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MEAN vs React Native: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will discuss the key differences between the MEAN stack and React Native. The MEAN stack consists of MongoDB, Express, Angular, and Node.js, while React Native is a framework for building native mobile applications using JavaScript and React. Both technologies have their advantages and use cases, so it's important to understand the differences before choosing the right stack for your project.

  1. Language and Platform: The MEAN stack uses JavaScript for both the front-end and back-end development. It leverages Node.js on the server-side and Angular on the client-side. React Native, on the other hand, uses JavaScript and React to build native mobile applications for Android and iOS platforms.

  2. Development Approach: The MEAN stack follows a full-stack development approach, where developers use JavaScript for both client-side and server-side code. React Native, on the other hand, follows a cross-platform approach, allowing developers to write code once and deploy it on both iOS and Android platforms.

  3. Code Reusability: While both MEAN and React Native allow code reusability, React Native has a significant advantage in this aspect. With React Native, developers can reuse a large portion of their codebase across different platforms, saving time and effort. In the MEAN stack, code reusability is more limited to the front-end, as the back-end is typically built using Node.js.

  4. Performance: MEAN stack applications can leverage server-side rendering and caching mechanisms to improve performance. On the other hand, React Native applications are highly performant due to the native rendering capabilities. However, React Native may face performance challenges when dealing with complex animations or heavy computations.

  5. Ecosystem and Community Support: Both MEAN stack and React Native have a strong and active community with extensive libraries, frameworks, and tools. However, the MEAN stack has been around for a longer time and has a more mature ecosystem with a wider range of resources and community support.

  6. Learning Curve: The learning curve for the MEAN stack is relatively steep, as developers need to be proficient in multiple technologies such as MongoDB, Express, Angular, and Node.js. On the other hand, React Native has a simpler learning curve, especially for developers already familiar with JavaScript and React.

In summary, the key differences between the MEAN stack and React Native lie in the language and platform used, development approach, code reusability, performance, ecosystem and community support, and learning curve. Understanding these differences will help developers choose the right technology stack for their specific requirements and project goals.

Advice on MEAN and React Native
espresso_coder
software engineer at AWS · | 6 upvotes · 96.6K views

I am building an app that would need at least two external APIs: a map and a payment service. I am currently building in Flutter, but I am having trouble integrating one of the external APIs with the app. I wonder (because I am still at the beginning) if I should switch to React Native or build native iOS and Android apps separately. Any advice would be appreciated!

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Replies (3)
Recommends
on
FlutterFlutter

Choosing between ios/android and Flutter is not simple. Neither is a one-size-fit-all solution. It would be impossible to suggest one or the other without first analysing particular project’s requirements.

Choosing cross-platform development (Flutter) offers a number of advantages – lower cost, faster time to market, etc…, and if applied to the right type of project, will result in high-quality, marketable mobile product. In my opinion, stick with flutter and try to resolve those problems. Here are some useful links,

Map: *https://pub.dev/packages/mapbox_gl *https://www.raywenderlich.com/4466319-google-maps-for-flutter-tutorial-getting-started

Payment Service: *https://developer.squareup.com/docs *https://github.com/square/in-app-payments-flutter-plugin *https://pub.dev/packages/stripe_sdk

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Recommends
on
FlutterFlutter

It's a bit late but I suggest staying on Flutter anyway. Though you might face troubles with APIs integration, overall development experience is better on Flutter, so you save some time & power on the project in general. Dunno if it's of any use to you, but as a prove I attach one of many Flutter vs RN comparison articles (you can find any other similar yourself on the web though), hope it helps you make a decision

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Recommends
on
FlutterFlutter

can you discuss in more detail why cant you integrate that API?

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Nikhilesh Goyal
Senior Embedded Engineer at GreyOrange · | 5 upvotes · 473.1K views
Needs advice
on
FlutterFlutterReact NativeReact Native
and
UnityUnity

Hi Friends, I am new to #MobileAppDevelopment and I need to make a #CrossPlatformMobileApp. I want guidance regarding which tools should I use to build a mobile app. Main requirements: integrate Unity game engine and provide a platform for social chats.

