Which is bet­ter for mobile app devel­op­ment, React or Angular?

As far as front-end devel­op­ment frame­works go, both Angu­lar and React have proved to be very versatile. 

How­ever, it can some­times take time to decide which one is the best to util­ize when devel­op­ing mobile apps. 

For your con­veni­ence, this blog post com­pares Angu­lar with ReactJS so that you can choose the prop­er frame­work for your project.

React Nat­ive: Intro­duc­tion and its features

The React Nat­ive frame­work is ver­sat­ile, allow­ing it to be used equally well for devel­op­ing React Nat­ive mobile apps and web apps. As an open-source com­munity for developers, the frame­work has offered a JavaS­cript lib­rary for user inter­face devel­op­ment since 2013. In addi­tion, with the hybrid JavaS­cript frame­work, React Nat­ive can render iOS and Android mobile applic­a­tions independently. 

Addi­tion­ally, developers favor it for its sim­pli­city and for the fact that it helps them deliv­er optim­al app per­form­ance. A fur­ther advant­age of React Nat­ive is its ease of learn­ing. There­fore, React Nat­ive app devel­op­ment is sim­pli­fied with cod­ing and launch­ing. Below are some of the key fea­tures of React Nat­ive soft­ware. Have a look!

React Native’s Key Features

In React Nat­ive, there are a few key fea­tures that make it stand out. Here are some of them:

• First, this frame­work is highly secure and pre­vents XSS attacks.
• It is easy for even novice developers to learn React Native.
• Developers can use vari­ous com­pon­ents and add vari­ous func­tion­al­ity imme­di­ately from the start.
• React Nat­ive app devel­op­ment struc­ture accel­er­ates app devel­op­ment without com­prom­ising performance.

Till now, we have seen React Nat­ive and its fea­tures. Now let’s under­stand what Angu­lar is.

Angu­lar: Intro­duc­tion and its features

Angu­lar is a JavaS­cript frame­work, just like React Nat­ive. Googleʼs Angu­lar team dir­ectly sup­ports and man­ages this TypeScript-based frame­work for mobile app devel­op­ment. Due to its open-source nature and back­ing by a glob­al tech giant, the frame­work has a sub­stan­tial developer community.

As a mobile app devel­op­ment frame­work, Angu­lar is highly com­pat­ible with vari­ous code edit­ors. Thus, Angu­lar developers can devel­op more dynam­ic and dazzling mobile applic­a­tions through this struc­ture since HTML is the basis of the tem­plate lan­guages. Because of this, it is rel­at­ively easi­er to cre­ate more com­plic­ated mobile apps using Angu­lar. Let’s explore some of Angu­larʼs key features. 

Angu­larʼs Key Features

Addi­tion­ally, Angu­lar has oth­er super­i­or fea­tures that set it apart from oth­er JS frame­works. Learn more about mobile app devel­op­ment frameworks.

• The frame­work provides bet­ter error hand­ling to assist coders dur­ing app development.
• Because it uses the Angu­lar CLI, developers can per­form updates seamlessly.
• With Angu­lar, you get power­ful AJAX, HTML, and oth­er built-in support.
• User Inter­faces and Busi­ness Logic Func­tions are organ­ized to avoid overlapping.

Now letʼs under­stand the Mar­ket pop­ular­ity of both Angu­lar vs React. 

Pop­ular­ity Growth: Angu­lar vs. React

To meas­ure pop­ular­ity, we will look at the num­ber of stars they receive on their Git­Hub repos­it­or­ies. Accord­ing to Git­Hub, React had 175k stars, and Angu­lar had 76.6k stars.

Source: Angu­lar Framework

The Angu­lar frame­work is a full-fea­tured frame­work that can cre­ate mobile and desktop apps, while React is a JS lib­rary that can cre­ate com­plex inter­act­ive UIs. In addi­tion, due to its more straight­for­ward struc­ture and small pack­age size, React has a short­er learn­ing curve than Angular. 

There­fore, React is a go-to option for mobile app devel­op­ment teams requir­ing a slight learn­ing curve. In con­trast, Angu­lar is an excel­lent choice for enter­prise-grade apps that require extens­ive devel­op­ment, since steep­er learn­ing curves wonʼt pre­vent these teams from using it.

