Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

NativeScript VS React Navigation

Compare NativeScript VS React Navigation and see what are their differences

NativeScript logo NativeScript

Build truly native apps with JavaScript

React Navigation logo React Navigation

Description will go into a meta tag in <head />
  • NativeScript Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-21
  • React Navigation Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-05-25

NativeScript features and specs

  • Cross-Platform Development
    NativeScript allows developers to write code once and deploy it across multiple platforms, including iOS and Android, which saves time and resources.
  • Native Performance
    Since NativeScript directly uses native components, it delivers high performance comparable to native applications, unlike some other cross-platform solutions.
  • Rich Ecosystem
    NativeScript offers a rich ecosystem of plugins and modules, making it easy to extend functionalities and integrate with various services.
  • Single Codebase
    Maintaining a single codebase for both iOS and Android reduces development and debugging efforts.
  • Open Source
    Being open source, NativeScript has strong community support and continuous improvements driven by developers around the world.
  • Access to Native APIs
    NativeScript allows direct access to native APIs, giving developers more flexibility and control over platform-specific features.

Possible disadvantages of NativeScript

  • Steep Learning Curve
    The framework requires an understanding of native development concepts, which can be complex for new developers or those not familiar with mobile development.
  • Lack of Third-Party Components
    Compared to more mature frameworks, NativeScript has a limited number of third-party libraries and UI components available.
  • Performance Overhead
    Despite high performance, there is still some overhead compared to fully native applications due to the abstraction layer.
  • Limited Community Support
    Although the community is growing, it is still smaller compared to mainstream frameworks like React Native or Flutter, which might result in slower issue resolution and fewer resources.
  • Maintenance and Updates
    Keeping the framework and its plugins up to date with the latest iOS and Android releases can be challenging and resource-intensive.

React Navigation features and specs

  • Flexibility
    React Navigation provides a highly customizable navigation solution that allows developers to design intricate and dynamic navigation patterns suited to the specific needs of the app.
  • Integration
    It integrates seamlessly with the rest of the React ecosystem, taking advantage of native components and leveraging React's component-based architecture.
  • Community Support
    Being one of the most popular navigation libraries for React Native, it has strong community support, with numerous resources, tutorials, and plugins available.
  • Ease of Use
    React Navigation's API is intuitive and straightforward, which makes setting up basic navigation quick and easy even for those new to React Native.
  • Redux Integration
    It offers excellent integration with Redux, allowing developers to manage navigation state along with the application state if needed.

Possible disadvantages of React Navigation

  • Performance Overhead
    While it is flexible, React Navigation can introduce performance overhead in certain complex navigation structures compared to some other solutions like native navigation.
  • Complexity for Advanced Features
    Implementing advanced navigation patterns can become complex and may require a steep learning curve to fully utilize the library’s capabilities.
  • Frequent Changes
    The library is under active development, which can lead to frequent updates and changes, potentially causing maintenance overhead for existing projects.
  • Default Transitions
    Out of the box, the default transition animations might not meet the needs of certain high-performance or highly-animated applications, requiring additional customization.

NativeScript videos

NativeScript VS React Native 2019 | performance | community | plugins

More videos:

  • Review - Which one is best for you? Flutter, React Native, Ionic or NativeScript?
  • Review - 7 Things to Know When Learning NativeScript

React Navigation videos

React Native Tutorial #19 - React Navigation Setup

More videos:

  • Tutorial - React Navigation 5 Complete Tutorial - React Navigation made easy | Bottom Tabs | Side Drawer
  • Tutorial - How to Use React Navigation 5 in React Native (Part 1) - Navigators

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to NativeScript and React Navigation)
Development Tools
75 75%
25% 25
JavaScript Framework
85 85%
15% 15
Developer Tools
69 69%
31% 31
Javascript UI Libraries
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using NativeScript and React Navigation. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

