Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

NW.js VS React

Compare NW.js VS React and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

NW.js logo NW.js

nwjs

React logo React

A JavaScript library for building user interfaces
  • NW.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-02
  • React Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-19

NW.js features and specs

  • Cross-Platform
    NW.js supports building applications that run on Windows, macOS, and Linux, enabling developers to write code once and deploy across multiple platforms.
  • Node.js Integration
    Provides deep integration with Node.js, allowing developers to leverage the vast Node.js ecosystem and modules within their applications.
  • Chromium Embedded
    Utilizes the Chromium engine to render the user interface, ensuring modern web standards compliance and high performance.
  • Full Access to Native APIs
    Offers access to all native system calls through Node.js, enabling developers to create rich desktop applications with full OS-level capabilities.
  • Single Process Model
    Allows developers to start with a simple single process model which is easy to debug and manage.

Possible disadvantages of NW.js

  • Large Application Size
    The bundling of Chromium with the application often results in larger file sizes compared to native applications.
  • Memory Consumption
    Applications may use more memory as they run instances of both Node.js and Chromium, potentially taxing system resources.
  • Performance Overhead
    There might be additional performance overhead compared to native applications due to the abstraction layers of Node.js and Chromium.
  • Limited Native UI Components
    Relies on web technologies for UI, which might not have the same look and feel as platform-native components.
  • Frequent Updates
    Keeping up with frequent updates from Chromium and Node.js can be challenging, requiring continuous maintenance to ensure compatibility and security.

React features and specs

  • Component-Based Architecture
    React encourages the creation of reusable UI components, which can be leveraged to build complex user interfaces efficiently. This promotes better code organization and separation of concerns.
  • Virtual DOM
    React uses a virtual DOM to optimize and accelerate the process of updating the browser’s DOM, significantly improving application performance.
  • Strong Community and Ecosystem
    React has a large and active community, which means plenty of third-party libraries, tools, and community support are readily available to assist developers.
  • JSX Syntax
    React’s JSX syntax allows developers to write HTML structures within JavaScript code, making the code more readable and easier to debug.
  • Unidirectional Data Flow
    React promotes a unidirectional data flow, which helps maintain the predictability and ease of debugging, especially for larger applications.
  • Extensive Documentation
    React's official documentation is comprehensive, well-organized, and provides numerous examples and tutorials to help developers get started and advance their skills.

Possible disadvantages of React

  • Steep Learning Curve
    React comes with a steep learning curve for beginners, especially those unfamiliar with JavaScript ES6 and JSX syntax.
  • Boilerplate Code
    Setting up a React project often requires boilerplate code, which can be cumbersome and time-consuming compared to simpler frameworks.
  • Fast-Paced Development
    React and its associated libraries evolve rapidly, necessitating frequent updates and learning new patterns, which can be overwhelming for developers.
  • Complexity in Larger Applications
    As a React application grows in size, managing state and props across components can become complex, sometimes necessitating additional state management libraries like Redux or Context API.
  • SEO Challenges
    React, being a JavaScript library, can present challenges for search engine optimization (SEO) due to Googlebot's limitations in executing JavaScript, although this can be mitigated with server-side rendering (SSR) or static site generation (SSG).

NW.js videos

NW.js vs Electron. Что выбрать для работы NW или Electron? JavaScript Desktop

React videos

What Is React?

More videos:

  • Review - NOT Worth Buying? Nike EPIC REACT FLYKNIT 2 vs Epic React REVIEW
  • Review - NIKE REACT INFINITY RUN FLYKNIT REVIEW | The Ginger Runner

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to NW.js and React)
Development Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Javascript UI Libraries
0 0%
100% 100
Rapid Application Development
Developer Tools
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 NW.js and React

NW.js Reviews

Electron Alternatives﹣5 Best JavaScript Frameworks for Desktop Apps
Although it’s the oldest Node.js-Chromium framework in the AppJS, Electron and NW.js trio, it’s not nearly as mature as its competition. Because it has lost its momentum, it may not be the best choice for new projects.
Source: brainhub.eu
Frameworks & Tools to Develop Cross-Platform Desktop Apps – Best of
Cons: Some hard work features that are available in Electron, such as auto-updater and crash-reporting, don’t comes built-in with NW.js. That said, building with NW.js requires more efforts and extra modules – unlike other solutions.

