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React VS GatsbyJS

Compare React VS GatsbyJS and see what are their differences

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Contents:
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  3. » Reviews
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React logo React

A JavaScript library for building user interfaces

GatsbyJS logo GatsbyJS

Blazing-fast static site generator for React
  • React Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-19
  • GatsbyJS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-12

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).

GatsbyJS features and specs

  • Performance
    GatsbyJS pre-builds your site into static files for fast load times and instantaneous page loads thanks to features like code splitting, PRPL pattern, and Asset Optimization.
  • SEO-Friendly
    GatsbyJS generates static HTML, which helps search engines to index your site more effectively. Additionally, you have fine-grained control over metadata and other SEO optimizations.
  • Rich Plugin Ecosystem
    GatsbyJS boasts an extensive plugin ecosystem that covers a wide array of functionalities such as sourcing data from CMSs, adding analytics, integrating with various APIs, and much more.
  • Strong Community Support
    Gatsby has a robust and active community that provides ample documentation, tutorials, and support to help you get started and troubleshoot issues.
  • Secure and Scalable
    Since Gatsby sites are static, they are inherently more secure against traditional web-based vulnerabilities and can be scaled easily by deploying to a CDN.

Possible disadvantages of GatsbyJS

  • Build Time
    For larger sites, build times can become noticeably long as Gatsby rebuilds the entire site. This can be a bottleneck for frequent updates.
  • Less Suitable for Dynamic Content
    Since Gatsby generates static pages, it's less suited for applications that require real-time data updates or dynamic content unless they are integrated with client-side JS or third-party services.
  • Initial Setup Complexity
    Getting started with Gatsby can be complex for beginners unfamiliar with React and GraphQL, as it requires knowledge of these technologies.
  • GraphQL Learning Curve
    A significant part of customizing and extending Gatsby sites involves GraphQL queries, which can be a barrier for developers who are not yet familiar with GraphQL.
  • Plugin Quality Variability
    While Gatsby has a rich plugin ecosystem, the quality and maintenance of plugins can vary, requiring developers to vet the plugins they choose to integrate into their projects.

React videos

+ Add

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

GatsbyJS videos

+ Add

The Great Gatsby - Movie Review by Chris Stuckmann

More videos:

  • Review - The Great Gatsby movie review
  • Review - The Ultimate Gatsby Moving Rubber Review!

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to React and GatsbyJS)

React

GatsbyJS

Javascript UI Libraries
100 100%
Javascript UI Libraries
0% 0
CMS
0 0%
CMS
100% 100
Developer Tools
93 93%
Developer Tools
7% 7
Blogging
0 0%
Blogging
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using React and GatsbyJS. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

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

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.
Source: tms-outsource.com
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

GatsbyJS Reviews

Top JavaScript Frameworks in 2025
Gatsby JS is a free, open-source, React-based framework that is used to create static websites. It has a great ecosystem of plugins that serve various needs like sourcing data from CMSs, integrating tools, managing images using lazy loading, and more.
Source: solguruz.com
Top 10 Next.js Alternatives You Can Try
Gatsby allows you to add plugins with versatile functions and customization to increase your efficiency when developing websites. Here, you can use multiple styling approaches like Sass and CSS-in-JS library solutions to build web pages more smoothly. Moreover, using Gatsby as an alternative to Next.Js provides you with a complete learning guide to enhance your developing...
Source: www.zegocloud.com
20 Next.js Alternatives Worth Considering
A React-based maestro, Gatsby transforms the way sites come to life by hooking into a rich set of data sources. Picture this: a web that’s blazing fast, where your creations go live almost before you hit ‘publish’. That’s Gatsby for you. Inside its engine, it’s got GraphQL superpowers, making data dancing across your pages a breeze.
Source: tms-outsource.com
10 Best Next.js Alternatives to Consider Today
A React-based framework, Gatsby excels in crafting static websites renowned for their exceptional performance. Leveraging GraphQL, Gatsby efficiently pulls data from diverse sources, empowering developers to build dynamic, data-driven websites effortlessly. Its expansive plugin ecosystem allows seamless integration with various data providers, content management systems...
Source: www.saffrontech.net
20 Best JavaScript Frameworks For 2023
Gatsby lets users pull data from any data source imaginable – CMS like WordPress, Drupal, Netlify, Contentful, etc., or APIs, databases, or simple markdown. Unlike Next.js, which we discussed above, Gatsby does not perform server-side rendering. Instead, it generates HTML content on the client side during build time. As a result, Gatsby delivers blazing-fast performance,...
Source: www.lambdatest.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, React seems to be a lot more popular than GatsbyJS. While we know about 814 links to React, we've tracked only 16 mentions of GatsbyJS. 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 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 / 2 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 / 15 days ago
  • Web Development Using React Framework
    Explore the official React documentation. - Source: dev.to / 28 days 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

GatsbyJS mentions (16)

  • React SEO: How to Build Search-Friendly Pages in React
    The most famous frameworks for developing SSR applications are Gatsby and Next.js. Although there are differences between them, their main goal is similar: to allow next-generation web applications to remain blazing-fast. - Source: dev.to / 29 days ago
  • External content for GatsbyJS
    If you enjoy React and want a standard-compliant and high performance web, you should look at GatsbyJS. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Replatforming from Gatsby to Zola!
    Since around 2019 I have used Gatsby as my static site generator. Its plugin system makes it super feature extensible. It uses React under the hood which makes components easy to write and has tons of community support. Once I had a Gatsby site styled and running, publishing blog posts is fairly trivial:. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Build a Documentation Website with Gatsby in 10 Mins
    Smooth DOC is a ready-to-use Gatsby theme to create a documentation website. Creating a pro-quality website like this one takes weeks. Smooth DOC saves you time and lets you focus on the content. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Where to begin?
    I'd start with learning HTML and CSS first, then Javascript after those. There are a lot of free online resources for learning those. For websites, I use jekyll which is a great way to start off because there are a lot of community website templates that you can customize, which is great for beginners and learning. Then I'd recommend learning/moving to React. The Gatsby website generator would be good for React... Source: over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

Vue.js - Reactive Components for Modern Web Interfaces

Jekyll - Jekyll is a simple, blog aware, static site generator.

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

Hugo - Hugo is a general-purpose website framework for generating static web pages.

Svelte - Cybernetically enhanced web apps

Ghost - Ghost is a fully open source, adaptable platform for building and running a modern online publication. We power blogs, magazines and journalists from Zappos to Sky News.

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