Angular Vs React Vs Vue: Which One To Choose

When it comes to creating web apps, the biggest concern front-end developers have is which frontend framework to choose as there are many JavaScript frameworks available in the market. The top three front-end frameworks or libraries that every expert suggests are Angular, React, and Vue. There is a huge competition between Angular vs React vs Vue. Angular is a fully-fledged framework and the best practices of Angular enable developers to create robust applications. React is not a framework, it is a UI library that helps in creating unique user interfaces, and Vue is a progressive JavaScript framework used for developing web apps. To make the right choice among these three, the developers have to go through the comparison among  Angular, React, and Vue’s key points and understand their differences. In this blog, we will first understand two JavaScript frameworks and one library and then go through their differences.

1. Comparison of Angular, React, and Vue

Angular is one of the best frameworks developed by Google. It was released in 2010 and this makes it the oldest framework in comparison with Vue and React. It is a popular TypeScript-based framework with an MIT license and having this license means that these products offer limited restrictions on reuse. In the year 2016, a shift happened and the new version of Angular, version 2 was released. This version dropped JS from the original name – AngularJS. Angular 2+ is called Angular and version 1 is called AngularJS.

React is a library which is developed by Facebook. It was developed in the year 2013 and since then it has been used to develop complex applications. React uses an MIT license. Facebook itself uses React and React Native in its products like WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram.

The Vue framework is one of the most popular and younger frameworks in this group. It was developed by Evan You, an ex-Google employee in 2014. This framework holds an MIT license. It has been through a substantial shift in the last few years and the latest versions of Vue are always announced on the official Vue website. It has its own GitHub repo and functions with the use of TypeScript.

Further Reading on VueJS Guide for Beginners

	Angular	React	Vue
Official Site	angular.io	reactjs.org	vuejs.org
Initial Release	2010	2013	2014
Current Version	13.x	17.x	3.x
License	MIT	MIT	MIT
Used By	Google, Wix	Facebook, Uber	Alibaba, GitLab

When it comes to having a legit license to make sure that these open-source JavaScript frameworks are good for web development, all three of them use the MIT license. Having this license means that these products offer limited restrictions on reuse.

1.1 Popularity

Angular is created by Google which automatically makes it popular amongst developers. Angular is often used to develop large scale application by experienced developers. As per the data by BuiltWith, Angular powers more than 97k websites.

React is one of the most popular JavaScript libraries. It is a product by Facebook and powers more than 11 million websites according to BuiltWith‘s statistics.

Vue has solid independence compared to Angular and React. It has an open-source community and is used by more than 2 million websites as per BuiltWith.

Besides this, amongst all the popular web app development frameworks, ReactJs stands 2nd with 35.9%, Angular at 3rd position with 25.1%, and VueJs with 7th position with 17.3% of usage by developers in the market.

1.2 Community and Development

When it comes to the community of these three frameworks, in comparison to React, Vue has a huge number of watchers and forks which means that it is very popular. But the contributors for Vue are lower than for both React and Angular. On the other hand, Vue works on a complete open-source community, but Angular and React come with a fair share of Google and Facebook employees as community members. 

Let’s go through the below table to get a clear idea about the community and development of these three frameworks. 

	Angular	React	Vue
Stars	85.8k	8.4k	34.7k
Forks	22.8k	6.7k	6.3k
Watchers	3k	210	758
Contributors	1663+	1681+	372+

1.3 Ecosystem

Angular offers the NgRx project for its state management and this is inspired by Redux. Angular has started offering Angular Material which guides the developers in creating Angular applications with the use of the right Material Design. It enables developers to create cross-platform apps with the use of NativeScript. Angular is also a part of the well-known MEAN stack that is a combination of Angular with ExpressJS, MongoDB, and NodeJS.

React’s popularity makes it easy for web app developers to find react-based components and elements for the development of web interfaces. Besides, React’s ecosystem also includes React Native which enables the developers to create native Android and iOS apps. React is a part of the MERN stack, which is a combination of React with ExpressJS and NodeJS.

Vue can use Redux but there are no official bindings between these two. Vuex is the official state management library of Vue. This framework enables developers to use a wide range of components offered by the community to create applications.

1.4 Jobs

Getting jobs as a developer who has proper knowledge of any programming language and JS framework can be easy. But the salary differs as per the popularity of the framework. For instance, Angular had 16,370 job listings on indeed.com as of 2020, React had 61,799 job listings as of 2020, and Vue had 3,780 job listings as of 2020. Besides this, the below chart will give you a clear idea about the job listings of these frameworks on popular job portals.

1.5 Migrations

When it comes to migration, Angular is a framework that comes with new major updates every six months. Angular also takes a period of six months before releasing any major API. This means that Angular developers get the time of two release cycles in a year and they can make required changes as per this release cycle. 

