Comparing Angular, React, Vue, and Svelte: What you need to know

The last time I compared the leading reactive JavaScript frameworks for InfoWorld was in 2021. It’s amazing how much has changed since then. All three of the frameworks I covered—Angular, React, and Vue—have made enormous strides with new features and deep refactors. Angular, in particular, is a modern Renaissance story, owing much of its success to greatly improved developer experience. Svelte has also established itself as a lasting and valuable option, worthy of being included in the current comparison.

The evolution of reactivity

Given all the advancements and embellishments, it’s worth taking a moment to ground ourselves in what is considered a “reactive framework.” At heart, reactivity is all about data binding. This is the mechanism whereby the framework takes data (a.k.a., “state”) and binds it to events so that changes to the events are automatically reflected. Data binding is a simple idea that nets enormous benefits in manageability. It is foundational to the present era of web user interfaces.

A huge range of additional capabilities have sprung up around this basic definition of reactivity. Many reactive frameworks have blossomed into full-blown platforms that include build toolchains, server-side rendering and API engines, integrated deployment adaptors, and plenty more. The most significant of these is the move toward server-side (or full-stack) support. Each of the frameworks here has at least one good full-stack option.

All four frameworks are known for their high quality. There are differences in style, syntax, and philosophy, but they’ve all benefitted from intensive development by teams of talented developers. (If you enjoy programming for programming’s sake, you can find a lot to appreciate by poking around their respective GitHub projects.)

You won’t go wrong using any of these frameworks. But there are some notable differences.

Usage statistics

All the frameworks here are very popular. NPM downloads are a good indicator of actual usage, and by this measure, React is an absolute behemoth. Its more than 30 million weekly NPM downloads imply north of one billion annual downloads of React. On the other side of the scale is Svelte, the most humble of the four, with “only” 1.7 million weekly downloads.

Much of this activity is from automated build systems and the like, but downloads are still a reliable indicator of relative use. React is the mainstream, conservative choice, but the other three have no trouble holding their own.

GitHub stars

Next, let’s consider GitHub stars as an indication of developer interest.

This chart is more balanced. React and Vue are neck-and-neck, as are Svelte and Angular. Even on the low side, these numbers indicate that developers are interested in all four libraries. Svelte’s 82,000 stars indicate a very active project, and I expect its popularity to continue growing.

The important thing to recognize about GitHub stars is that a human being bothered to leave one. Tens of thousands of developers have expressed interest in each of these projects. Many of them have gone one step further by contributing to a project. This is all indicative of a very healthy open source ecosystem.

Stack Overflow and Reddit

Now let’s consider the frameworks’ standing on two social sites popular with developers.

First, we’re looking at the “watchers” (users subscribed to the framework as a topic) and the number of questions asked on Stack Overflow. Rather than indicating a shortcoming with Vue and Svelte, I believe their comparatively lower numbers may be due to developers using channels like Reddit to find the answers they need.

The numbers speak for themselves in terms of React’s dominance, but all are active, viable communities.

Community involvement

Finally, I’m going to go out on a limb and offer a more subjective characterization based on each project’s GitHub activity. Here is how community-driven each project currently looks to me.

Angular and React are both backed by big tech (Facebook and Google, respectively, or Meta and Alphabet if you prefer), but the developer community around them is still very grassroots. With React, Facebook initially bridged corporate sponsorship with the open source community. Currently, though, it seems the React team is designing things from within and issuing them out to the community. Angular has done the opposite, opting for community-first engagement to guide changes to the project.

Svelte and Vue both started life as the brainchild of an individual, then grew big communities of users and contributors. For a time, Vue was very active in the open source space. More recently, it has lost some of that dynamism, possibly because its founder is busy building another popular tool in Vite. Svelte still maintains that open source style of openly debating issues and changes, although currently not to the same extent as the Angular team.

Now that we have an overview of the four frameworks in the overall developer space, let’s look at how they compare based on usability and features.

Which one is easiest to learn and use?

In this day and age, we can readily use AI to generate component examples of development frameworks. But AI won’t tell us how it feels to use a framework, especially as you add more elements to the project. What you want is something that starts simple (they all do) and keeps that simplicity as much as possible as the project becomes more complex.

If you can still dip into the code and make changes in a sensible, controllable way—even after API calls are flying, component states are interacting, and stores are firing events—you are doing great. Much of that depends on how you use the tools, more than the tools themselves. But the frameworks do have their role to play. Svelte is the easiest platform to pick up. The purpose of its code is obvious, meaning it is easy to read and understand. Angular has made huge strides by eliminating module requirements, and even Vue and React are easy for new users to start learning.

Here’s how I rank the frameworks in terms of simplicity and ease of learning:

1. Svelte
2. Vue
3. React
4. Angular

Angular is still the biggest mental meal to swallow, but if you’ve been burned in the past, it’s well worth a revisit. These frameworks compete and influence each other on the developer experience (DX) front, and they are all well-designed as a result.

Code comparison of React, Vue, Angular, and Svelte

Next, I’ve used Google’s Gemini Code Assist to generate component samples for each of the frameworks. I also reviewed and validated the samples as a best practice for working with AI-generated code. Let’s see what we can glean from the samples.

