The framework you choose can either make or break your project. The highly contested topic of whether to go for React or Angular is usually faced by developers in the making of modern web applications. Each comes with its own set of features and advantages. While React offers more flexibility and performance, Angular is a big shot – a complete framework with varied abilities. Nevertheless, choosing the right one for your project might not be easy.
This article discusses the key considerations concerning how to best judge which one, React or Angular, would work best for your project.
Understanding React
React is a popular open-source JavaScript library developed by Facebook. It uses server-side rendering to offer a flexible and performance-driven solution for building user interfaces, specifically single-page applications. The core features of the library are the component-based architecture, virtual DOM, JSX (JavaScript Syntax Extension), and one-way data. It gained popularity among developers owing to its ability to update particular parts of an application without requiring a full reload, as well as creating seamless UX and complex UI.
React has demonstrated efficiency in huge, high-traffic applications, like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Shopify, Airbnb, and Netflix. Actually, when talking about Reacts popularity among developers, it’s worth noting that, according to Statista, React took the second place with 39.5% in the list of most used web frameworks worldwide.
What is Angular?
Angular is an open-source front-end framework developed by Google. Providing a full set of tools and features, it enables the development of dynamic, single-page applications. Released in 2016, it adopted modern JavaScript standards—including a component-based architecture and TypeScript—to boost performance and maintainability. What really makes it stand out is its all-in-one approach, offering developers a complete ecosystem for building, testing, and debugging applications.
Thanks to its reliability and proven performance, Angular is widely favored by enterprise teams, among which there are Google, Samsung, PayPal, Forbes, and Upwork. However, as Statista survey shows, compared to React, it’s not as widely used. Among the most used web frameworks, Angular holds the sixth spot with 17.7%.
React and Angular comparison
React and Angular show significant differences in their architecture and performance. Let’s delve into them.
Type
React is a JavaScript library. It lets you put components together, but it doesn’t prescribe how to do routing and data fetching. It’s used with other libraries to render to certain environments.
Angular is a complete front-end framework to develop scalable web applications. Great collection of well-integrated libraries covering a variety of features in routing, forms management, client-server communication, and much more.
Written in
The foundation of React is JSX (JavaScript XML), which enables the creation of code that appears to be HTML on the outside but is actually JavaScript on the inside. This approach makes component development simple and convenient.
Angular is built using TypeScript. It allows us to provide improved code autocompletion and refactoring tools and easily detect errors and significantly increase developers’ productivity.
Architecture
React has a component-based architecture. It is flexible, and ideal for building reusable UI components.
Angular implements a structured MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture to ensure a clear separation of concerns.
Data Binding
React employs one-way (unidirectional) data binding, requiring additional libraries for state management, so data changes are predictable and easier to debug.
To the contrast, Angular implements two-way (bidirectional) data binding, which automatically synchronizes the model with the view and hence makes the development process easier.
DOM
A feature of React is its virtual DOM (Document Object Model). Due to that, React is faster, as when developers make changes to the UI, it checks the differences between the real and virtual DOM and updates only the necessary parts of the real DOM.
And, Angular uses real DOM, which might be time-consuming, but, at the same time, it tries to optimize performance by efficiently handling changes and limiting unnecessary updates.
Language
React uses JavaScript (often with ES6+ features) and JSX, which is a syntax extension allowing HTML-like code in JavaScript files. You can extend it to use TypeScript as needed. While Angular primarily uses TypeScript, which is a superset of JavaScript.
Learning curve
React offers a smoother entry point for new developers. Whereas, Angular has a steeper learning curve, particularly for newcomers to web development.
- Feature
- React
- Angular
- Type
- JavaScript library
- Full front-end framework
- Created by
- Written in
- JavaScript
- TypeScript
- Architecture
- Component-based architecture
- Structured MVC (Model-View-Controller)
- Data Binding
- One-way data binding
- Two-way data binding
- DOM
- Virtual DOM
- Real DOM
- Performance
- Generally faster due to virtual DOM
- Can be slower than React but offers optimizations like lazy loading
- Learning curve
- Quite easy
- Steep
- Popular apps
- Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Shopify, Airbnb, Netflix
- Google, Samsung, PayPal, Forbes, Upwork
- Use cases
- Perfect for dynamic UIs, SPAs, and projects requiring flexibility and rapid development.
- Suitable for large-scale enterprise applications, complex SPAs, and projects requiring a structured approach.
Which framework to choose?
The choice between React and Angular is largely dependent on the requirements of the project. React is a library that promotes versatility and specializes in user interface (UI) design. It suits speedy and dynamic single-page applications (SPAs) well. Meanwhile, Angular is a perfect fit for large-scale and enterprise-level projects that are complicated enough to require embedded features such as dependency injection, routing, and state management. It is a complete framework covering all aspects.
Conclusion
The discussion on whether to use React or Angular is still ongoing in the web development world. When compared on grounds like selecting the right framework for your web development project, both have some distinct advantages. React proves its worth when we talk about flexibility and simplicity, especially for Single-page applications (SPAs). Alternatively, Angular is much more considered and comprehensive when developing large-scale enterprise applications. The selection between the two is completely dependent on the project you are working on, along with consideration of your team or personal experience and the type of application you’re building.