Past experience - C++ and Python

I have tagged Flutter and React Native but if anything better than both please suggest them.

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Replies (3)
Sahil Singh
Product Manager at AutoVRse · | 10 upvotes · 432.4K views
Recommends
on
UnityUnity

Hey, If you are using Unity you are going to have to do the end to end development on Unity, you can directly build for android and iOS on Unity. I dont see how Flutter or React Native fit into this equation. Unity is a standalone engine. As for Social Chats, you could use Firebase or your own API and integrate that in Unity in C#

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Recommends
on
UnityUnity

I agree with Sahil. If Unity is a requirement, best way is to use just that to create your app.

If you really want, it should be possible to use Flutter and Unity together. Using Flutter Unity Widget. Although I wouldn't recommend it just yet. It's too early days.

If you do end up using it, I would be very interested in reading about your experiences.

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Mathieu Grenier
Recommends
on
UnityUnity

You can start by small steps with Flutter and after Unity. Flutter = best choice to build a small cross-platform mobile app. With or no flutter, use directly Unity. Y'll have complete control but it's harder for new mobile developers. Keep in mind, the requirement is Unity!

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Needs advice
on
ExpoExpoReact NativeReact Native
and
ReduxRedux
in

Hello guys, I am new here. So, if I posted without specific guidelines, please ignore.

Basically, I am an iOS developer and developing native apps for the last three years. Recently, I started learning React Native to develop apps for both platforms. If anyone out there knows any useful resources that will become a better react native developer.

#newbie

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Replies (1)
Javier Silva Ortíz
Senior Full Stack Developer at Aleph Engineering · | 6 upvotes · 293K views
Recommends
on
ReduxRedux

Well, the first resource I would recommend you is my upcoming book by Packt Publishing, "Professional React Native", but it's due late January next year :) . Now jokes aside (the book's real by the way :) ), the easiest way to build a iOS/Android/Web app with React Native is to do: npm install -g expo-cli expo init some-project cd some-project expo eject

You might have heard of Expo, but trust me, stay away from it. Expo highest value is that it's an already pre-configured 3 platforms environment, but if you don't eject then you're vendor-locked to what Expo has to offer in iOS and Android, which is very poor compared to going full React Native on these platforms, they can't even handle Google Sign In properly and by the way, even if your app is 10 lines of code your app size will be over 40 MB if you don't eject, yep it's that bad, plus the performance is regular and the loading times slow, not to mention that you're stuck with their build service which the free tier makes you wait for hours for a free build slot. It's important to note that when ejecting you don't lose the Web, you simply do expo start --web to start your dev environment and expo build:web to build a static website that you can serve with any web server. Regarding state management, don't bother with "lifting state up" philosophies mixed with Context API to manage your state, lifting state is a great pattern and helps your codebase, Context is great to avoid prop-drilling, but NEVER mix them to achieve app-wide state management, for that, simply go for Redux or MobX, the hype is all about Redux, but I consider MobX far better in many aspects. However, as you're getting new into this I would recommend you start with Redux AND PLEASE grab yourself npm install @manaflair/redux-batch so that you can batch updates and don't bring your app to a crawl. Forget that "connect HOC" thing with React-Redux, don't bother for a second with it, go with Hooks and useSelector and useDispatch and the likes, it will make your code SO much cleaner and smaller. Adopt clean and new Hooks philosophy, avoid writing class components as much as possible and write function components augmented with Hooks.

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Needs advice
on
React NativeReact Native
and
Vue NativeVue Native

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!!!

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Replies (1)
Barry Hylton
Recommends
on
Vue NativeVue Native

Vue Native is definitely production-ready in my experience. I've used both, have apps built with both in production right now, and both are fine technologies. As far as I can recall, there's nothing in RN that you can't do in VN. Given that, I would say go with "the devil you know".

That said, the one downside of VN over RN is that there are a lot more people using RN last I checked, so there are likely more resources readily available.