Source: React

The pop­ular­ity of React is increas­ing — it is con­stantly evolving and remains in style. This frame­work has many easy ways to reuse UI com­pon­ents, mak­ing it easy to work with. Due to its vir­tu­al DOM, ren­der­ing optim­iz­a­tions, and ease of migra­tion, React is super­i­or to Angular. 

Because Angu­lar can handle mul­tiple things inde­pend­ently, it may appear chal­len­ging ini­tially. This frame­work, how­ever, provides the most extens­ive concept and is worth invest­ing your time in.

Check out the Google trends ana­lys­is below if you want to see some recent ana­lys­is. The graph shows the past 12 months’ search trends.

Source: Google Trends

Above-men­tioned inform­a­tion states that React Nat­ive app devel­op­ment cov­ers most of the Mobile app devel­op­ment mar­ket as com­pared to Angu­lar. Now letʼs see the dif­fer­ence between Angu­lar vs React.

Angu­lar vs. React.js: Tech Difference

Here are the essen­tial mobile app devel­op­ment areas and how the two frame­works compare.

#1. Per­form­ance & DOM

Angu­lar and React are both excel­lent front-end devel­op­ment frame­works. When it comes to build­ing large-scale applic­a­tions, they do equally well. How­ever, Angu­lar and React have one sig­ni­fic­ant difference.

As part of its imple­ment­a­tion, React uses DOM (Doc­u­ment Object Mod­el — which can help you access and modi­fy doc­u­ment con­tents, lay­outs, and even struc­ture). In con­trast, Angu­lar 2 uses real DOM.

Con­sider updat­ing a user pro­file detail, such as the last name. Instead of updat­ing just one bit of inform­a­tion, real DOM updates the entire tree struc­ture of HTML tables until the desired inform­a­tion gets reached. In our example, itʼs the user­ʼs last name. read about Why is React Nat­ive the future of mobile app devel­op­ment?

Vir­tu­al DOM allows us to update the HTML without rewrit­ing the entire doc­u­ment. Because of this, apps have much faster per­form­ance, regard­less of how large they are.

#2. Data Binding

Data bind­ing aims to syn­chron­ize data between busi­ness logic and the user inter­face. Com­pared with React, Angu­lar 2 util­izes both one and two-way data bind­ing: a change in data affects the view, and a change in view trig­gers a change in data.

On the oth­er hand, the React app uses one-way bind­ing: nes­ted child com­pon­ents are com­monly used with­in high­er-order par­ent com­pon­ents when devel­op­ing React Nat­ive mobile apps.

The one-way data bind­ing in React makes the code more stable and easi­er to debug, while the two-way data bind­ing in Angu­lar makes code devel­op­ment more flexible.

#3. Archi­tec­ture

React is a JavaS­cript lib­rary, where­as Angu­lar is a devel­op­ment frame­work. As a des­cend­ant of Angu­larJS, Angu­lar is a fully-fledged MVC frame­work, while React is more of a UX lib­rary. It is only the V com­pon­ent of MVC. M and C com­pon­ents require oth­er libraries.

In some developers’ opin­ion, it can be a pos­it­ive or a neg­at­ive factor. Due to Reactʼs min­im­al­ist approach, adding your own components/libraries is easi­er if you like things your own way. How­ever, if you use Angu­lar, you must adapt to pre-exist­ing libraries. 

An Angu­lar app makes sense if you need lib­rar­ies that are already avail­able in Angu­lar. If, how­ever, the lib­rar­ies you require are unavail­able in Angu­lar or React, you can­not use this cri­terion to make a decision.

The Angu­lar frame­work includes many com­pon­ents that a stand­ard applic­a­tion might need, such as rout­ing, AJAX requests, forms, and XSS pro­tec­tion. In con­trast, React has only a few built-in features. 

Also Read: Which Mobile App Devel­op­ment Frame­work Is Right For You?

#4. Speed

Since Angu­lar has more com­pon­ents than React, it takes longer to load, espe­cially on mobile devices. React has always been sleek, so it loads faster. As a res­ult, devel­op­ment is easi­er with Angu­larʼs CLI, which allows developers to cre­ate work­spaces and design func­tion­al applic­a­tions quickly. 

In Angu­lar, there are built-in pro­cess tools allow­ing developers to debug errors. Developers can also devel­op cus­tom com­pon­ents and ser­vices just by writ­ing a few lines of code.

