Choosing Cross-Platform Frameworks for Mobile App Development
With the growth of mobile apps on the market, many businesses struggle to choose the best mobile app development framework. Seeing how much the market has changed in recent years, this decision is far from straightforward, especially when it comes to React Native vs Ionic.
Each development framework has its own features, performance metrics, and ecosystems, all of which impact how efficiently an app reaches users on platforms like the App Store and Google Play.
Today we will React Native vs Ionic vs Cordova and focus on aspects like performance, debugging capabilities, and current popularity.
What is React Native?
React Native, created by Facebook (now Meta), is one of the best examples of the mobile app framework done right (Yes, we’re fans!). It lets developers create mobile applications for iOS and Android at the same time. The architecture of this framework is designed for optimal performance, closely mimicking native app behaviour using native components. As a result, React Native was chosen by many big players in the market.
React Native app components are reusable across projects, which shortens development time. More importantly, as teams don’t need to create components for each version of the app, development costs are also lower while the project’s high performance remains unaffected.
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What is Ionic?
Ionic is an open-source SDK that allows developers to build high-performance web and cross-platform applications using a single codebase. Many companies use Ionic since integrates easily with Angular, React.js, Vue or any other framework, making it incredibly versatile.
Ionic has an extensive component library that covers all of the elements like buttons, lists slides, and date pickers. It’s a great choice for developers with different technology experience and expertise levels.
What is Cordova?
Cordova is another mobile development platform that is open-source and free.
It uses standard web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, or Javascript, etc to create cross-platform applications. Usually, web applications do not have native functionalities such as an accelerometer, camera, or GPS, but with Cordova, you can package web applications according to the format of the device.
However, Cordova’s relevance has declined in recent years. Microsoft officially announced in 2020 that it would cease support for Apache Cordova in Visual Studio, encouraging developers to transition to alternative solutions like React Native, Flutter, or Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). While Cordova is still maintained by the open-source community, its ecosystem has slowed, and many developers have moved to mobile frameworks with better performance and support.
Some might think all cross-platform frameworks work the same, and while the results they provide might be closely tied, their processes and functionalities couldn’t be more different.
Native vs Hybrid
Before comparing Ionic and React Native for mobile app development, you need to understand, that they provide different final products.
With React Native, you’re able to develop applications with almost native performance for both Android and iOS using just one codebase. This approach ensures your app can integrate with each platform’s unique features and design guidelines with little to no problem.
Ionic app is a hybrid that uses JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. While projects developed with it can be used on mobile, web, or different devices, Ionic doesn’t have access to native features such as contacts, GPS, and cameras. Still, the Ionic app can gain access to native device features thanks to Capacitor, a cross-platform app runtime.
Both of the frameworks are constantly evolving, so the differences between them are much more blurred now than in the beginning.
If you want our recommendation, use React Native when high app performance is important for your business, you need complex device integration, or prioritize user experience. Ionic will be a great choice if you want to cover more platforms with a single codebase, or if your app doesn’t require intensive use of device capabilities.
Performance
As we mentioned earlier, React Native provides the look and feel of native apps, as it works around the same building blocks that are used in them.
React Native is known for great performance and responsiveness, especially for apps needing complex device integration. With the New Architecture, React Native introduces Fabric (a new rendering system) and TurboModules (a more efficient way to handle native modules), resulting in lower latency and improved performance. These upgrades, combined with Hermes, React Native’s lightweight JavaScript engine, contribute to faster startup times, lower memory consumption, and smaller app sizes compared to JavaScriptCore. This makes apps using React Native even more efficient.
Ionic excels in the look, feel, and UI interactions of an app across all platforms. Originally relying on Cordova, Ionic has now fully transitioned to Capacitor as its runtime engine. Capacitor provides a more modern and flexible approach to accessing native functionality, improving performance and developer experience. The latest release, Ionic 8, introduces several enhancements that contribute to improved performance and user experience:
Revised iOS 17 Design Specifications: Ionic 8 updates components to align with the latest iOS design guidelines, ensuring a consistent and native-like appearance on Apple devices.
Built-in Light and Dark Palettes: The framework now includes built-in light and dark themes, allowing developers to easily implement adaptive styling that responds to user preferences.
New Picker Component: Ionic 8 introduces a new Picker component, offering a more intuitive and customizable selection interface for users.
Ionic offers significant advantages in terms of development speed and cross-platform compatibility. Still, it’s performance might not be enough for apps with heavy UI interactions or intensive use of native features, compared to React Native’s capabilities in that area.
