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Sandpack by CodeSandbox VS Create React App

Compare Sandpack by CodeSandbox VS Create React App and see what are their differences

Sandpack by CodeSandbox logo Sandpack by CodeSandbox

Sandpack is a toolkit for building live coding experiences that run fully in the browser.

Create React App logo Create React App

Create React apps with no build configuration
  • Sandpack by CodeSandbox Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-03
  • Create React App Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-18

Sandpack by CodeSandbox features and specs

  • Real-time Collaboration
    Sandpack allows developers to collaborate in real-time, enabling teams to work together efficiently without dealing with latency or desynchronization issues.
  • Easy to Embed
    Sandpack makes it easy to embed live code examples in documentation, blog posts, or tutorials, enhancing the learning and sharing experience.
  • Customizable Environment
    Developers can customize their development environment to suit their specific needs by choosing different bundlers, editors, and themes.
  • Integration with CodeSandbox
    Sandpack seamlessly integrates with CodeSandbox, allowing users to switch between simplified live previews and full-featured development environments.
  • Open Source
    Being open source, Sandpack encourages community contributions, ensuring continuous improvement and support from a broader group of developers.

Possible disadvantages of Sandpack by CodeSandbox

  • Limited Language Support
    Sandpack might support fewer programming languages compared to other development platforms, potentially limiting its usability for some projects.
  • Performance Constraints
    The performance of Sandpack might be constrained by browser limitations, affecting the speed and responsiveness of larger projects or complex applications.
  • Learning Curve
    New users may face a learning curve when adapting to Sandpack's environment and features, especially if they are used to other development tools.
  • Dependency on Internet Connection
    As a web-based tool, Sandpack requires a stable internet connection for optimal performance, which could be a drawback in areas with unreliable connectivity.

Create React App features and specs

  • Ease of Setup
    Create React App provides a simple command to quickly set up a new React project. This reduces the time required for initial configuration.
  • Zero Configuration
    The tool comes with a large set of defaults out of the box. You don't need to configure Webpack, Babel, or other build tools manually.
  • Best Practices
    It encapsulates a lot of best practices for building React applications, ensuring you start off on the right foot.
  • Development Server
    Includes a local development server with hot-module reloading powered by Webpack, which improves the development experience.
  • Community Support
    As a Facebook-backed project with a wide user base, Create React App benefits from extensive documentation and community support.
  • Testing Setup
    Initial Jest configuration is included, providing a straightforward way to start writing and running tests.
  • Production Optimizations
    Built-in optimizations for production builds, such as code splitting and minification.

Possible disadvantages of Create React App

  • Limited Customization
    While the zero-configuration approach is convenient, it can be limiting if you need to modify the underlying configurations (Webpack, Babel, etc.).
  • Monolithic
    Create React App is a single monolithic package, which can make it difficult to understand or change certain aspects without ejecting.
  • Eject Complexity
    Ejecting from Create React App exposes all underlying configurations, which can be overwhelming and increase the complexity of your project.
  • Dependency Management
    Because it abstracts away many details, you may not be aware of what dependencies are being used in your project.
  • Less Control
    Advanced users may find Create React App restrictive as it abstracts many details and does not easily allow for deep customization.
  • Performance Overhead
    For very small applications, the built-in tooling might be overkill and add unnecessary complexity and performance overhead.

Sandpack by CodeSandbox videos

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Create React App videos

Why You Should Stop Using Create React App | React.js Todo List | Code Review #4 Part 2

More videos:

  • Review - Create React App Explained

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Sandpack by CodeSandbox and Create React App)
Developer Tools
16 16%
84% 84
Javascript UI Libraries
0 0%
100% 100
Open Source
100 100%
0% 0
Text Editors
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Create React App seems to be a lot more popular than Sandpack by CodeSandbox. While we know about 120 links to Create React App, we've tracked only 8 mentions of Sandpack by CodeSandbox. 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.

Sandpack by CodeSandbox mentions (8)

  • Inside the Box: August Community Update
    Sandpack static file support πŸ–ΌοΈ β€” You can now serve static files inside a Sandpack instance! This beta feature allows serving SVGs, fonts, images, and much more, which helps take isolated, interactive code examples to a new level! - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • This weird IFRAME thing wasted my 2 days (and counting...)
    But as soon as I wrote the first iteration, I got to know that it wasn't a cakewalk. The page I was trying to capture screenshot of did not render the preview as soon as it loaded. I am using Sandpack by codesandbox to render react/nextjs components and it takes around 35-40 seconds to load up the preview(it runs every thing on machine[WASM baby], such a 😎 cool tech). - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Celebrating Hacktoberfest With Tips for Open-Source
    For us at CodeSandbox, we stand by it as a company but also as individuals. We released our browser editor, Sandpack, and parts of Nodebox as open source and we want to give back any time we can! - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • I spent 5 months building a free leetcode for React/Frontend πŸŽ‰
    As for the portal itself then I was thinking of making another post that explains how the site is built. But sandpack by codebox is the standard solution for live code execution. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Creating fluffy trees with Three.js
    Https://sandpack.codesandbox.io/ Sandpack is what they're using. Go check out the docs, and I'm sure there's plenty of tutorials if you search it up. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

Create React App mentions (120)

  • Those Golden Era of React...πŸ‘©β€πŸ’»β˜ΊοΈ
    This project was bootstrapped with Create React App. - Source: dev.to / 12 days ago
  • You should know this before choosing Next.js
    I could totally see how you'd arrive there. Backstory: create-react was a starter boilerplate for React built and maintained by Facebook. This was when webpack was the standard and just getting a local development environment to "hello world" for React could be challenging.[1] That project was depreciated and the popularity of the Next.js site framework for react projects (plus I certainly assume heavy lobbying... - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • Updating my website's tech stack in 2025
    My website's previous iteration was built in 2021. It was bootstrapped using (the now deprecated) Create React App and it took approximately 2 months to build. The home page included a bunch of photos that I had taken myself of my desk and keyboard as background for several sections and it included most of the information on the website. In the middle of the page I put the SkillsTerminal (which also features in... - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Micro-libraries need to die already
    This is just a discourse based on "I need to churn out something, I need that fast and I didn't start in the web game when Backbone and E4X were a solid corporate choice". If you are not in a hurry, work in a solid team and have a good attention span, a lot of clickbait idiocy around JS may not happen. I'm presenting you one of countless examples: a lot of coding bootcamps teach React, maybe with TS, maybe with... - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • 45 NPM Packages to Solve 16 React Problems
    Create-react-app -> Building a single-page application. Good for beginners. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Sandpack by CodeSandbox and Create React App, you can also consider the following products

replit - Code, create, andlearn together. Use our free, collaborative, in-browser IDE to code in 50+ languages β€” without spending a second on setup.

NativeExpress - The ultimate React Native & Expo boilerplate with everything you need to build, launch, and monetize your mobile app as fast as possible. Including step-by-step submission guides and all the resources you need to submit your app to the stores

Runops - Run one-off scripts as production-ready automations

React - A JavaScript library for building user interfaces

CodeSandbox - Online playground for React

React Boilerplate - Offline-first, highly scalable foundation for your next app