React vs React Native: The Ultimate Key Differences To Check Out

Hardik Thakker

Founder & CEO

Published On: Jun 07, 2023

A big confusion exists in the mind about React and React Native and whether both are the same or not.

To clear the confusion about React and React Native, it becomes of prime importance to understand the basic concept of React Vs React Native in detail.

As per the recent survey by Stack Overflow, it has been estimated that ReactJS is the most popular web framework that is used by many developers.

Table of Content

What is React?

React, or ReactJS is an open-source JavaScript library specifically used to build the user interface for Web Apps. It takes sole responsibility for only the view layer of the application.

In addition, we can say that ReactJS is

• A library that typically supports both front-end development and server-based configurations.
• Created by Jordan Walke and his team from Facebook.
• A new way of rendering pages, leading to responsive and dynamic user input.
• Responsible for the rendering of UI components.

React is beneficial for developers working with a reputed ReactJS development company in many ways, including

• Developing fast, adaptive, and intuitive mobile and web applications.
• They can quickly automate the entire design process.
• They are not bound to strict rules; instead, they can work according to their convenience.
• Easily plugins and libraries integrations are made possible with existing code.
• Enables developers to develop fast, scalable, and simple web applications.

Hope you got a clear vision of what is ReactJS. Now, we’ll come across the concept of React Native.

What is React Native?

React-Native is a ReactJS-based framework designed explicitly to develop robust and responsive mobile apps. It is designed to build native mobile applications using reusable components and their react native best practices which will help you create better applications.

Moreover, we can say that React Native is:

• Used to develop rich mobile UI from declarative components using only JavaScript.
• A hybrid mobile app development framework that allows you to build mobile apps only with a single code base.
• A framework that allows building mobile apps natively across different platforms like Android and iOS.

React Native is beneficial for developers working in a React Native App development company in many ways including

• They can use ReactJS to create mobile apps and web apps.
• It allows them to easily compile native app components enables them to build mobile applications that can efficiently run on Android, iOS, and Windows devices.
• The syntax and workflow remain similar to ReactJS, but the components are different.
• The developers can only target mobile platforms rather than web browsers.

Working of React Native Vs React

Now it’s time to explore the working process of the leading technologies: React and React Native. First, let’s start with React framework. To make it concise, ReactJS uses VDOM, while React Native uses API for its working process.

ReactJS’ Virtual DOM

ReactJS typically uses VDOM (Virtual DOM) to create an application’s inspiring user experience (UX). The representation of the web document and its content is done correctly with the help of an external programming interface named DOM.

One effective way to perform DOM management has greatly impacted how libraries and frameworks are used to make the application more secure and robust.

But in the case of React application, Virtual DOM has changed the entire scenario. VDOM is nothing but a visual representation of the real DOM. While creating dynamic UIs for your application, the primary role of the VDOM is to manage quick updates.

What is the importance of virtual DOM as compared to real DOM?

React Native’s API

React Native framework utilizes APIs to render robust UI components that play an essential role in Android and iOS applications.

Generally, React Native uses Java APIs to render Android components. While for iOS applications, React Native utilizes native API and Objective-C for rendering UI components.

So, the role of JavaScript is to deal with the remaining available code and personalize the application for every platform (Android or iOS). So, it enables maximum component reusability and code shareability.

For React Native, you need to deal with creating a style sheet in JavaScript just for styling React Native’s components. So, in simple words, we can say that React Native is not leveraging CSS and HTML, but ReactJS is.

If we talk about the coding principle, ReactJS uses tag instead of tag. On the other hand, tag is used in React rather than tag for React Native.

Let’s see the example of ReactJS.

function sampleapp ()
{
const element = (
<div>
<p> Welcome to the World!!! </p>
</div>
ReactDOM.render(element, document.getElementById('root'));
}
setInterval (sampleapp,1000);

Now, see the example of React Native.
import React, { component } from ‘react’;
import {text, view} from “react-native”;

export default class SampleApp extends component
{
render()
{
return 
{
<view>
<text> Welcome to the World!!! </text>
</view>
}
}
}

Related Post: What are the Differences between Vue and React?

