Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

jQuery VS React Native

Compare jQuery VS React Native and see what are their differences

jQuery logo jQuery

The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript Library.

React Native logo React Native

A framework for building native apps with React
  • jQuery Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-22
  • React Native Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-10-16

jQuery features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    jQuery simplifies complex JavaScript tasks by providing easy-to-use methods, which can lead to shorter development times and cleaner code.
  • Cross-Browser Compatibility
    jQuery handles many browser inconsistencies, ensuring that your code works seamlessly across different browsers without additional effort.
  • Large Community and Ecosystem
    There is a vast community of developers who contribute plugins, extensions, and provide support, making it easier to find solutions and enhance functionality.
  • Animation and Effects
    jQuery offers built-in methods for creating animations and effects, allowing developers to enhance the user interface with minimal code.
  • AJAX Simplification
    The library provides straightforward methods for making AJAX calls, which simplifies the process of loading data asynchronously.
  • Documentation and Learning Resources
    Extensive documentation and a plethora of tutorials are available, making it easier for developers to learn and troubleshoot.

Possible disadvantages of jQuery

  • Performance Overhead
    Using jQuery can add overhead to your application due to its file size and additional abstraction, which can impact performance, especially in resource-constrained environments.
  • Relevance
    With the advent of modern JavaScript frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular, and the improvements in native JavaScript (ES6+), the need for jQuery has decreased, making it less relevant in contemporary web development.
  • Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    While basic usage is straightforward, mastering more advanced topics and optimizing performance can be challenging for newcomers.
  • Potential for Overuse
    Developers might rely too heavily on jQuery for tasks that can be efficiently handled by native JavaScript, leading to bloated codebases.
  • Maintenance and Legacy Code
    Projects heavily reliant on jQuery may face maintenance challenges as modern frameworks and practices evolve, requiring significant refactoring effort if transitioning away from jQuery.
  • Security
    Older jQuery versions have known security vulnerabilities, and continuing to use outdated versions can pose security risks. Regular updates are necessary to mitigate this issue.

React Native features and specs

  • Cross-platform development
    React Native allows developers to write code once and use it to build applications for both iOS and Android platforms, significantly reducing development time and effort.
  • Performance
    React Native uses native components under the hood, providing better performance compared to hybrid technologies like Cordova or Ionic.
  • Community support
    React Native has a large and active community, which means plenty of libraries, tools, and support are available to help developers solve problems and add features.
  • Hot reloading
    React Native supports hot reloading, enabling developers to see the results of the latest change instantly without losing the application's state.
  • Reusable components
    Developers can use React Native's component-based architecture to create reusable UI components, making code more modular and easier to maintain.
  • Strong backing
    Backed by Facebook, React Native benefits from continuous development, regular updates, and a high level of reliability and stability.

Possible disadvantages of React Native

  • Complexity for advanced features
    Implementing complex features and achieving deep integrations with native APIs may require more effort and a good understanding of native programming.
  • Performance limitations
    While React Native performs well for most use cases, it may still fall short in performance-intensive applications compared to fully native solutions.
  • Limited third-party libraries
    Some third-party libraries might not be available for React Native, or they may lack features compared to their native counterparts.
  • Platform-specific code
    Despite being cross-platform, certain features might still require platform-specific code, increasing the complexity when developing for both iOS and Android.
  • Potential for outdated documentation
    As React Native evolves quickly, some documentation or tutorials might become outdated, leading to confusion and extra effort to find up-to-date information.
  • Size of the application
    React Native applications tend to have larger file sizes compared to their native counterparts due to the inclusion of the JavaScript runtime and other dependencies.

Analysis of jQuery

Overall verdict

  • jQuery is good for simplifying and speeding up certain JavaScript tasks, particularly in projects that need to support older browsers or if you are maintaining legacy code. However, for modern web development, many of its features are now part of the JavaScript standard, diminishing its necessity.

Why this product is good

  • jQuery has been popular due to its simplicity and ease of use, providing an easier way to work with HTML document traversal, event handling, and animations. It abstracts browser differences and offers a concise API for common JavaScript operations.

Recommended for

  • Developers maintaining or updating legacy projects that already use jQuery.
  • Projects that require compatibility with older browsers not supported by modern JavaScript features.
  • Beginners learning JavaScript concepts as an additional tool to practice DOM manipulation and event handling.

