Vue JS and React JS are two popular frontend JavaScript frameworks in the developer world. JavaScript and its frameworks are the most used tools for web development. Year after year the battle between JS frameworks getting tight as there are many options for front-end development tools. Thus, everything depends on the project requirements and different business needs.

Common factors

Both can be considered widely used frameworks for front-end development. Where, instead of re-rendering the whole page as in the case with regular Document Object Model (DOM), these two libraries are using virtual DOM which consists of a JavaScript representation of each node in the real DOM tree. This helps to find the nodes that have changed in the Virtual DOM much faster. In addition, virtual DOM has higher efficiency and output for single page application (SPA).

Vue JS and React JS are using Virtual DOM for faster execution. In terms of the application/platform, ReactJS is a JavaScript library used for developing interactive web and mobile applications, while Vue JS used for developing web applications at most cases. Both have a component based structure and intend to work with the root library while all the additional tasks are transferred to other libraries.

React JS

React JS is an open-source JS library for building reusable UI (Component Reuse). It is maintained by Facebook and a community of individual developers and firms.

Advantages of using React JS
  • For web and mobile applications: React Native, a hybrid mobile-app development framework for Android and iOS.
  • Virtual DOM: this model is very helpful in terms of performance. Therefore, React delivers great performance and memory allocation.
  • Big Community: The current number of contributors is touching the 1,400. Contributors from all over the world are putting in the effort to add even more features and support.
  • Scalability: flexible structure and scalability. It has terrific view framework to build re-usable and scalable components.
Disadvantages of using React JS
  • Poor Documentation: Due to the continues fast developments in React technologies, the documentation is not fully covered.
  • View Part: React JS Covers only the UI Layers of the app and nothing else. So, you still need to choose some other technologies to get a complete tooling set for development in the project.
  • Large Library: React contains very huge list of pre-built components which require time to understand how to be used.
Companies using React JS

There are about 9000 companies over the world using React JS framework. Here some of the well-known companies:

  • Uber
  • Airbnb
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • WhatsApp
  • Instagram
  • Udemy
  • Twitter
Vue JS

Vue JS is an open-source JS framework capable of developing single page applications (SAP). It helps to simplify the web development tools. Therefore, this framework attracted many developers around the world to build terrific web applications.

Vue JS framework contains great structure that helps to build eye-catching user interfaces for websites. Founded by the former Google developer Evan You in 2014.

Advantages using Vue JS
  • Ease-of-Use: Vue JS is a HTML-based templates which makes it simpler to use and remodel an existing application.
  • Smoother Integration: Whether it is SAP or complex web interface, Vue JS offers smoother integration of smaller parts without any effect on the whole system.
  • Better Performance: With the smaller package size, it takes up less space and tends to give better performance than other frameworks
  • Great Documentation: It provides an easy learning steps by following the documentation.
  • Vue Material Kit: There are many UI component libraries in the market which helps to develop a Material Design apps. Examples of these libraries are: Vuetify, Buefy, Vue Material and many more. It provides simple, efficient structure and reusable templates.
Disadvantages using Vue JS
  • Small community: The market share for Vue is still smaller compared to React. Vue is getting popular recently because of its useful features and new UI components. Since its still new, it does not yet have the widespread support of its associated frameworks.
Companies using Vue JS

There are many companies over the world using Vue JS framework. Here some of the well-known companies:

  • Netflix
  • Adobe
  • Grammarly
  • Adobe
  • UpWork
  • Alibaba
  • Gitlab
  • Laracasts
In Summary

In conclusion, React JS or Vue JS frameworks are almost the same in terms of structure, features and performance. Developer has to choose which one can meet his project's requirements.

If the project is a web application that requires some UI integration, then Vue JS is the better choice, although there are number of 3rd parties' frameworks that helps to build cross platform native mobile apps such as NativeScript-Vue. While if the project requires to build mobile applications (for iOS and Android) using JavaScript, then React JS is the better option.

Vue has emerged as the main competitor to Angular and React, and one of the reasons for Vue's popularity is the wide use of components, which make development much easier to grasp.

Cross-platform mobile application development is already quite popular in both React and Vue, they are in race to provide a powerful cross platform application development experience. ReactNative is a mature and widely used platform for native mobile applications. While, NativeScript-Vue is still evolving and aims to create native mobile application experiences for iOS and Android using Vue JS.