Angular vs React vs Vue: Pros, Cons and When to Use

admin / June 28, 2021

Today, front-end frameworks are gaining popularity amongst startups, businesses, and enterprises since they allow them to build complex apps in reduced development time. With the growing time, these technologies continue to evolve and have revolutionized the way of web development. 

With multiple front-end technologies adapted by top-level developers, it becomes quite difficult to choose the one to build your project. Even though you hire a front-end developer, selection of the front-end technology stack that boosts development time and leverage clean and intuitive user experience is quite difficult.

Today, we will talk about the three most popular front-end technologies: Angular, React, and Vue. We will break down each framework in-depth to help you identify the best ones as per your business needs.

1. A brief history of Angular vs React vs Vue

So, before we get into the technical details, let’s talk about the history behind these frameworks and how they started and evolved.

Angular 

Developed by Google, Angular is one of the oldest Type-script-based JavaScript frameworks which was first released in 2010. Then a substantial shift occurred in 2016 on the release of Angular 2 where the suffix “JS” dropped from the original name – AngularJS. Now, Angular 2+ is known as just Angular. Though AngularJS still gets updates, we will still keep our focus on Angular. The latest stable version in Angular is Angular 11 which was released in Nov’2020.

React 

Developed by Facebook, React was initially released in 2013. Having multiple products like WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, it used React extensively to enhance its products. The current stable version of React is 17.X which was released in Oct’2020 having smaller incremental updates till now.

Vue 

Renowned as Vue.js, it is one of the youngest members developed by Evan You – An ex-Google employee in 2014. In the past three years, Vue has seen a significant shift in its popularity despite the fact it lacks huge community support. The current stable version is 3.0 which is released in September 2020 since then is seeing a lot of popularity. Though the contributors of Vue are supported by Patreon, it should be noted that Vue 3 has its own GitHub repo and has moved towards TypeScript. 

2. License

So, before you decide to make use of any open-source framework, make sure you’re thorough with its licensing details. It’s amazing to know that all these 3 frameworks use MIT license which restricts reuse of the framework even in the proprietary software. So, make sure to know the implications of the license before using any framework or software.

3. Popularity

Since “Angular” and “React” are the most common words, it’s quite hard to gauge their popularity among the developers from Google Trends. However, its popularity and implementation in software among the developers can be identified by the number of stars, ratings, and reviews GitHub repositories get. Talking about the popularity, a sudden shift has been noticed in the stars of Vue in mid-2016 and recently, Vue has been there with React as the most popular framework.

4. Job market

As per the trends of 2018, the number of jobs that require Angular or React Skill sets is approximately the same however, Vue was merely a tiny number (around 20%).

If you’re still looking for some up-to-date analysis, The Google Trends search will break down the search trend over the past 12 months for Angular jobs, React Jobs, and Vue jobs. This data will surely help you to hire front-end developer accordingly. The data embedded is as below:

So, if you’re looking for the current job market perspective, you can surely go with Angular or React. Though Vue has gained popularity over the past three years, it will still take some time to get implemented in the project. 

5. Community and development

Now that you’re familiar with the history and recent trends of this framework, let’s watch out how the community access the development of these frameworks.

While comparing Vue with React, Vue wins the game as it has a huge number of stars, watchers, and forks. This shows Vue’s popularity and its value among its users as compared to React. However, if we talk about the contributor, Vue bags in lower contributors as compared to Angular and React.

One of the major reasons can be that Vue is driven by the open-source community while Angular and React have significant shares of Facebook and Google. As per the statistics, all three frameworks shows significant development activity and are going to continue in the future.

6. Migration

When it comes to migration, Angular plans every major update in 6 months. So, when it comes to Angular vs React, Facebook stated that stability of the framework is highly important for them since companies like Twitter, Airbnb makes use of React. As compared to Angular, updates in React are comparatively easy and quick.

Talking about Vue3 docs, it is quite similar between 1.x to 2 since 90% of the API is the same. There is a Vue2 to Vue1 migration helper tool that helps you to access your app status on the console.

Advantages & Limitation of Angular, React & Vue

Angular

Performance highlight

The MVC structure helps Angular to split tasks into logical chunks and thus reduce webpage load time.

The MVC structure allows separation of logic and view part and thus queries in the background are reduced drastically.
The synchronous mode makes communication easy as it makes fewer server calls.

Pros

Two-way data binding: The two-way data binding replicates instant changes from model to view in an easy, efficient, and intuitive way.

Popular and well-used: It has huge community support and is widely adopted by developers globally.

Cons

Heavier applications: Its multiple features sometimes make applications heavier and degraded the app performance compared to React and Vue.
Constantly updating: New, significant changes are introduced quite frequently which makes it hard for developers to adopt them.

React

Performance Highlight

One of the great advantages of using React is its performance. With a gZipped file size of 43KB, the library is quite fast to use.
Its bundling and tree-shaking minimize the user’s resource load.

Pros

Virtual DOM: The virtual DOM boosts app performance and optimizes the application workload.

One-way data-binding: Data will flow only in one direction when writing our React applications, providing us with better control over the full project.

Cons

Doesn’t implement MVC: Since it does not implement MVC, you may need extra libraries to implement state and model.
Poor documentation: Due to the constant updates along with all the companion libraries being created to support it, react technologies are moving ahead so fast that there is no time to write proper instructions.

Vue

Performance Highlight

When it comes to performance, Vue is an exceptionally fast tool. At an incredibly small 18KB after gzipping, this technology will probably have a long life ahead of it.

Pros

Ease of use: Contrary to other frameworks like Angular, Vue is easy to learn, which makes it appealing for both beginners and long-time professionals.
Easy project integration: This allows you to start using Vue instantly in your project.

Cons

Small community: Being a new framework, Vue still needs time to grow its community to the size of those backing React or Angular.
Smaller job market: Since it’s a relatively new framework, the wider market has yet to adopt Vue at the same level it has to React and Angular. Thus, it may take some time to see a high demand for skilled Vue.js developers in the job market.

Angular, React & Vue is widely acceptance and adoption by global brands

 Let’s have a look at the brands that have adopted these frameworks at their front-end. You’ll surely be amazed to see the names in each group:

Angular	React	Vue.js
Google (of course!)	Facebook (you bet!)	Xiaomi
PayPal	Reddit	Alibaba
Upwork	Airbnb	WizzAir
Sony	Dropbox	Grammarly
Mastercard	Netflix	Euronews

How to choose the right JavaScript framework for your project?

Choose Angular when:

Hire Angular developer when you want to develop a large and complex project for your business
When you’re willing to learn TypeScript before the project development phase takes place.
When you’ve skilled, experienced yet expert Angular developers on your team.

When you need easy and reliable scalability.

Choose React when:

When you don’t want your front-end to be too complex.
When you have tighter deadlines to follow. In such cases, hire dedicated React developers can help you with quicker development within your budget.

When performance and scalability is highly important for your project,
When your project can accept reusable components.

Choose Vue when:

When your project needs speed and high performance.

When you have small project scope and not a complex one’s.
When you don’t have skilled front-end developers but your development team has in-depth JavaScript knowledge.
When you have a lack of time to learn and adopt new technology.

So, Which Framework Is the Winner Here- Angular, React, Or Vue? 

Well, there’s no absolute answer to this question. Each of these frameworks has its benefits and drawbacks. Based on your project requirements and its features, you can gauge the technology stack capable enough to deliver quality software solutions. 

If you’re looking to hire front-end developer to analyze your requirements and choose a framework from the stack that suits your end business goals, Dark Bears is your address. Hire a dedicated front-end development team from us and get your solution developed at an affordable cost.