Analysis of React Native

Overall verdict

  • React Native is generally a good choice for mobile app development, especially if you're looking for a cross-platform solution. Its ease of use, combined with the ability to leverage a single codebase for both iOS and Android, makes it a popular option among developers.

Why this product is good

  • React Native is considered good because it allows developers to build mobile applications using JavaScript and React, enabling code reuse between Android and iOS platforms. This can speed up development time and reduce costs. It also has a vibrant community and a strong ecosystem with numerous libraries and tools, making it easier to implement complex functionalities. Additionally, React Native provides a native-like performance for most use cases, which enhances the user experience.

Recommended for

  • Startups and small businesses looking to develop mobile apps quickly and cost-effectively.
  • Developers with a background in JavaScript and React who want to expand into mobile app development.
  • Projects that require rapid prototyping and iterative development.
  • Applications that need to maintain a shared codebase between web and mobile platforms.

jQuery videos

Quick jQuery Review

More videos:

  • Review - jQuery vs Vue, React and Angular
  • Review - Front-End Development, HTML & CSS, Javascript & jQuery by Jon Duckett | Book Review
  • Review - The Legend of jQuery in 100 Seconds
  • Review - โญ•The one book I regret not having as a beginning web developer || Jon Duckett JavaScript & jQuery

React Native videos

React Native in 2019 & Beyond

More videos:

  • Review - What Is React Native?
  • Review - Why React Native is garbage.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to jQuery and React Native)
Development Tools
39 39%
61% 61
Javascript UI Libraries
47 47%
53% 53
Libraries And Widgets
51 51%
49% 49
JavaScript Framework
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare jQuery and React Native

jQuery Reviews

Top 20 Javascript Libraries
jQuery dramatically simplifies JS programming and is easy to learn and use. It is highly extensible and makes web pages load faster. jQuery wraps up a lot of standard functions making the job of the developer easy. A JS code of several lines could be just a method to be called in jQuery. It also has many plugins to perform different tasks. Some of the features of jQuery are...
Source: hackr.io
Top 15 jQuery Alternatives To Know
The world is full of newer technologies and there are alternatives available for all of them. jQuery is no different. The above-mentioned technologies can be a good alternative to jQuery though jQuery itself has a loyal user base of its own. Overall, it depends upon the organizational skills, requirements, budget, and objective, based on which stakeholders can take a call on...
Best Javascript libraries to use in 2021
jQuery has been in the development scene for a long time and has been the unprecedented king for webpage dev. It is one of the most common libraries used throughout the world, with more than 50% of websites using jQuery for their functioning. jQuery is a library used majorly for Document Object Model (DOM) manipulation. The DOM is a tree-like structure that represents all...
Source: codersera.com

React Native Reviews

Explore 9 Top Eclipse Alternatives for 2024
Pioneered by Meta Platforms, Inc., React Native is a remarkable JavaScript framework that merges native app development with JavaScript libraries, offering a dependable solution for creating exemplary native apps for Android, iOS, and other platforms.
Source: aircada.com
Top 10 Flutter Alternatives for Cross-Platform App Development
Introduced in 2015 by Facebook, React Native is an open-source framework based on JavaScript. Being a developer-friendly framework, itโ€™s a mobile-first platform that is capable of rendering mobile apps for multiple platforms, including iOS and Android.
Exploring 15 Powerful Flutter Alternatives
React Native is an open-source UI framework for writing native Android and iOS apps using JavaScript and React. React Native does deliver excellent prototyping capabilities, however. The React framework lends itself nicely to creating basic proofs of concept and experimenting with different interaction models and UI designs with little overhead. Features like Fast Refresh...
THE BEST 34 APP DEVELOPMENT SOFTWARE IN 2022 LIST
Create native apps for Android and iOS using React. React Native combines the best parts of native development with React, a best-in-class JavaScript library for building user interfaces. You can use React Native in your existing Android and iOS projects or you can create a whole new app from scratch. Written in JavaScriptโ€”rendered with native code. React primitives render...
Top 10 Visual Studio Alternatives
React native is famous for enabling the users to develop the core native applications and offers the best quality. It does not compromise on providing the best customer services and support. The react-native components surround the codes that already exist and then interact with the native APIs. That, in turn, allows the developers to learn the development process and makes...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, React Native should be more popular than jQuery. It has been mentiond 243 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

jQuery mentions (105)

