Apache Cordova vs Ionic vs React Native vs Xamarin

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Apache Cordova

706
893
+ 1
218
Ionic

9.5K
8.5K
+ 1
1.8K
React Native

33.5K
29K
+ 1
1.2K
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Pros of Apache Cordova
Pros of Ionic
Pros of React Native
  • 48
    Lots of plugins
  • 35
    JavaScript
  • 26
    Great community
  • 25
    Easy Development
  • 18
    Easy to learn
  • 15
    Cross platform
  • 7
    Open Source
  • 6
    Easy, fast, not buggy in my experience with my code
  • 6
    Lots of descendants; PhoneGap, Ionic, Intel XDA etc
  • 4
    Can use CSS3
  • 4
    Rich HTML 5
  • 4
    Easy debugging
  • 3
    HTML, CSS and JS
  • 3
    Fast and hot reload
  • 3
    Rich css ui
  • 3
    Use what you code in your browser
  • 2
    Need a light system
  • 2
    Native Web Technologies
  • 2
    Without extra tooling needed
  • 2
    One code base everywhere
  • 248
    Allows for rapid prototyping
  • 228
    Hybrid mobile
  • 208
    It's angularjs
  • 186
    Free
  • 179
    It's javascript, html, and css
  • 109
    Ui and theming
  • 78
    Great designs
  • 74
    Mv* pattern
  • 71
    Reuse frontend devs on mobile
  • 65
    Extensibility
  • 31
    Great community
  • 29
    Open source
  • 23
    Responsive design
  • 21
    Good cli
  • 14
    So easy to use
  • 13
    Angularjs-based
  • 13
    Beautifully designed
  • 12
    Widgets
  • 11
    Allows for rapid prototyping, hybrid mobile
  • 11
    Typescript
  • 10
    Quick prototyping, amazing community
  • 10
    Easy setup
  • 8
    Angular2 support
  • 7
    Fast, easy, free
  • 7
    Because of the productivity and easy for development
  • 7
    Base on angular
  • 7
    So much thought behind what developers actually need
  • 6
    Super fast, their dev team is amazingly passionate
  • 6
    Easy to use
  • 6
    It's Angular
  • 4
    UI is awesome
  • 4
    Hot deploy
  • 3
    Material design support using theme
  • 3
    Amazing support
  • 3
    It's the future
  • 3
    Angular
  • 3
    Allow for rapid prototyping
  • 3
    Easy setup, development and testing
  • 3
    Ionic creator
  • 2
    User Friendly
  • 2
    It's angular js
  • 2
    Complete package
  • 2
    Simple & Fast
  • 2
    Fastest growing mobile app framework
  • 2
    Best Support and Community
  • 2
    Material Design By Default
  • 2
    Cross platform
  • 2
    Documentation
  • 2
    Because I can use my existing web devloper skills
  • 2
    Removes 300ms delay in mobile browsers
  • 1
    Responsive
  • 1
    Native access
  • 1
    Typescript support
  • 1
    Ionic conect codeigniter
  • 1
    Fast Prototyping
  • 1
    All Trending Stack
  • 214
    Learn once write everywhere
  • 174
    Cross platform
  • 168
    Javascript
  • 122
    Native ios components
  • 69
    Built by facebook
  • 65
    Easy to learn
  • 45
    Bridges me into ios development
  • 40
    It's just react
  • 39
    No compile
  • 36
    Declarative
  • 22
    Fast
  • 13
    Virtual Dom
  • 12
    Insanely fast develop / test cycle
  • 12
    Livereload
  • 11
    Great community
  • 9
    It is free and open source
  • 9
    Native android components
  • 9
    Easy setup
  • 9
    Backed by Facebook
  • 7
    Highly customizable
  • 7
    Scalable
  • 6
    Awesome
  • 6
    Everything component
  • 6
    Great errors
  • 6
    Win win solution of hybrid app
  • 5
    Not dependent on anything such as Angular
  • 5
    Simple
  • 4
    Awesome, easy starting from scratch
  • 4
    OTA update
  • 3
    As good as Native without any performance concerns
  • 3
    Easy to use
  • 2
    Many salary
  • 2
    Can be incrementally added to existing native apps
  • 2
    Hot reload
  • 2
    Over the air update (Flutter lacks)
  • 2
    'It's just react'
  • 2
    Web development meets Mobile development
  • 1
    Ngon

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Cons of Apache Cordova
Cons of Ionic
Cons of React Native
  • 2
    No native performance
  • 1
    Hard to install
  • 0
    Hard to install
  • 20
    Not suitable for high performance or UI intensive apps
  • 15
    Not meant for game development
  • 2
    Not a native app
  • 23
    Javascript
  • 19
    Built by facebook
  • 12
    Cant use CSS
  • 4
    30 FPS Limit
  • 2
    Slow
  • 2
    Generate large apk even for a simple app
  • 2
    Some compenents not truly native

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What is Apache Cordova?

Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs that allow a mobile app developer to access native device function such as the camera or accelerometer from JavaScript. Combined with a UI framework such as jQuery Mobile or Dojo Mobile or Sencha Touch, this allows a smartphone app to be developed with just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

What is Ionic?

Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.

What is React Native?

React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.

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What companies use Apache Cordova?
What companies use Ionic?
What companies use React Native?

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What tools integrate with Apache Cordova?
What tools integrate with Ionic?
What tools integrate with React Native?

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What are some alternatives to Apache Cordova, Ionic, React Native, and Xamarin?
Xamarin
Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
PhoneGap
PhoneGap is a web platform that exposes native mobile device apis and data to JavaScript. PhoneGap is a distribution of Apache Cordova. PhoneGap allows you to use standard web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for cross-platform development, avoiding each mobile platforms' native development language. Applications execute within wrappers targeted to each platform, and rely on standards-compliant API bindings to access each device's sensors, data, and network status.
React Native
React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.
Electron
With Electron, creating a desktop application for your company or idea is easy. Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor, Electron has since been used to create applications by companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, and Docker. The Electron framework lets you write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. It is based on io.js and Chromium and is used in the Atom editor.
Ionic
Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.
See all alternatives