Ionic vs Onsen UI vs React Native

Overview

Ionic

Stacks9.5K

Followers8.6K

Votes1.8K

React Native

Stacks34.4K

Followers29.5K

Votes1.2K

GitHub Stars124.4K

Forks24.9K

Onsen UI

Stacks40

Followers136

Votes11

GitHub Stars8.9K

Forks1.0K

Ionic vs Onsen UI vs React Native: What are the differences?

Architecture: Ionic is built on top of Angular and Apache Cordova, allowing developers to use web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to build cross-platform mobile applications. On the other hand, Onsen UI is framework-agnostic, providing flexibility to developers who prefer using Angular, React, or Vue. React Native, however, utilizes native components, enabling better performance by rendering UI using native APIs.
User Interface Components: Ionic offers a wide range of pre-designed UI components that are optimized for mobile devices and provide a native-like user experience. Onsen UI also provides a rich set of UI components that can be easily customized to fit specific design requirements. In contrast, React Native provides a smaller set of components compared to Ionic and Onsen UI, but they are more customizable and can be extended using third-party libraries.
Performance: Ionic applications are known for their web-based performance, which may not match the native performance offered by React Native due to the latter's use of native APIs for rendering. Onsen UI falls somewhat in between, offering decent performance by leveraging web technologies while also providing access to native features if needed for optimization.
Community and Ecosystem: Ionic has a large and mature community with extensive documentation, plugins, and third-party tools, making it easier for developers to find resources and address issues. Onsen UI, although having a smaller community compared to Ionic, still provides robust support and a variety of plugins. React Native, backed by Facebook, has a strong community and a vast ecosystem with numerous libraries and tools available for developers.
Development Workflow: Ionic allows rapid development through its command-line interface (CLI) tools, enabling quick testing and deployment of applications. Onsen UI also offers CLI tools but might require more configuration due to its flexibility with multiple frameworks. React Native supports hot reloading, allowing developers to see real-time changes without recompiling the entire application, streamlining the development process.
Platform Support: Ionic and Onsen UI support cross-platform development for iOS and Android, along with web applications. React Native primarily focuses on iOS and Android platforms, potentially leading to a more optimized user experience on these devices compared to cross-platform solutions.

In Summary, the key differences between Ionic, Onsen UI, and React Native lie in their architecture, user interface components, performance, community support, development workflow, and platform focus.

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Advice on Ionic, React Native, Onsen UI

Nick

CTO at Pickio

Jun 2, 2020

Decided

We built the first version of our app with RN and it turned out a mess in a while. A lot of bugs along with poor performance out of the box for a fairly large app. Many things, that native platform has, cannot be done with existing solutions for RN. For instance, large titles on iOS are not fully implemented in any of existing navigations libraries. Also there's painfully slow JSON bridge and many other small, yet annoying things. On the other hand Flutter became a really powerful and easy-to-use tool. A bit of a learning curve, of course, because of Dart, but it worth learning. Flutter offers TONS of built-in features, no JSON-bridge, AOT compilation for iOS.

491k views491k

Comments

Andrea

May 26, 2020

Needs adviceon

Vue.js

Vue Native

React

I'm a huge fan of Vue.js and I'm pretty comfortable with it. I need to build a mobile app for my company and I was now wondering whether I could make use of VueJS with Vue Native instead of switching to React. I know Vue Native builds on top of RN. My question is whether I'd have as much freedom with Vue Native over RN and whether you feel like Vue Native is "production ready" or not. Not sure of which shortcomings I may find using Vue Native... Thanks a lot!!!

336k views336k

Comments

Anonymous

CEO at ME!

Jun 7, 2020

Decided

While with Ionic it is possible to make mobile applications with only web technologies, Flutter is more performant and is easy to use if you are willing to learn Dart, which is a fun language. Plus, it has awesome documentation and, while its ecosystem isn't near as big as JavaScript's is, it has a good package manager called Pub and its packages are generally high quality.