Nev­er­the­less, React depends on the third-party lib­rary for devel­op­ment speed and pro­ductiv­ity. So, developers need to choose the appro­pri­ate tools and archi­tec­ture pat­terns for devel­op­ment. In addi­tion, each pro­ject requires a dif­fer­ent toolkit in React. 

Thus, updat­ing an exist­ing app requires more time and effort if the developer is new to the pro­ject. also read about Hybrid Mobile App Frame­work: The Future of App Development.

#5. Developer Com­munity and Support

One of the largest JS com­munit­ies in the world sup­ports and devel­ops React frame­work. Itʼs essen­tial to stay up to date with all the changes when work­ing with React. 

Even though the com­munity tries to keep up with all the latest doc­u­ment­a­tion as quickly as pos­sible, keep­ing up with all the changes takes work. In some cases, applic­a­tions might lack doc­u­ment­a­tion, but com­munity sup­port on them­at­ic for­ums usu­ally resolves the issue.

On the oth­er hand, Angu­lar is less pre­ferred than React, par­tially because Angu­lar 1.0 was unpop­u­lar. In addi­tion, developers dis­missed it as an overly time-con­sum­ing frame­work due to its com­plex­ity. How­ever, the fact that Google devel­ops Angu­lar lends cred­ib­il­ity to the framework.

As part of its long-term sup­port strategy, Google con­tinu­ously improves the frame­work. How­ever, the doc­u­ment­a­tion often falls behind due to the rap­id pace of updates. As a res­ult, React wins here with major com­munity support.

Also Read: Best React Nat­ive Font Fam­ily for Mobile App Development

#6. Com­plete Mobile App Devel­op­ment: App Structure

Regard­ing the entire mobile app devel­op­ment struc­ture, neither React Nat­ive nor Angu­lar is a clear win­ner. This is because Angu­lar and React both miss a few features. 

How­ever, as dis­cussed earli­er, Angu­lar is a set of built-in tools that become the best choice if an organ­iz­a­tion wants to devel­op an app with all the tools. 

How­ever, if a com­pany wishes to enhance the front end without con­tinu­ous reload­ing in the devel­op­ment pro­cess, React Nat­ive is the best choice. This is because the React frame­work breaks down UIs into components. 

It works like this: you cre­ate com­pon­ents that man­age their own state and con­nect them to more com­plex user inter­faces. Mul­tiple integ­ra­tions and sup­port­ing tools are neces­sary if you use React for your pro­ject architecture.

Some of them are

• Redux  (a state con­tain­er that speeds up Reactʼs work in large apps)
• Babel  (trans­lates JSX into JavaS­cript so that browsers can under­stand the app)
• Webpack  (a lib­rary for bund­ling modules)

In con­trast to React, Angu­lar is a full-fea­tured frame­work with many out-of-the-box fea­tures, such as

• RxJS  (imple­ments react­ive pro­gram­ming in JS)
• Angu­lar CLI  (a power­ful com­mand-line tool)
• Angu­lar Uni­ver­sal   (for serv­er-side rendering)

React, and Angu­lar both come with robust eco­sys­tems. Even though React is simple to learn, its full poten­tial depends on integ­rat­ing Redux and oth­er components.

So far, we have covered the dif­fer­ences between Angu­lar and React in detail. Now letʼs see the dif­fer­ence between these two para­met­er-wise with a com­par­is­on table.

Angu­lar vs. React – The Com­par­is­on Table

Top Reas­ons to Use Angular

The frame­work provides developers with an incred­ible com­bin­a­tion of tech­no­logy and prac­tic­al fea­tures. There­fore, Angu­lar is a no-brain­er for you if you fall into this cat­egory.  Weʼve now dis­cussed some of Angu­larʼs essen­tial fea­tures, so letʼs dis­cuss why Angu­lar is a great choice.

Angu­lar is the best frame­work for devel­op­ing mobile apps for the fol­low­ing reasons:

• The serv­er-side ren­der­ing speeds up, and the browser-side ren­der­ing is also supported.
• Since Angu­lar optim­izes its efforts and runs the com­pon­ents sim­ul­tan­eously, developers do not have to code much for sim­il­ar functions.
• Angu­lar makes it easi­er to cre­ate apps and add files.

Top Reas­ons to Use React Nat­ive: Why choose React over Angular?

