monitoring website. It provides meaningful error messages, and time-saving and robust tools make it a premium choice over other platforms. Moreover, it provides intelligent debugging tools and error report mechanisms. And most importantly for us, it provides the aesthetic minimal functionality to learn in order to implement it, thereby eliminating the need to work in Xcode or Android Studio for iOS or Android apps respectively.
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Pros
Open Source
  • React is fantastic for building performant user interfaces. Our web app is snappy and great for our customers.
  • React has the philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well which is the view layer of the application. This makes it incredibly intuitive and flexible for developers to use.
  • React has lead the way in being able to write modular and structured code. It is a drastic improvement since the days of spaghetti jQuery code.
  • React has an unmatched community. The amount of tools and libraries available is fantastic, and there plenty of solutions available online for common problems.
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Open Source
  • Customized Components
  • State Management
  • Extensibility
  • Usage and Community
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Cons
Open Source
  • Debugging React is challenging. Bugs in react code generate stack traces internal to React and it is often totally unclear how it relates to the code you actually wrote.
  • Relating your React elements to corresponding DOM elements is difficult. The intentional separation of virtual and actual DOM also makes it difficult to map the elements to the structures in the DOM. This is partially ameliorated by the use of the React dev tool, which provides a DOM-like view of the React elements, but the tool still does not provide a direct correspondence with the DOM that is often necessary to figure out why something isn't right.
  • Because JSX is React-specific and not a language feature, a special compilation process is necessary to convert JSX code to normal JS. Coming from a C++ background, compiling things doesn't bother me, but many JS developers are used to a less structured development.
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Open Source
  • Performance is still lower than native app development (Kotlin, Swift, etc.)
  • Not efficient design-wise (if you are planning to implement some advanced design, then you should reconsider the approach provided by React Native)
  • Issues with the update to the last release of React Native
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Usability
Open Source
React is just a bit of a different animal. I was avoiding it for the longest time. I thought for sure I would land on Vue or something else with a more approachable and familiar appearance. But after taking an online course in React, I started realize what people were raving about (and complaining about) and decided to implement it at our office for one of our products.
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Open Source
Since it's open-source and very popular, the community support for React and related tools and libraries is excellent. There are a lot of people using the same tools, and so issues tend to get fixed quickly and "recipes" are easy to come by. And since it's backed by Facebook, they have a dedicated engineering team working on the progression of React.
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Open Source
While this is a widely contested debate with various blog posts and benchmarks all over the place, its really a personal choice to determine what works for the team. Coming from a Angular 1.x background, I decided to try a new framework when Angular 2.x was announced and at that time React is gaining popularity and Vue hasn't taken off yet. Compared to Angular 1.x and Vue (hybrid of React and Angular) that split the logic from the html templates, I loved the way React breaks code into components using the jsx syntax. In my mind, this allows for cleaner components and easier maintenance
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Open Source
Decision for React Native came mainly from the big popularity of the framework. Thus, we had a big base of resources we could come back to. We also used it because it is a javascript framework. Thus, we could utilize the already existing experience in javascript and web development to ensure a smoother implementation of the app.
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Return on Investment
Open Source
  • Our web applications now run much faster because the whole page doesn't reload
  • We spend less time developing UI components because a lot of them are readily available on NPM
  • We don't have to optimize apps for multiple browsers since React natively supports it.
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Open Source
  • Decreased the development process time via robust and easy-to-use platform
  • Easier to debug with a provided intelligent tool as well as error-prone messages, which allows developing in a paced manner for the decreased Time-To-Market
  • Reusable code base can directly impact lead time and thereby on ROI in a positive manner
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ScreenShots