403k views403k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Ionic	React Native	Onsen UI
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.	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.	Onsen UI helps you develop both hybrid and web apps. If developing hybrid apps, you can use it with the Cordova / PhoneGap command line, or with Monaca tools (CLI, Monaca IDE - cloud-based IDE for Cordova, Localkit - desktop GUI).
Performance obsessed;Utilizes Angular and React;Native focused;Beautifully designed;Based on Web Components;	Native iOS Components;Asynchronous Execution;Touch Handling;Flexbox and Styling; Polyfills	Open source HTML5 hybrid app framework for PhoneGap & Cordova; JavaScript framework agnostic; Mobile-optimized HTML5, CSS and JavaScript with Web components; UI framework; Responsive layout; Material and Flat design; Comprehensive toolset (CLI, IDE, debugger, remote build etc.) provided as Monaca
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 124.4K	GitHub Stars 8.9K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 24.9K	GitHub Forks 1.0K
Stacks 9.5K	Stacks 34.4K	Stacks 40
Followers 8.6K	Followers 29.5K	Followers 136
Votes 1.8K	Votes 1.2K	Votes 11
Pros & Cons
Pros 248 Allows for rapid prototyping 228 Hybrid mobile 208 It's angularjs 186 Free 179 It's javascript, html, and css Cons 20 Not suitable for high performance or UI intensive apps 15 Not meant for game development 2 Not a native app	Pros 214 Learn once write everywhere 174 Cross platform 169 Javascript 122 Native ios components 69 Built by facebook Cons 24 Javascript 19 Built by facebook 12 Cant use CSS 4 30 FPS Limit 2 Slow	Pros 3 Hybrid mobile 3 Works with any JavaScript framework 3 Allows for rapid prototyping 2 Free

What are some alternatives to Ionic, React Native, Onsen UI?

Flutter

Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.

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.

NativeScript

NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms.

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.

Framework7

It is a free and open source mobile HTML framework to develop hybrid mobile apps or web apps with iOS native look and feel. All you need to make it work is a simple HTML layout and attached framework's CSS and JS files.

Qt

Qt, a leading cross-platform application and UI framework. With Qt, you can develop applications once and deploy to leading desktop, embedded & mobile targets.

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.

Expo

It is a framework and a platform for universal React applications. It is a set of tools and services built around React Native and native platforms that help you develop, build, deploy, and quickly iterate on iOS, Android, and web apps.

Vue Native

Vue Native is a mobile framework to build truly native mobile app using Vue.js. Its is designed to connect React Native and Vue.js. Vue Native is a wrapper around React Native APIs, which allows you to use Vue.js and compose rich mobile User Interface.

Shoutem UI

Shoutem UI is a set of styleable components that enables you to build beautiful React Native applications for iOS and Android. All of our components are built to be both composable and customizable.

Related Comparisons

Ionic vs Onsen UI vs React Native: What are the differences?

Architecture: Ionic is built on top of Angular and Apache Cordova, allowing developers to use web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to build cross-platform mobile applications. On the other hand, Onsen UI is framework-agnostic, providing flexibility to developers who prefer using Angular, React, or Vue. React Native, however, utilizes native components, enabling better performance by rendering UI using native APIs.
User Interface Components: Ionic offers a wide range of pre-designed UI components that are optimized for mobile devices and provide a native-like user experience. Onsen UI also provides a rich set of UI components that can be easily customized to fit specific design requirements. In contrast, React Native provides a smaller set of components compared to Ionic and Onsen UI, but they are more customizable and can be extended using third-party libraries.
Performance: Ionic applications are known for their web-based performance, which may not match the native performance offered by React Native due to the latter's use of native APIs for rendering. Onsen UI falls somewhat in between, offering decent performance by leveraging web technologies while also providing access to native features if needed for optimization.
Community and Ecosystem: Ionic has a large and mature community with extensive documentation, plugins, and third-party tools, making it easier for developers to find resources and address issues. Onsen UI, although having a smaller community compared to Ionic, still provides robust support and a variety of plugins. React Native, backed by Facebook, has a strong community and a vast ecosystem with numerous libraries and tools available for developers.
Development Workflow: Ionic allows rapid development through its command-line interface (CLI) tools, enabling quick testing and deployment of applications. Onsen UI also offers CLI tools but might require more configuration due to its flexibility with multiple frameworks. React Native supports hot reloading, allowing developers to see real-time changes without recompiling the entire application, streamlining the development process.
Platform Support: Ionic and Onsen UI support cross-platform development for iOS and Android, along with web applications. React Native primarily focuses on iOS and Android platforms, potentially leading to a more optimized user experience on these devices compared to cross-platform solutions.

Ionic vs Onsen UI vs React Native

Overview