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Needs advice
on
FlutterFlutter
and
React NativeReact Native

Hi, I'm a web dev and am using Electron for a desktop app. Now I have to develop a mobile app with the following features:

  • Posting/uploading files by users, private messaging between users, download files, moderation of the uploads, push notification of new posts.
  • Mods can ban users and delete files.
  • Share buttons from the library folder of the user phone.
  • When a user uploads a photo, a pencil tool for deleting staff on the pic.

Which tool is better for such a project?

Thanks in advance

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Replies (2)
Lee Dydo
Technology Development Manager at Outform · | 5 upvotes · 382.4K views
Recommends
on
React NativeReact Native

Given your experience in electron I think the shortest hop is going to be React Native. Especially since half of the requirements are server-side. Google is doing a pretty great job bringing up Flutter and the tooling is pretty great. For me however, dart seemed like quicksand and not everything is in its final home. React Native is mature, and considering my cursory analysis of your experience and the low complexity of this project, you've got quite a lot of room to grow into Javascript Land. Ultimately, my recommendation is always "play with both, see what you like, and get to know the documentation and the community." Keep your head on a swivel and set aside time to peek greener pastures, but spend most of your time delving deeply into what you're already doing.

But yeah, go with React Native first, get bored of it, learn what the shortcomings are through experience and then see if something else is really more attractive or just a new shiny.

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Varun Sharma
CTO at Nugen Computer & I.T. Services · | 5 upvotes · 382.3K views
Recommends
on
React NativeReact Native

Well, I will personally recommend to go for React Native as I have worked in both of them. React native has big community and it is easy to opt as compared to Flutter. There no doubt about the fact that Flutter is a great framework for developing both Android/IOS apps. However, you should have some experience to go for the same. Both will require prior knowledge as for React Native you have to go through Javascript first with which you are already familiar and for Flutter you need to go through Dart. So being familiar with Javascript you should go for React Native. You can go expo which has lot of inbuilt functionalities for the React Native developers.

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Needs advice
on
FlutterFlutterIonicIonic
and
React NativeReact Native

Hi, we are an early startup (with an iPOC prototype) but need to get started on our MVP, and our tech developers in India recommended a hybrid, and they use Ionic, then we spoke with a software company in the US and he recommended Flutter or React Native. Any advice or input for us on the differences between these? Our app will need Bluetooth GPS for "near me" and social media sharing reviews capability, and also link on the backend with businesses. Thanks in advance for any help you can give!

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Replies (6)
Dario Alves
Arquiteto de Software at Senior sistemas · | 2 upvotes · 495K views
Recommends
on
React NativeReact Native

Maturity, Community, Facility, Libs React Native is the principal platform of mobile cross-platform development today, Flutter is it's a promise.

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Ahmad Khan
Recommends
on
FlutterFlutter

I would never recommend you to go with Ionic, Because of the User experience it provides is subpar. Flutter is most promising, Can be easily used to develop great user experience in no time. React native is also good, but it's phasing out in my opinion, while Ionic has already phased out. Flutter also provides great developer experience, resulting in fast and productive developers. I would have to press hard to think of a CON about flutter when recommending it for your needs.

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Recommends
on
IonicIonic
at

I don‘t have practical experience with flutter but between ionic and react native I‘d say both a perfectly viable options and we have used both for a number of production apps. We normally go with ionic on capacitor because we build a lot of pwa/web apps so we can use the same code for all. We don‘t use much of ionic elements, we do most styles on our own.

The comments that the user experience is bad I cannot agree with. A well designed and developed ionic apo can hardly be distinguished from a native app. But obviously that depends also on the usecase and type of app.

I hope this helps

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Recommends
on
FlutterFlutter

Flutter is built on DART which is written in GO. GO compiles to binary. Hence is faster than any java based framework. It provides superior performance and has a simplified UI process for designing apps.

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Kevin Lücke
Recommends
on
FlutterFlutter

It depends also on your team skills. Flutter is fast to learn, fast to develop with and the performance is much better in comparison to React. If your team is already highly skilled in React Native it could be the better option - if not Flutter is my 100% recommendation. We rapidly prototype and deliver MVPs with Flutter since two years.