Advantages of React Native Vs React

After having a basic understanding of React VS React Native differences along with its working, it’s time to explore how React and React Native will be helpful to you in developing web applications and mobile applications.

Top Advantages of Using React

• DOM (Document Object Model) is a viewing agreement between data inputs and outputs. It works faster than another conventional full refresh model, as virtual DOM refreshes only parts of the page. Moreover, it plays a vital role in enhancing the performance of web applications.
• With the help of ReactJS, you can effectively use code components multiple times. Such reusable components help you in saving a lot of time in web and mobile application development.
• The applications developed with the ReactJS framework will make your application SEO-friendly. The rendering of your web pages is performed directly from the server to render browser code, which eventually improves the SEO of your web app.
• React plays an essential role in the life of developers as it is solely responsible for improving the debugging speed of mobile and web applications.
• React coding standards are very familiar, even for non-familiar users. It often happens that some framework needs you to learn multiple concepts that are only useful within the framework.

Top Advantages of Using React Native

• React Native is vital in improving the application’s performance and is made possible with its Native Modules and Native components. React Native renders specific code components with native APIs, which is not possible with other cross-platform frameworks like Cordova or PhoneGap that typically render code via WebView.
• React Native is a robust framework that usually comes with all the advantages of React.js. As we know, React.js is a master in dealing with providing a better UI, so those benefits remain.
• The excellent part about React Native app is that the developers don’t have to develop the same application for iOS and Android separately. It’s because they need to reuse the common logic layer directly.
• The component-based structure of React Native app typically allows developers to build mobile apps by strictly following a more agile, web-style approach to development than most hybrid frameworks and without any web development at all.
• If you have a basic understanding of JavaScript technology, React Native will be easy to learn. Moreover, it allows most front-end web developers to be mobile developers. By knowing JavaScript, platform APIs, some native UI components and elements, and any other platform-specific design patterns, you can efficiently adopt React Native platform.
• With the help of this robust framework, you do not have to refurbish your old app. Instead, add React Native UI components to your existing app’s code without having to rewrite the entire code. Isn’t it great?
• What’s the primary role of Native app development? Inefficiency, slower time to deployment, and less developer productivity. React Native brings high speed, responsiveness, and agility of web app development along with effectual processing and the best user experience to the hybrid space, to provide your users with a native app experience.

Disadvantages of React VS React Native

After exploring the advantages of React Vs React Native, it’s time to see the drawbacks of both technologies.

Top Disadvantages of Using React

• Complexity of JSX
  React utilizes JSX (JavaScript XML), an extension or plugin that allows the developers to code HTML programming language in React applications. So, it becomes challenging for the developers to prefer JSX proper documentation, especially for freshers working with React web development.
• Frequent Library Updates
  With the constant changes in the library for React applications, it becomes pretty difficult for developers to deal with application speed. Moreover, such React improvements are generally occupied by specific libraries and other updates, making the development code less robust.
• Learning Curve
  Compared to React Native, React takes much more time for developers to learn in a short amount of time. In simple words, the learning curve of React is definitely more, making it a challenging factor for new developers to create an application using React UI Frameworks.
• Third-Party Integration
  As we know, React comes up with various third-party plugins and modules, and it possesses only a few native modules. Using third-party integration support makes it challenging for the developers to combine HTML and CSS code directly into JSX, along with its code complexity.
• Overhead Cost & Time
  It becomes of prime importance to download another react-enabled library, and that plays an essential role in increasing overall cost and time overheads. Let’s say you are using the Carbon framework for UI experience; then it becomes crucial to download Carbon components with react.

Top Disadvantages of Using React Native

• Lowers Development Speed
  The development speed of React Native applications lowers as the application is loaded with multiple features and modules. In addition, with the shortage of native modules and third-party libraries dependencies, React Native applications’ development speed is lowered too.
• Constant Updates
  The developers are constantly working on providing better development of React Native applications. So, with such constant updates, it becomes pretty challenging for the developers to deal with new native render components, improved performance, and custom components.
• Lacking Native Libraries
  React Native is solely responsible for slowing down the entire development process if your application is bound with multiple heavy functionalities. The primary reason is that it lacks native libraries and is dependent on external, third-party libraries.
• Loosely Held Abstraction Layer
  React Native programmers can easily fetch tags like HTML, stylesheets like CSS, and code from Javascript. And that’s what the loosely held abstraction layer is about. It provides more freedom to the developers, but at the same time, it poses challenges as well.
• Lacking Security Robustness
  React Native is solely responsible for creating a gap in security robustness when you create banking and financial apps where data is highly confidential; experts advise not to choose React Native application development.