As an open-source lib­rary and reusable UI com­pon­ent, React Developers prefer to React over any oth­er frame­work for mobile app devel­op­ment. In addi­tion, since Face­book sup­ports the frame­work, lead­ing organ­iz­a­tions use it for large mobile applic­a­tions since they do not have to reload entire pages. Here are some oth­er top reas­ons to use React Native:

• React Nat­ive sim­pli­fies con­vert­ing JSX to JavaS­cript for browser understanding
• The React Nat­ive frame­work requires developers to add extern­al entit­ies to access all functions.
• In React Nat­ive, URL routers such as web pack and React­Router are necessary.

ANGULAR VS REACT – THE USE CASES

Here are a few top web­sites that use REACT dur­ing development.

#1. Face­book – With over 1 bil­lion mobile users, Face­book has used the React frame­work since its inception.

#2. Tesla – ​‘Tesla Motors” offi­cial site uses React as a foundation.

#3. Drop­box – The pop­u­lar online file stor­age ser­vice Drop­box, which syn­chron­izes your data in the cloud seam­lessly, also uses React.

#4. Airb­nb – Airb­nb is anoth­er plat­form that uses React as its found­a­tion to con­nect ten­ants and land­lords globally.

#5. Net­flix – There are plenty of enter­tain­ment options on Net­flix, includ­ing web series, movies, and shows. Net­flixʼs seam­less ser­vices rely on the React framework.

Web­sites based on ANGULAR include 

#1. Google – It offers everything from search engines to soft­ware, hard­ware, cloud com­put­ing, and advert­ising tech­no­logy, formerly known as ​‘Back­Rub.’

#2. Adobe Fonts – Online ser­vice that offers high-qual­ity font sub­scrip­tions Angu­lar provides the found­a­tion for the website.

#3. For­bes – For­bes is one of the best magazine web­sites cov­er­ing vari­ous cat­egor­ies, blogs, and top­ics and using Angu­lar as a foundation.

#4. PayP­al – The Angu­lar frame­work makes PayP­alʼs online money trans­fers so fast and straight­for­ward. With Angu­lar, PayP­al can do this.

#5. Jet­Blue – Jet­Blueʼs web­site uses Angu­lar. As a res­ult, the design and book­ing options are seam­less, and you can explore des­tin­a­tions and road maps.

Com­pan­ies of all types and sizes prefer Angu­lar and React accord­ing to their product require­ment in the mar­ket today.

So letʼs now exam­ine which tech­no­logy is most suit­able for your requirement.

Angu­lar Vs. React: Which One To Choose And When?

Choos­ing the prop­er frame­work or lib­rary — such as React or Angu­lar — can be chal­len­ging because each has unique fea­tures. How­ever, since Angu­lar and React can solve the same prob­lem, choos­ing one is usu­ally a per­son­al pref­er­ence. To sum­mar­ize, here are some points to consider:

Choos­ing Angu­lar Framework

Angu­lar is the best plat­form for devel­op­ing dynam­ic apps in the fol­low­ing scenarios:

• You will be more pro­duct­ive if you use already-pre­pared software.
• A large-scale frame­work and rich fea­tures are essen­tial to you.
• If the devel­op­ment team has worked with Java, C#, and old ver­sions of Angular.
• Main­tain a low dif­fi­culty level for your app.

Choos­ing React framework

In the fol­low­ing scen­ario, React is the best plat­form for devel­op­ing a dynam­ic app:

• You want to cre­ate a multi-event application.
• The devel­op­ment team has expert­ise in CSS, HTML, and JavaScript.
• A cus­tom­ized approach is needed when devel­op­ing an application.
• A web applic­a­tion requires share­able components.

So the art­icle ends here, but not the com­par­is­on. Sev­er­al things are yet to be added to this art­icle. Till then, letʼs sum­mar­ize it.

The Future Scen­ario-Angu­lar vs. React

Based on Angu­lar vs. React ana­lys­is, and both plat­forms will remain in the game for quite some time. 

It is ideal for developers that both frame­works are being updated, improved, and changed at the right time. Before choos­ing a plat­form, wheth­er itʼs React Nat­ive app devel­op­ment or Angu­lar app devel­op­ment, it is cru­cial to identi­fy the object­ive and require­ments of the applic­a­tion. read more about ReactJS app devel­op­ment and its fea­tures.