React

import React, { useState } from 'react';

function Counter() {
  const [count, setCount] = useState(0);

  return (
    

      
Count: {count}
       setCount(count + 1)}>Increment
    
  );
}

export default Counter;

Here we have a functional component that makes use of the useState hook. The return value is JSX. This lets us describe a template for the view with an HTML-like syntax that is capable of accessing the count variable created by the useState call.

Combined with the onClick handler, we end up with a reactively wired-up UI, such that the count variable is incremented and reflected in the {count} displayed on the interface. This is a pretty clean arrangement. Probably the biggest hurdle is becoming familiar with the useState syntax and the functional syntax inside the onClick handler.

Angular

import { Component, signal } from '@angular/core';

@Component({
  selector: 'app-counter',
  standalone: true,
  template: `
    <p>Count: {{ count() }}</p>
    <button (click)="increment()">Increment</button>
  `,
})
export class CounterComponent {
  count = signal(0);

  increment() {
    this.count.update(value => value + 1);
  }
}

Angular is still the most verbose framework, and the component sample shows it. Like React and Vue, it needs an import call. The @Component decorator is required by Angular but you don’t need it with the other frameworks, where the component-hood is deduced by context.

Angular creates a custom component with the selector property, so this component introduces the app-counter element, which you have to know when using it in the parent. In general, Angular tends toward being more explicit, which requires more effort as a developer. On the other hand, it allows the Angular engine to be very aggressive about optimizations.

The {{ count }} interpolation expression is obvious and the (click) syntax for event handling is less verbose than React’s.

In Angular’s favor, you are engaging with signals, which have become something of a de facto standard, and popular for their reactive programming power.

Vue

<template>
  <p>Count: {{ count }}</p>
  <button @click="increment">Increment</button>
</template>

<script setup>
import { ref } from 'vue';

const count = ref(0);

function increment() {
  count.value++;
}
</script>

Vue has a tight syntax, although I am not a fan of the framing template tags. The interpolation syntax is the same as Angular’s, and the event-handling syntax is comparably simple. (Personally, I prefer Angular’s use of parentheses on the handler property, which makes it explicit that you are calling a function.)

The setup attribute on the <script> tag is a Vue 3 shortcut that sidesteps a lot of boilerplate we had in Vue 2. As with React and Angular, an import (ref) is required.

Svelte

<script>
  let count = 0;

  function increment() {
    count++;
  }
</script>

<p>Count: {count}</p>
<button on:click={increment}>Increment

Svelte’s code doesn’t even require an import call. There’s very little to it but describing exactly what happens. Probably the <script> tag is the only extraneous thing to remember. Keeping all the syntax front-of-mind is easy to do.

There is no added syntax (like useState) on the count variable, the interpolation syntax is as simple as possible, and the on:click is comparable to the others in this section (although, again, I kind of prefer Angular’s increment() with the parentheses). The surrounding formality is kept to a bare minimum and does not clutter the purpose of the component.

Comparing component highlights

To me, the most immediately obvious syntax is Svelte’s. Vue’s syntax is also very tight, even though I am not a huge fan of the framing template tags. React’s functional style is slick but the function definition can’t compete with Svelte’s compiler-driven elimination of such formality. (Although one could argue in favor of React’s JavaScript obviousness.)

Angular is still the most verbose, and it suffers from having to make an import call for such a simple use case. But in its favor, Angular forces you to engage with signals, yielding power over the long term.

Scalability and performance

All four frameworks provide the tools to develop highly optimized applications. Along with DX, performance is a major area of focus. You can see that focus in React’s adoption of a compiler to boost optimizations like caching/memoization. Angular, for its part, brings interesting capabilities around deferred component rendering.

Each of the frameworks offers code splitting and server-side rendering. It’s down to the developer to make the most of these tools, however. Like the core framework, it’s a matter of personal preference which tool gives you the best options for optimization.

Each framework is enterprise-grade and is deployed into production on large-scale apps. Even more than other factors, how the app handles large, interconnected designs and scaling to heavy use is heavily dependent on the specifics of your use case. They’re also all compatible with server-side frameworks for full-stack integration.

Which reactive framework is for you?

Svelte, Angular, React, and Vue all carry the banner of open source software high and bright. Prototyping is the best way to get a real feeling for a framework, but that is not always possible. As developers, there’s a tendency to use what we already know or what is already in use. Organizations (and developers) often seek the safest or most mainstream option, which in this set is undoubtedly React. Technology inertia, more so than superior technology, is the driving force behind React’s numerical dominance.

Even if you are only experimenting on weekends, it’s worth exploring other frameworks. The reactive frameworks profiled here are all well-established options with good ideas and large ecosystems. With experimentation, you may find you appreciate one framework’s DX over the others.

If you are in the market for a new reactive framework, and you have the time or organizational permission to experiment, Svelte is the most tempting option. I think Angular is one to keep an eye on. Vue is a solid option, although it is not very active currently. React retains its position as the top choice for developers who just need to get the job done.