  • History of JavaScript: Browser wars, ECMAScript, Node.js, TypeScript, and React
    John Resig created jQuery at BarCamp NYC in January 2006. Its key sources of inspiration included Dean Edwards' CSSQuery library and other community projects from that time. - Source: dev.to / 7 days ago
  • How to Detect cdnjs on Any Website (API Guide)
    $ curl -s "https://detectzestack.p.rapidapi.com/analyze?url=example.com" \ -H "X-RapidAPI-Key: YOUR_KEY" \ -H "X-RapidAPI-Host: detectzestack.p.rapidapi.com" { "url": "https://example.com", "domain": "example.com", "technologies": [ { "name": "cdnjs", "categories": ["CDN"], "confidence": 100, "description": "cdnjs is a free distributed JS library delivery service.", "website": "https://cdnjs.com", "icon":... - Source: dev.to / 16 days ago
  • The Ultimate Guide to AJAX
    jQuery simplified AJAX syntax dramatically, which is why it became so popular. If you're working with a project that already uses jQuery (like many WordPress themes and plugins), its AJAX methods are very convenient. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • The Unchaining: My Personal Journey Graduating from jQuery to Modern JavaScript
    When I was building a quick frontend to the LLM game, I used jQuery to quickly whip out a prototype. Only after I was happy with it, I ported the code to the modern DOM API. As a result, I totally removed the dependency on jQuery. This whole experience makes me wonder, do people still use jQuery, in this age of frontend engineering? I took some time over the weekend to port one of my old jQuery plugins. This is... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • This One jQuery Mistake Froze Our Web Page! Here's the Fix You Need to Know
    Whenever the number of items increased, the browser became slow, sometimes even unresponsive. At first, we thought it was a server issue or maybe too much data. But no โ€” the problem was hiding inside a small line of jQuery. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
View more

React Native mentions (243)

  • Yoga: A Simple Guide to Layout in React Native
    When you build layouts in React Native, you write styles that look a lot like CSS: flexDirection, alignItems, justifyContent, and so on. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • I Built The Same App 3 Ways: No-Code, React Native, And Angular + .NET On Azure - Hereโ€™s What Nobody Tells You
    React Native hit the best balance for speed and product quality. Its official docs still position it around building native apps with React, and the project continues shipping frequent releases and improvements to the New Architecture. (React Native). - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • AI-Native Mobile Device Automation: Give Your AI Agent Eyes and Hands on Real Phones
    For apps with custom-rendered UIs โ€” React Native, Flutter, games โ€” where the accessibility tree is sparse, MobAI offers an OCR fallback that returns recognized text with tap coordinates. The agent always has something to work with. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • First Time Using GitHub CoPilot to Create a ReactNative LoginPage app. What Could Go Wrong?
    Before I started anything, the first thing I had to do was set up my environment on my MacBook, according to the directions on the ReactNative.dev site. ReactNative allows one project to create both iOS and Android mobile applications, but since I didnโ€™t want to bite off more than I could chew, I would focus on developing an app for the iPhone 16 Pro:. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Top 10 Frameworks for Hybrid Mobile Apps in 2026
    React Native is a widely used framework for hybrid mobile app development, supported by Meta. It enables developers to build cross-platform applications using JavaScript and React while delivering a near-native experience. Instead of relying on WebViews, React Native renders actual native UI components, resulting in better performance and smoother interactions. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing jQuery and React Native, you can also consider the following products

Babel - Babel is a compiler for writing next generation JavaScript.

Composer - Composer is a tool for dependency management in PHP.

jQuery UI - Curated set of user interface interactions, effects, widgets, and themes built on top of the jQuery JavaScript Library

OpenSSL - OpenSSL is a free and open source software cryptography library that implements both the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols, which are primarily used to provide secure communications between web browsers and โ€ฆ

Flutter - Build beautiful native apps in record time ๐Ÿš€

Raven.js - Raven.js is a standalone JavaScript client for Sentry.