In comparison with Angular, React is called a stable framework and because of this companies like Airbnb and Twitter use it. React comes with new upgrades that can be accessed through react-codemod scripts which makes migration a very easy process. 

Vue has come with a new Vue 3 version but there is not much difference between Vue 2 and Vue 3 which means that almost 90% of the APIs are the same in these versions and this makes migration very easy. Besides, Vue also offers Vue 1 to Vue 2 migration tool which helps developers to assess the app’s status. 

1.6 Performance and Memory

The performance of a web app completely depends on the framework. This is why developers check the web frameworks’ scalability (how well it is able to handle larger scale projects), integrability, and robustness before choosing one. In this Angular vs React vs Vue 2022 comparison, the performance can be tested as per the framework’s DOM and JS framework benchmark.

Angular relies on real DOM for performance, while React and Vue functions use virtual DOM. In this case, when any frontend framework depends on virtual DOM, it saves the trouble of re-rendering/repainting the app which eventually makes the web app quicker.

To get a clear idea about the performances of these three frameworks, check out the performance graphs given below.

Angular Performance

React Performance

Vue Performance

1.7 Angular vs React vs Vue Startup Time Comparison

When it comes to the comparison between these three JavaScript frameworks for their startup time, there is a general thought amongst the techies that Vue would be the winner for startup time as the small size of this framework enables them to decrease the startup time tremendously. This eventually helps in having a robust application.

Whereas, the developers might get the same result while using React for the web app development process. But this is not the case with the Angular framework as it is very heavy in size.

1.8 Learning Curve

Angular is known as a framework that comes with the most complex project structure. And this is because it is a fully-grown front-end framework that relies on more concepts. Angular supports services, components, and modules. In this framework, it is expected to write and design the code in a specific manner which helps the project to be maintainable when it scales up. Besides this, to work with Angular, the developer must be able to write code in TypeScript. 

React framework is the least complex of these three. And the reason behind it is that the developer just needs to import the library, then they can start writing a React application. Besides this, React apps are component-based and this means that they don’t just render some elements on the page.

Like Angular, Vue is also a bit of a complex framework. It can be used as a library to define components that must be used throughout your HTML. The majority of the Vue projects come with a root component named App. When it comes to Vue’s syntax, the one thing that developers need to learn is Vue’s template syntax which is similar to HTML. 

This shows that the learning curve with React is very easy and smooth in comparison to React and Vue.

2. Top Companies Using React

Here is the list of the top brands that use React for frontend development –

• Yahoo
• Instagram
• Facebook
• WhatsApp
• New York Times

Further Reading on Companies That Use React

3. Top Companies Using Angular

Here is the list of the top brands that use Angular for the front-end development –

• Microsoft Office
• Gmail
• Forbes
• Deutsche Bank
• PayPal

Further Reading on Companies That Use Angular

4. Top Companies Using Vue

Here is the list of the top brands that use Vue for the frontend development  –

• Xiaomi 
• Reuters
• Adobe
• Grammarly
• Behance

Further Reading on Companies That Use Vue

5. Tabular Comparison: Angular vs React vs Vue

Categories	Angular	React	Vue
Type	It is a framework.	It is a rich library to create UI.	It is a library.
Maintained By	Google maintains this framework.	Facebook maintains this library.	Evan You, a former Google employee, and his core team maintains this library.
Initial Release	September 2016	March 2013	February 2014
Development Approach	It is based on TypeScript.	It is based on JavaScript.	It is based on HTML and JavaScript.
Ideal For	It is ideal for creating large-scale apps that have rich features.	It is ideal for creating user interfaces based on UI components.	It is ideal for creating single-page apps.
Developer-friendly	Angular embraces a structure-based approach.	It ensures flexible development.	It demands a focus on the separation of concerns.
Written In	TypeScript	JavaScript	JavaScript

6. Conclusion

As seen in this blog, JavaScript frameworks have a huge family. Each of these frontend frameworks and libraries offers the best results when it comes to creating applications, solving issues, or adding new functionalities to current web apps. All three frameworks compared here are different from each other. Angular, React, and Vue are known as the top players among front-end JavaScript frameworks.

The Angular framework is used by experienced developers for creating apps with extensive structures and this framework works best when it comes to building progressive web apps and hybrid mobile applications.

React developers use React to create dynamic websites with flawless functionalities. It also helps in creating native mobile apps (using react native framework).

Vue combines the best features of Angular and React. It helps in creating single page applications.

This proves that these three JavaScript frameworks perform magic while creating user interfaces and offer the best solutions for robust web development. But which one to choose for your next project depends on the software development environment, the flexibility of the team working, and the type of project they are working on.