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Nicolas Kovacs
Recommends
on
FlutterFlutter

Even if React Native is older (I didn't say mature) you should go for Flutter, It's works really well and the developer experience is great (auto-completion, plugin etc). I spent years with React Native and now I am using Flutter and I don't regret It. Even if you have to learn a new language, It's pretty simple even more If you know some OOP, Java and Javascript ES6 syntax in some case. One other advantage is the facility to design app in Flutter, you have widgets for everything and you can adapt any design made by your designer. For example you can't make a simple custom box shadow with React-Native ...

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Decisions about MEAN and React Native
Thuan Nguyen
FE Lead at SOLID ENGINEER · | 5 upvotes · 619.9K views
  • Javascripts is the most populated language in the world.
  • Easy to learn & deployed production
  • Fast development
  • Strong community
  • Completed Documents
  • Native performance with lower RAM used.
  • Easy to handle native issues by using native code like Java / Objective C
  • Powered by Facebook.
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Nick Skriabin

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.

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Aleksandr Filatov
Contract Software Engineer - Microsoft · | 2 upvotes · 395.1K views

I've done some Hybrid Mobile apps with both technologies Apache Cordova and React Native and described my experience in my blog.

In a few words, I would suggest to use each technology in accordance what what is your current code base and what do you want to achieve.

React Native is a great option if you need that extra edge in performance with multi-threading and native UI rendering. Or you already have a web app based on React which you want to port to mobile.

On the other hand, if you have an existing web application code and you want to reuse some or all, including the ability to use web third-party libraries, then Cordova is the best option.

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Pros of MEAN
Pros of React Native
  • 86
    Javascript
  • 62
    Easy
  • 58
    Nosql
  • 52
    Great community
  • 50
    Mongoose
  • 50
    Modularity
  • 48
    Open source
  • 37
    Organized
  • 32
    Simple
  • 31
    Boilerplate
  • 10
    AngularJs
  • 9
    CLI
  • 9
    It's simply awesome
  • 8
    Cutting edge tech
  • 7
    Passport
  • 6
    It's a great new exciting stack
  • 6
    Yeoman
  • 6
    Docs
  • 5
    Friendly & Fun
  • 4
    Great Flexibility ;)
  • 4
    The WordPress of javascript apps
  • 3
    Genius
  • 2
    Modular
  • 2
    Scalable
  • 2
    JavaScript only
  • 1
    Growing Community
  • 1
    It's fun and has great potential
  • 1
    Gulp
  • 1
    Because i can write everything using javascript
  • 1
    Fast
  • 0
    The best
  • 211
    Learn once write everywhere
  • 171
    Cross platform
  • 167
    Javascript
  • 122
    Native ios components
  • 69
    Built by facebook
  • 65
    Easy to learn
  • 45
    Bridges me into ios development
  • 39
    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 MEAN
Cons of React Native
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 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

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    What is MEAN?

    MEAN (Mongo, Express, Angular, Node) is a boilerplate that provides a nice starting point for MongoDB, Node.js, Express, and AngularJS based applications. It is designed to give you a quick and organized way to start developing MEAN based web apps with useful modules like Mongoose and Passport pre-bundled and configured.

    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.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    What companies use MEAN?
    What companies use React Native?
    See which teams inside your own company are using MEAN or React Native.
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    What tools integrate with MEAN?
    What tools integrate with React Native?

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    Blog Posts

    What are some alternatives to MEAN and React Native?
    Mode
    Created by analysts, for analysts, Mode is a SQL-based analytics tool that connects directly to your database. Mode is designed to alleviate the bottlenecks in today's analytical workflow and drive collaboration around data projects.
    Node.js
    Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.
    Django
    Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.
    ASP.NET
    .NET is a developer platform made up of tools, programming languages, and libraries for building many different types of applications.
    Laravel
    It is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. It attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, and caching.
    See all alternatives