React Reviews

Top JavaScript Frameworks in 2025
ReactJS is a JavaScript based UI development library which is developed by Facebook. It is an open-source framework which is widely used by developers for web development. One of the major reasons why React.JS is widely popular is because it uses Virtual DOM. This enables developers to create web applications faster.
Source: solguruz.com
The 20 Best Laravel Alternatives for Web Development
React’s the cool kid on the block, turning heads since Facebook dropped it at our feet. Building dynamic user interfaces feels less like coding, more like crafting with this JavaScript library.
Top 9 best Frameworks for web development
React uses a virtual DOM to optimize the performance of UI updates and follows a one-way data flow for easy tracking of data changes. With its active community and abundance of third-party resources and libraries, React is a solid choice for web development.
Source: www.kiwop.com
9 Best JavaScript Frameworks to Use in 2023
React can be used as a base in the development of single-page or mobile applications. However, React is concerned with rendering data to the DOM, so creating React apps usually requires additional libraries for state management, routing, and interaction with an API.
Source: ninetailed.io
JavaScript: What Are The Most Used Frameworks For This Language?
Some of its top features include server-side rendering, automatic code splitting, client-side routing, built-in CSS support, static site generation and API routes. Overall, Next.JS is a powerful and flexible framework that provides developers with a simple and intuitive way to build complex React applications with ease. It is widely used in the React community and has a...
Source: www.bocasay.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, React seems to be a lot more popular than NW.js. While we know about 814 links to React, we've tracked only 33 mentions of NW.js. 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.

NW.js mentions (33)

  • Linux 6.9 Set to Drop the Old NTFS File-System Driver
    > FUSE drivers are slow, but "wildly slow" is an overstatement. I can confirm this, I've played RPGMaker M{V,Z} games natively by swapping out the copy of NWJS¹ it shipped with and running it through a CIOPFS² mount. 1: https://nwjs.io/ 2: https://www.brain-dump.org/projects/ciopfs/ / https://github.com/martanne/ciopfs. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • How to play this on a Chromebook through Linux Itch.io
    Go to this page to download NW.js https://nwjs.io/. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • What would be the current recommended way to publishing an html5 game on steam?
    In addition to the other options here you could look at nw.js. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Console Commands, Kill Count And Saving System
    I don't think you can access it by default, but crosscode runs on [nw.js](https://nwjs.io). I know there is a way to get the chromium devtools to open, but I haven't been able to. Source: about 2 years ago
  • DuckieTV not launching
    Or browse the NWJS home page at https://nwjs.io/. Source: about 2 years ago
View more

React mentions (814)

  • Indie Hacking with Open Source Tools: Innovating on a Budget
    One inspiring example is a developer building a "Todoist Clone" using a combination of React, Node.js, and MongoDB. The developer tapped into open source libraries and community support to create a highly responsive task management application. This project underscores how indie hackers can achieve rapid development and adaptation with minimal budget – a theme echoed in several indie hacking success stories. - Source: dev.to / 4 days ago
  • Next.js Localization: How to Build a Multilingual Website with Next-Intl
    Next.js is a very popular framework built on top of the React.js library and it provides the best Development Experience for building applications. It offers a bunch of features like:. - Source: dev.to / 17 days ago
  • Web Development Using React Framework
    Explore the official React documentation. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Monorepo Tutorial With Lerna, Storybook & Next.js
    We’ll be creating the components package inside the packages directory. In this monorepo package, we’ll be building React components which will be consumed by our Next.js application (front-end package). - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Migrating from AngularJS to React
    After evaluating our options including upgrading from AngularJS to Angular (the name for every version of Angular 2 and beyond) or migrating and rewriting our application in a completely new JavaScript framework: React. We ultimately chose to go with ReactJS. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing NW.js and React, you can also consider the following products

Electron - Build cross platform desktop apps with web technologies

Vue.js - Reactive Components for Modern Web Interfaces

NeutralinoJS - Neutralino is a lightweight application development framework.

Next.js - A small framework for server-rendered universal JavaScript apps

Proton Native - A React environment for cross platform native desktop app

Svelte - Cybernetically enhanced web apps