What to choose ReactJS vs ANGULAR vs Vue.js?

There are many technologies to develop web applications, but which one is more interesting for the project you want to implement. In this article, we will see the advantages and disadvantages of each frontend framework (Angular, ReactJS, VueJS )to help professionals or engineers choose the best one for their development needs.

Market trend

First, let’s look at the graph in Google Trends over the last 5 years.

In terms of research, Angular and ReactJS crush Vuejs. Searches for Angular have remained rather stable over the last 5 years, although we can see a relative increase since 2016. Vuejs is extremely under-searched compared to the other 2 frameworks, but according to Google Trends, in 5 years, the demand for Vuejs has more than doubled. ReactJS is the most requested framework, since 2016, its search has been increasing, in 2021, the difference in search between ReactJS and Angular is 26%.

Frameworks Version

JavaScript frameworks are developing at an extremely fast pace, which means that today we have frequently updated versions of Angular, ReactJS and Vue.js. Here are the latest releases for each framework:

Advantages and disadvantages

ReactJS

ReactJS is a JavaScript library, opened by Facebook in 2013, which is used for building huge web applications where data is changeable on a regular basis.

Advantages

• Easy to learn, due to its simplicity in terms of syntax
• High level of flexibility and responsiveness
• Virtual DOM (document object model)
• Combined with ES6/7, ReactJS can work with high load in an easy way.
• 100% open source JavaScript library (receives many updates and improvements daily)
• Migration between versions is generally very easy, with “codemods”, provided by Google, to automate a large part of the process

Disadvantages

• Insufficient official documentation – ReactJS’ ultra-fast development leaves no room for proper documentation
• ReactJS is unopinionated, which means that developers sometimes have too many choices.
• Long to master, ReactJS requires a deep knowledge of how to integrate the user interface into the MVC framework.

Angular

Angular is a Component-oriented JavaScript framework, whose initial version (2.0) was released in September 2016, which is widely used for building highly interactive web applications.

Advantages

• New and improved features such as RXJS, faster compilation (less than 3 seconds)
• Detailed documentation
• Bi-directional data binding that minimizes possible errors
• MVVM (Model-View-Model) that allows developers to work separately on the same section of the application using the same data set
• Dependency injection of component-related functionality with modules and modularity in general
• Although this framework can be difficult to learn. It has a large community that provides enough training and discussion to get started with AngularJS without getting stuck.

Disadvantages

• Migration problems that can occur when moving from older to newer versions
• Dynamic applications have not always performed well. Complex single-page applications could lag behind and be inconvenient to use because of their size.

Vue.js

Vue.js is a JavaScript framework, launched in 2013, that is ideally suited for creating highly adaptable user interfaces and complex single-page applications.

Advantages

• Optimized HTML. Vue.js has many similar features with Angular and it can help to optimize the management of HTML blocks with a use of different components.
• Detailed documentation
• Adaptability. It provides a quick transition period from another framework to Vue.js, due to the similarity with Angular and ReactJS in terms of design and architecture.
• Impressive integration
• Large scale. Vue.js can help develop very large, reusable templates that can be built without extra time
• Small size. Vue.js can weigh around 30KB while keeping its speed and flexibility which allows to achieve much better performance compared to other frameworks.
• No additional knowledge required: HTML and JavaScript will do the job.

Disadvantages

• Limited resources
• There may be integration problems in huge projects
• Chinese backgrounds. Since Vue.js has a bit of Chinese history, many elements and descriptions are still in Chinese, however, more and more materials are being translated into English.
• Since Vue is relatively newer, there are not as many developers who have a lot of experience with this framework. The frequent updates force developers to relearn.
• Vue has fewer plugins than ReactJS or Angular. Vue doesn’t have many common plugins that many developers rely on.

SUMMARY

As you can see, all three frameworks have their advantages and their inconveniences. Choosing the right tool for your project is unique in each case and depends heavily on the particular requirements of the solution.

We have summarized the advantages and disadvantages of each framework so that you can get a general idea:

	Angular	ReactJS	Vue.js
Performance	medium	high	high
Scalability	high	high	low
Learning	difficult	medium	easy
Developer availability	high	high	low
Developer community	large	very large	small
Acceptance and trust	high	very high	low

USE BY BRANDS

No matter how good a framework is, its reputation and popularity always play a key role in its acceptance. When you develop an application on a popular and widely used platform, its maintenance and support is going to be much easier.

Let’s take a look at the brands that have adopted each of the frameworks for their front-end:

Angular	ReactJS	Vue.js
Microsoft	Facebook	Google
Deutsche Bank	Yahoo!	Apple
Google	New York Times	Nintendo
Forbes	Netflix	Trivago
PayPal	Airbnb	Gitlab
Samsung	DropBox	Trustpilot

CONCLUSION

For a real engineer, there is no significant difference in which framework to choose, as it just takes time to get used to the new one. Each framework has its own advantages and disadvantages, which means that there should be just one good choice for each case when developing the product.

	Angular	ReactJS	Vue.js
Stars in GitHub	75k +	172K +	175K +
Commits	19 700	34 668	3 128
Contributors	1 266	1 518	381
Licence	MIT	MIT	MIT

Of course, Angular, ReactJS and Vue.js are by no means the only front-end development frameworks on the market. There are many interesting tools out there suitable for projects of different size and complexity. With the right approach, it shouldn’t be too difficult to be able to provide a great solution.

And for you, what is the best JavaScript framework? Tell us in comments 😉