React Native offers an advanced debugging environment that integrates with popular development tools. One of its best features is the React Developer Tools, which lets you inspect the React component hierarchy in the same way they would inspect a web DOM. It provides valuable insights into the props and state of each component.
React Native also supports Hot Reloading and Live Reloading, speeding up the development process by allowing developers to see changes in real-time without rebuilding the app.
The refined Live Reloading feature allows developers to compile and reload files faster than ever before. It’s like having a real-time conversation with your codebase, where you can see the impact of your changes instantly.
Kornel Kwiatkowski, React Native Expert
Debugging in Ionic
Ionic apps, being hybrid, can be debugged in a few different ways depending on the platform and the stage of development. Since Ionic projects are built with web technologies, devs can use browser developer tools to inspect the app, debug JavaScript, and analyze performance, like they would with any web page.
For debugging the app as a native package on emulators or real devices, Ionic integrates with Capacitor plugins, so you can use native SDKs like Android Studio and Xcode for debugging. These tools offer additional debugging capabilities, including breakpoint setting, memory inspection, and performance profiling.
Ionic also benefits from Chrome DevTools when running in the browser or on a device, enabling detailed inspection and debugging of the WebView used by the app. For performance analysis and to debug network requests, Ionic developers can utilize tools like Safari’s Web Inspector when running apps on iOS devices.
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Both React Native and Ionic provide comprehensive debugging tools tailored to their respective development environments. React Native offers a closer-to-native debugging experience with tools like React Developer Tools, while Ionic takes advantage of its web technology foundation for effective debugging with familiar web development tools and native SDKs for more detailed inspection on devices.
React Native vs Ionic Framework – Popularity
According to Stack Overflow React Native ranks higher than Ionic among developers:
Source: Stack Overflow 2024 Survey
The information on StackShare shows that 799 companies reportedly use Ionic in their tech stacks, including Accenture, doubleSlash, and TACTFUL.ai.
At the same time, 2284 companies reportedly use React Native in their tech stacks, including Shopify, Instagram, and Discord. From these numbers we can see the RN is more popular among businesses.
On GitHub, RN has over 120k GitHub stars and more than 24K GitHub forks. Ionic, on the other hand, has over 50k stars and 13k forks.
React Native vs Cordova
Please note that the information in this section is no longer accurate. Ionic, which previously relied heavily on Cordova for accessing native device features, transitioned towards using Capacitor, which was designed to offer a more modern and streamlined way to build hybrid applications. Although interest in Cordova decreased and Microsoft App Center deprecated Cordova support in 2022, we decided to leave this section to provide our readers with relevant information.
To make a comparison between React Native and Cordova, first, we should look into how both of these perform.
Build Performance
If you compare their builds then you might notice that Apache Cordova is better in terms of build time and it also produces smaller built packages. React Native takes more time to build performance and also produces large packages. Still, there are other benefits that give RN an edge over other platforms. For instance, it has built-in camera support while you need to add a plugin in Cordova to offer native functionality.
App Performance
Since the foundation of the Cordova was written according to standard web technologies, it needs more time to render an app.
In React Native mobile app UI components are linked with native UI views which allow it to render quickly. What’s more, React Native also utilizes multi-threading technology due to which a separate thread runs, this functionality does not exist in Cordova.
Debugging Capabilities
Cordova does not come with a pre-packaged debugging environment. You have to go through the documentation and prepare a local environment for debugging purposes.
While in React Native you can debug JavaScript code via Chrome Developer Tool. Now, there is a standalone application with which you can drill through the React Native projects.
There is also an extra menu for React Native developers which gives them access to the list of features to make their work a lot easier. Some features are:
Live Reloading
Hot Reloading
Performance Monitoring
Element Inspector
System Trace
React Native vs Ionic for Cross-Platform and Native App Development
Now that you know the difference between React Native vs Ionic, time to ask the big question. Which is the best mobile app framework?
React Native can deliver a native experience in both aesthetics and functionality. Mixed with the ease of incorporating native code for optimized performance, it is a great solution for many. Ionic is a good solution for apps with a broader focus. Think fast cross-platform development and deployments where top-tier performance isn’t the primary concern.
In the end, the choice between React Native and Ionic should be influenced by project requirements and development budget. Given our clients’ tendency to prioritize cross-platform mobile apps as a crucial component of their business model, requiring the utmost in performance and user experience, React Native may be the right framework for most developers in our professional opinion.
