Svelte vs React: Comparing Two Frontend JavaScript Frameworks
Frameworks have been the backbone of software applications be it web, mobile, or desktop. And to add to it, being a JavaScript framework offers plenty of benefits – React, Vue, and Angular being some of the popular ones. For a few years, here is a new name that has made news – Svelte. React and Svelte are well-known JavaScript frameworks that offer a highly effective methodology for creating web apps.
While React.js has been a common choice for years, Svelte is an upcoming framework that has been attracting developers. Both are component-driven JavaScript frameworks and enable a CDD bottom-up development. Both enable sharing of components within apps, platforms, etc.
Do You know?
Svelte was voted the most loved web framework according to Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2021.
On the other side, React tops the chart of the most wanted framework, desired by one in four developers.
Source: stackoverflow.com
Before we compare them both, here is an individual view of both these frameworks in terms of their features, organizations using it, and their core strength areas:
What Is Svelte?
Svelte is a radical new approach to building user interfaces. Whereas traditional frameworks like React and Vue do the bulk of their work in the browser, Svelte shifts that work into a compile step that happens when you build your app.
Svelte is a relatively new but well-admired, free, open-source, JavaScript web development framework tool that has the unique competence to compile and convert UI components from the code to be updated to the DOM. The capability to perform virtual DOM diffing for interactive user interfaces is what Svelte is known for.
Even though it is new, there are many developers vouching in for Svelte and many top organizations leveraging its output. It is like React and Vue – other JS frameworks that aim to make it simple for creating faster web apps. Svelte converts the applications into ideal JS at build time and the entire app can be created at a stretch or can be added incrementally to any codebase. Components can be shared as individual packages without depending on any framework.
Key Features:
- Automatic update of data to the interface
- Faster and effortless user experience
- Makes use of less code
- Compilation without Virtual DOM
- Lightweight and user-focused interface
- Readable and concise code
- Lower learning curve and overhead
- Creation of boilerplate-free components with known languages
- No complicated state management libraries
Companies Using Svelte:
- Razorpay
- Philips
- Square
- The New York Times
- FusionCharts
- GoDaddy
- LesEchos
- Alaska Airlines
- Parklab
- BuildLab
- Opensense
What Is React.js?
React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. React makes it painless to create interactive UIs. React can also render on the server using Node and power mobile apps using React Native.
React is a popular JavaScript UI framework that was developed by Facebook. It is one of the most used frontend libraries for web applications and provides extensions to app architecture like Flux, React Native, etc. It has a component-based architecture with which it reuses the custom components across different platforms and helps the entire process to become faster and more cost-effective.
It offers faster rendering of web pages with better search engine visibility. It is light in weight, enriched with features, and makes it easy to create interactive user interfaces. There are declarative views to make the code easy to manage. It creates encapsulated components for better state management and then composes them for better UI. It goes by the ‘learn once, write anywhere’ concept with a lot of reusability in place. It is SEO-friendly attracting more organic traffic.
Features Of React.js:
- Higher loading speed of web pages with refreshing of UI
- Optimization of code with better readability and reusability
- A large community of developers and good support
- Faster application delivery
- User-friendly, modular style, resilient and accessible
- Regular technological updates
- Component-based architecture
- Virtual DOM
- One-way data flow
Companies That Use React:
- Amazon
- Netflix
- Uber
- Walmart
- Airbnb
- Skype
- Discord
- Dropbox
Svelte vs React – The Similarities
Both React.js and Svelte have a few things in common, here are they:
- Based on JavaScript
- Frontend development frameworks to create UI
- Familiarity with HTML and CSS is needed
- Node 8+ and npm must be installed
- Open-source projects released under the MIT license
- Can be applied for commercial projects without any constraints
Svelte vs React: A Detailed Comparison
| Parameters | React.js | Svelte |
| Overview | Free, open-source, offers framework-based JavaScript code | Free, open-source, offers framework-independent Vanilla JS code |
| Year of Release and Community | 2013, maintained by the Meta (Facebook) community | 2016, maintained by the Svelte community |
| Learning Curve | The relatively steep learning curve | Easy to learn and utilize |
| Popularity | Highly popular and utilized by many organizations | Heavily getting popular with a rising client base |
| Documentation | Detailed documentation, tutorials, online material, etc. | Still growing documentation support |
| Use Cases | Mobile applications, video streaming, media sites, web application, desktop applications JAMstack sites | Single webpages, interactive visuals, applications done under limited internet connection |
| Virtual DOM Dependency | Fast UI performance by utilizing Virtual DOM design | Fast UI performance without using Virtual DOM |
| Svelte Vs React Performance
|
Good, fast, and effective performance | Being modern, very fast speed |
| Community Support | Strong community support for many years | Relatively growing community hence less support |
| Third-Party Library Support | Makes use of third-party state management libraries – Jotai, Redux, etc. | Inbuilt state management, no dependency on external libraries |
| Compilation | Uses a virtual DOM and JavaScript library to interpret the application code while runtime | Uses a compiler to translate applications into JavaScript code and hence are smaller in size |
| Tools and Libraries | Wide range of different libraries and tools | Light-weighted library with access to third-party tools |
| Syntax | Syntax is JSX, based on JavaScript, uses JavaScript functions | The syntax is much easier to learn and grasp and uses JavaScript classes |
| Scalability | React is highly scalable since it has a greater number of resources to scale apps | Svelte is relatively less scalable since it is still growing in terms of the number of resources |
| Reusability | React lets developers reuse components | Svelte doesn’t permit developers to reuse components |
| Reactivity | Less reactive as it works on a schedule | More reactive as it is a serverless framework |
React vs Svelte: When to Use What?
Be it Svelte or React, both have their own characteristics. As you compare Svelte js vs React, below mentioned are certain situations when they can be more useful:
Use React When –
- You need heavy community support
- There is a need to utilize different parts of code in different projects
- You need to find developers in bulk and with ease
- There is a need for more stability
Use Svelte When –
- You are a novice and need to learn the tool
- The project size is small
- There is a need for maintainable code
- You need good performance without virtual DOM
- There is a need to develop a website faster
Also Read: Ember vs React: Comparing Two Popular Frontend Frameworks
A Concluding Note:
The discussion of Svelte Vs React is a never-ending one, it is like choosing the better of the best. And hence it goes on and on. Finally, it is up to the organizations to analyze the business needs and select the appropriate option. Both frameworks have proven their worth and hence can be an ideal choice. The above-mentioned criteria can help in deciding the better choice!
There are many who wonder ‘Is Svelte better than React.js?’ The answer is dicey since both have their own set of pros and cons. React has an upper hand in terms of its popularity and utilization but Svelte is fast and effective in offers a great development experience. There is a competition to witness, interesting!
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