Technical Difference Between React and React Native

It’s time to see the differences between React Vs React Native.

1. Installation Scenario

   As we all know, React is a JS library, so it becomes essential to import or integrate React library into the HTML page.

   Copy

   <script src="https://unpkg.com/react@18/umd/react.development.js" crossorigin></script>
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/react-dom@18/umd/react-dom.development.js" crossorigin></script>

   Likewise, you can start by creating your first components in the ReactJS application.

   On the other hand, to create an app using React Native framework, you must first have Android Studio (for Android applications) and Xcode (for iOS applications) in your system.

   Not only this, you must install other essential tools like Node, React Native CLI, and others depending on your project needs. Once the installation is done, you can start creating new React Native components by using React Native CLI and directly executing it on a mobile emulator.

2. Developer Efficiency

   To design and develop an inspiring User Interface for your application, React is the perfect library for it. The excellent part about ReactJS is that you can efficiently execute native code on the client side while still rendering on the server side.

   Unlike React Native, ReactJS is not only responsible for improving developer efficiency, but it allows you to deal with more specific options required to opt for making fundamental abstractions.

   While React Native systematically adopt a slightly different approach with an aim to enhance the performance of the developer’s efficiency. The fundamental building blocks of React Native applications are the reusable native components, and such components are directly compiled into native code.

   With the help of the React Native components, your application gets a fantastic look and feel of responsive functionality, and, most importantly, speed is enhanced.

3. Technology Basics

   As React is a JavaScript-based framework, it’s quite apparent that you must have a basic knowledge of JavaScript technology. However, if you have good expertise in JavaScript, you can easily become a ReactJS developer in a short period.

   React Native is a cross-platform mobile framework that typically utilizes ReactJS to create mobile interactive user interfaces for cross-platforms apps on a large scale. But, as React Native is not a pure JavaScript framework, combining Java, Objective-C, Objective-C++, and C++ code is mandatory for you to learn this framework.

4. Achievability

   React is a framework that typically combines HTML and CSS for designing and building robust web applications. Moreover, it’s possible to integrate CSS, eliminating multiple challenges associated with CSS development.

   React Native help you add additional components and features to the existing applications without making drastic changes in the coding. For example, let’s say your mobile application is created using a hybrid framework like Ionic and Cordova. It becomes easy for you to reuse that Ionic-based code smoothly with simple plugin integrations.

   Related Post: NativeScript vs React Native

5. Syntax

   The coding in ReactJS is specifically done using JavaScript technology. So, React usually use HTML-like web components with Moreover, it is possible to utilize JSX – a JavaScript’s special syntax extension for making web pages responsive.

   For React Native, it becomes mandatory for you to know everything about the specific React Native syntax support. React Native renders basic native multiple components like , , , and so on for developing a mobile application for your business needs.

   Remember that React Native is not concerned with HTML-like syntax, so creating a web application using React Native is impossible.

6. Component Creation Method

   As ReactJS is a JavaScript and component-based library, you can easily use a JavaScript class or method that specifically delivers a React element. Generally, ReactJS comes up with two main components: function components and class components.

   On the other hand, React Native framework has Native components and Native modules to make it easy for developers to develop apps.

   SEO-Friendly Application

   While developing a ReactJS application, you must consider SEO parameters. The primary reason behind SEO perspectives is to rank among the top in the leading search engines.

   ReactJS comes up with multiple tools and libraries that easily optimize your applications in terms of search engine optimization (SEO).

   But, in the case of React Native, you do not have to deal with SEO. So it ultimately depends on how we build native UIs for our application needs.

7. Navigation

   In both React and React Native, navigation refers to the process of moving between different screens or components within an application. However, there are some differences in how navigation is implemented and the available libraries used in React and React Native.

   In React, navigation is typically handled by using a library called React Router. React Router is a popular routing library that allows you to define routes and handle navigation within a React application. It uses the browser’s history API to manage the URL and render the appropriate components based on the current route.

