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React VS Purecss

Compare React VS Purecss and see what are their differences

React logo React

A JavaScript library for building user interfaces

Purecss logo Purecss

A set of small, responsive CSS modules that you can use in every web project.
  • React Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-19
  • Purecss Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-18

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).

Purecss features and specs

  • Lightweight
    Pure.css is extremely lightweight, under 4KB when minified and gzipped, which makes it very fast to load.
  • Responsive
    Pure.css comes with a set of responsive design modules that can be easily integrated, ensuring that your web pages look good on all devices.
  • Modular
    The library is modular, meaning you can include only the parts that you need, which keeps your project lean.
  • Easy Integration
    Pure.css can be easily dropped into existing projects without much hassle, allowing for quick and effective styling.
  • Customization
    Pure.css is designed to be easily customizable, enabling developers to tweak the styles to fit their project's needs.
  • CSS Vanilla Approach
    Pure.css sticks to a vanilla CSS approach, making it easy for developers who are familiar with standard CSS.

Possible disadvantages of Purecss

  • Limited Components
    It offers fewer UI components compared to more comprehensive frameworks like Bootstrap or Foundation.
  • Basic Design
    The default styles are minimalistic, which may not meet the aesthetic requirements for more visually rich applications without additional customization.
  • Lack of JavaScript Utilities
    Pure.css focuses strictly on CSS, providing no JavaScript utilities or plugins for additional functionality.
  • Community Size
    The community around Pure.css is smaller compared to more popular frameworks, which means there are fewer third-party resources and extensions available.
  • Learning Curve for Customization
    While basic usage is simple, customizing Pure.css to fit specific needs may require a deeper understanding of CSS.

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

Purecss videos

CSS Flexbox layout with inline-block fallback using PureCSS grids

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to React and Purecss)
Javascript UI Libraries
100 100%
0% 0
CSS Framework
0 0%
100% 100
Developer Tools
94 94%
6% 6
JavaScript Framework
100 100%
0% 0

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 and Purecss

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

Purecss Reviews

22 Best Bootstrap Alternatives & What Each Is Best For
Pure.css offers a set of small, responsive CSS modules that you can use in every project. These include grids, menus, buttons, tables, and other essential components. Despite its minimalistic design, Pure.css works well with other libraries such as Normalize.css, and can be used alongside any JavaScript library or framework.
Source: thectoclub.com
15 Top Bootstrap Alternatives For Frontend Developers in 2024
Pure is a lightweight CSS framework like Bootstrap and a Bootstrap competitor designed with a mobile-first approach. Built on Normalize.css, it provides styling and design to native HTML components, as well as the most popular UI elements.
Source: coursesity.com
9 Best Bootstrap Alternatives | Best Frontend Frameworks [2024]
Pure.css is a CSS framework bunch of CSS modules clustered together. The crux of Pure lies in its weight. It is incredibly lightweight, as it has been crafted keeping mobile devices in mind, in which a small file size is imperative. The framework is purely CSS in nature, doing justice to its name.
Source: hackr.io
Top 10 Best CSS Frameworks for Front-End Developers in 2022
At only 3.7 KB minified, Pure is the most compact CSS Framework around. Out of all the CSS frameworks, Pure will help you create awesome CSS Code without sacrificing space. You can add pure-min.css through free unpkg CDN in your code to use Pure. You can also install Pure using a package manager like npm, Grunt, etc.
Source: hackr.io
15 Best CSS Frameworks: Professional Bootstrap and Foundation Alternatives
We consider Pure a minimalist alternative to Bootstrap that offers every module a beginner needs (navigation menu, grid, tables, etc.).

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, React seems to be a lot more popular than Purecss. While we know about 814 links to React, we've tracked only 9 mentions of Purecss. 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 / 1 day 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
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Purecss mentions (9)

  • Rapidly build efficient sites with Neat, the minimalist CSS framework
    Neat lacks a header and navigation; this by design, and may be enough for simple sites. If you want more capability, Pure.css is good to try too https://purecss.io/. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • CSS framework for Dioxus + mobile
    I found Pure.css and it looks nice but maybe there is something better? Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Is a website built completely on HTML, CSS and JS enough?
    Some examples: - https://simplecss.org/ - https://purecss.io/ (I've used this one for over a decade and works great). Source: over 2 years ago
  • CSP nonce with Node.js and EJS
    Now, to test our CSP, we just have to load some external resources. Let's bring on Pure.css and Lodash. Update index.ejs to look like this :. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • Bootstrap vs Tailwind
    Personally I don't like either. Bootstrap seems too bloated and cookie-cutter, and Tailwind is inline styles and clutter. Lately I've used Bulma (CSS framework) and Buefy (Bulma + Vue) on a couple of projects. I also like the look of Pure CSS, but I haven't used it. Source: about 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

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

Vue.js - Reactive Components for Modern Web Interfaces

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

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

Materialize CSS - A modern responsive front-end framework based on Material Design

Svelte - Cybernetically enhanced web apps

Tailwind CSS - A utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom user interfaces.