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React Native VS Material

Compare React Native VS Material and see what are their differences

React Native logo React Native

A framework for building native apps with React

Material logo Material

A beautiful graphics framework for Material Design in Swift
  • React Native Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-10-16
  • Material Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-11

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  • Potential for outdated documentation
    As React Native evolves quickly, some documentation or tutorials might become outdated, leading to confusion and extra effort to find up-to-date information.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.

Material features and specs

  • Design Flexibility
    Material provides a wide range of UI components that can be easily customized, which makes it versatile for creating modern and visually appealing user interfaces.
  • Cross-Platform Support
    Material is designed to be used across different platforms including iOS, macOS, and Android, allowing developers to maintain a consistent look and feel.
  • Active Community
    The project has an active community, which can be beneficial for finding help, tutorials, and additional resources.
  • Comprehensive Documentation
    Material's documentation is extensive and well-organized, providing clear instructions and code examples for implementing its features.

Possible disadvantages of Material

  • Learning Curve
    Beginners may find the framework overwhelming due to its vast range of features and functionalities, which can take time to fully grasp.
  • Performance Overhead
    Incorporating such a rich framework could potentially introduce performance overheads on smaller projects due to its comprehensive nature.
  • Dependency Management
    Keeping up with updates and managing dependencies can be challenging, particularly if the project integrates different frameworks or libraries.
  • Limited Native Feature Integration
    Developers may encounter limitations when attempting to integrate Material with some native device features, requiring additional workarounds.

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.

React Native videos

React Native in 2019 & Beyond

More videos:

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

Material videos

Material Review Board

More videos:

  • Review - Mechanics of Material Final Exam Review
  • Review - Glassjaw - Material Control ALBUM REVIEW

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to React Native and Material)
Development Tools
99 99%
1% 1
Design Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Javascript UI Libraries
100 100%
0% 0
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 React Native and Material

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...

Material Reviews

15 Fabulous Alternatives to Bootstrap, Foundation and Skeleton
Like the Material UI, Materialize is also designed based on Googleโ€™s Material Design. This responsive framework works with great speed, and the concentration is specified on building awesome user-experience.
Source: www.agriya.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, React Native seems to be more popular. 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.

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 / 4 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 / 4 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 / 5 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 / 8 months ago
View more

Material mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Material yet. Tracking of Material recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

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

jQuery - The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript Library.

Material UI - A CSS Framework and a Set of React Components that Implement Google's Material Design

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

Bootstrap - Simple and flexible HTML, CSS, and JS for popular UI components and interactions

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

Ant Design - An enterprise-class UI design language and React implementation with a set of high-quality React components, one of best React UI library for enterprises