   React Router provides different components such as , , and that you can use to define your routes. The component is used to wrap your application and provides the necessary routing functionality.

   The component is used to render the first matching component based on the current URL. Each component represents a specific route and defines which component to render when the route matches.

8. React Native

   React Native, on the other hand, doesn’t have a built-in navigation library like React Router. Instead, it relies on third-party navigation libraries that are specifically designed for mobile app development. The most popular navigation libraries for React Native are React Navigation and React Native Navigation.

   React Navigation is a JavaScript-based library that provides a declarative way to handle navigation in a React Native application. It offers different navigation types, such as stack navigation, tab navigation, and drawer navigation.

   With React Navigation, you define a navigation hierarchy using navigators and screens. Navigators represent the overall structure of the app, while screens represent individual screens or components. React Navigation also provides navigational hooks and a navigation prop that you can use to navigate between screens programmatically.

   React Native Navigation, on the other hand, is a native navigation library that uses native navigation components provided by the underlying platform (iOS or Android). It offers a more performant navigation solution but requires additional setup and configuration compared to React Navigation.

   Both React Navigation and React Native Navigation have their own set of APIs and features that allow you to handle navigation, pass parameters between screens, and customize the navigation experience in a React Native app.
   Overall, while the concept of navigation is similar in React and React Native, the implementation and available libraries differ due to the different environments (web vs. mobile) and requirements of each platform.

9. Storage

   In both React and React Native, the concept of storage refers to the ability to persist and manage data within an application. However, the specific approaches to storage differ between React and React Native due to the distinct environments in which they operate.

   In React, which is primarily used for web development, the storage options are typically related to web browser capabilities. There are several methods for storing data in a React application:

   • Local Storage: The Web Storage API provides the ability to store data in the user’s web browser. It allows you to store key-value pairs of data persistently on the user’s device even after the browser is closed. The data is stored as strings and can be accessed using JavaScript.
   • Session Storage: Similar to local storage, session storage allows you to store data persistently within the user’s browser. However, the data stored using session storage is only available for the duration of the browser session and is cleared once the session ends or the browser is closed.
   • Cookies: Cookies are small pieces of data stored by the web browser. They can be used to store user-specific information and are sent with each request to the server. Cookies are often used for authentication, tracking user preferences, and maintaining session state.
   • State Management Libraries: React also offers state management libraries like Redux and MobX, which allow you to manage and store application state in a centralized manner. These libraries provide predictable and scalable ways to manage complex application states.

   React Native, on the other hand, is a framework used for building native mobile applications. Since it operates within a mobile environment, the storage options differ from React.

   • Async Storage: React Native provides an API called AsyncStorage, which is an asynchronous, persistent, key-value storage system. It allows you to store data locally on the device, similar to local storage in web browsers. AsyncStorage is a simple and lightweight storage solution for basic data persistence in React Native applications.
   • Native Storage Solutions: React Native also allows you to leverage native storage solutions provided by the underlying mobile platforms. For example, on iOS, you can use Core Data or SQLite for more advanced data storage needs. On Android, you can utilize SQLite or Android’s SharedPreferences for storing and managing data.
   • Redux or MobX: Just like in React, you can use state management libraries such as Redux or MobX in React Native applications to handle and persist application state across different components.

   It’s important to note that while these storage options exist, the choice of storage mechanism depends on the specific requirements of your application. Factors such as the type of data, its sensitivity, performance considerations, and cross-platform compatibility should be taken into account when selecting a storage approach in both React and React Native.

React Vs React Native: The Comparison Table

Let’s highlight the difference between React and React Native in the form of a comparison table to get more insight into both technologies.

Which is Best to Learn? React or React Native

The siblings – React and React Native are both leading frameworks that help you make the development process more manageable.

React, or ReactJS is a framework that helps you build robust user interfaces for web applications. On the other hand, React Native is a framework that enables you to develop secure and responsive mobile applications for Android, iOS, and Windows.

We have seen the difference between React VS React Native in a more detailed way. Both technologies typically use similar principles for the application development process. If you have a grip on React or React Native, it becomes relatively easy to learn any framework quickly.