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

NativeScript Reviews

Top 10 Flutter Alternatives for Cross-Platform App Development
With the framework, developers get the option to craft a completely native experience even without interfering with the user interface. Those who are familiar with JavaScript can leverage NativeScript to its fullest.
Top 5 Flutter Alternatives for Cross-Platform Development
NativeScript is a powerful framework that empowers developers to build Web, iOS, Android, and Vision Pro apps on a single codebase. If you’re comfortable with web development, especially Angular or VueJS, you’ll find NativeScript accessible.
Source: www.miquido.com
10 Best Open Source Firebase Alternatives
The native apps you develop use the richness of the mobile platform and offer the performance you need for mobile devices. NativeScript uses native APIs and controls to render, allowing you to create more sophisticated apps compared to using a hybrid approach.
10 Best Tools to Develop Cross-Platform Desktop Apps 
NativeScript doesn’t require Angular or Vue.js but works better when used together for cross-platform app development. This runtime framework implements JavaScript, its superset TypeScript and Angular Native, and can render a variety of apps, be they gaming, streaming, geolocation, or chat apps. The user interface is in XML and CSS. A single, reusable codebase can be applied...
Top JavaScript Frameworks For Mobile App Development
NativeScript is an open-source, cross-platform, free mobile framework that assists in the creation of a truly native Android and iOS mobile apps. These apps can be built with JavaScript, Angular, Vue.js or TypeScript. Programming using NativeScript reduces the development time and lines of code, to a large extent. Many organizations globally have been implementing it because...
Source: medium.com

React Navigation Reviews

We have no reviews of React Navigation yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, React Navigation should be more popular than NativeScript. It has been mentiond 54 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.

NativeScript mentions (20)

  • What are JavaScript Engines?
    NativeScript is a good example of a runtime built specifically for cross-platform native mobile application development built using JavaScript. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Gio UI – Cross-Platform GUI for Go
    A long time ago, nativescript[1] seemed to be a strong alternative to reactnative. Is that still the case? [1] https://nativescript.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
  • Ask HN: Flutter or React Native?
    I'm curious about this topic as well. I would also add NativeScript[1] in the comparison. [1] https://nativescript.org/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Svelte Native: The Svelte Mobile Development Experience
    This is not so much the Svelte equivalent of React Native as it is just NativeScript (https://nativescript.org). - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Mobile App Development for both iOS and Andriod
    There is also https://nativescript.org/ which would allow you to use Vue (or several other frameworks) to build a mobile app. Used it myself a while back for an iPad app using Vue 2 and it was pretty straightforward. It seems like there have been quite a few improvements since then so might be worth a look. Source: about 2 years ago
View more

React Navigation mentions (54)

  • 🚀 Why You Should Start Building Cross-Platform Apps with React Native & Expo Right Now!
    ✅ React Navigation –For smooth screen navigation. Guide. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • 5 Easy Methods to Implement Dark Mode in React Native
    Deciding on a navigation library is one of the most discussed topics in the React Native community. One of the top advantages of React Navigation is theme support. This offloads the implementation of making themes from developers. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • An Android Developer's Guide to React Native
    No Built-in System: Unlike Android's core Intent and Activity systems, React Native doesn't have a built-in navigation framework. Instead you need to chose a 3P library, React Navigation being the most widely adopted solution. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Must-Know React Native Libraries for Faster Mobile App Development in 2025 🚀
    2. React Navigation – Seamless Navigation Made Easy 🗺️. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Journeying from React to React Native
    Navigation: While in React you might typically using React Router for web navigation, React Native has its own React Navigation library. This is because React (Web) typically uses URL-based navigation, where different components are rendered based on the current URL path. Whereas React Native uses stack-based navigation, mimicking the native mobile app experience. Screens are ‘stacked’ on top of each other, with... - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing NativeScript and React Navigation, you can also consider the following products

React Native - A framework for building native apps with React

Ionic - Ionic is a cross-platform mobile development stack for building performant apps on all platforms with open web technologies.

CodePush - CodePush is a cloud service that enables Cordova and React Native developers to deploy mobile app updates directly to their users' devices. 

Apache Cordova - Platform for building native mobile applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript

Native Navigation - Application and Data, Mobile, and Cross-Platform Mobile Tools

Onsen UI - HTML5 Hybrid Mobile App UI Framework - work with Angular, React, Vue, Meteor & pure JavaScript. Material & Flat design.