Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

StackBlitz VS Create React App

Compare StackBlitz VS Create React App 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.

StackBlitz logo StackBlitz

Online VS Code Editor for Angular and React

Create React App logo Create React App

Create React apps with no build configuration
  • StackBlitz Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-20
  • Create React App Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-18

StackBlitz features and specs

  • Speed
    StackBlitz is known for its quick load times and fast editing capabilities, making it ideal for rapid development and testing.
  • Ease of Use
    The interface is intuitive and user-friendly, allowing developers to get started quickly without a steep learning curve.
  • Zero-Setup
    Users can write, compile, and run code directly in the browser without any setup or configuration required.
  • Integrations
    StackBlitz integrates seamlessly with GitHub, allowing for easy import and export of repositories.
  • WebContainers
    StackBlitz uses WebContainers to run Node.js applications in the browser, providing a near-native development experience.
  • Collaboration
    Real-time collaboration features allow multiple users to work on the same project simultaneously, similar to Google Docs.

Possible disadvantages of StackBlitz

  • Limited Plugins
    Unlike traditional IDEs like VSCode or IntelliJ, StackBlitz has a limited ecosystem of plugins and extensions.
  • Online Dependency
    StackBlitz requires an internet connection to function, which can be a limitation for developers who need to work offline.
  • Performance
    For very large projects or those requiring extensive computational resources, performance may degrade compared to local development environments.
  • Mobile Accessibility
    While StackBlitz is accessible on mobile devices, the user experience is not as optimized as it is on desktop browsers.
  • Limited Framework Support
    Although StackBlitz supports many popular frameworks, it doesn't support all frameworks or versions, which could be limiting for some projects.
  • Storage and Persistence
    Files and data are stored in the cloud, which might raise concerns around data privacy and persistence for some users.

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.

Analysis of Create React App

Overall verdict

  • Create React App is a good choice for developers looking for a straightforward way to start React applications without delving into setup configurations. It's a robust, flexible tool for beginners and those who appreciate productivity and ease of use over micromanaging build setups.

Why this product is good

  • Create React App is widely appreciated for streamlining the setup of new React projects. It abstracts away the complex configurations of tools like Webpack and Babel, allowing developers to focus on building applications rather than managing build processes. It offers a strong development environment with features like hot reloading, a development server, and support for the latest JavaScript features. Additionally, it provides a sensible set of defaults and is maintained by the React team, ensuring compatibility and access to the latest React updates.

Recommended for

  • Beginners who are new to React and want to start building projects quickly.
  • Developers who want to focus on app development rather than configuration details.
  • Teams that require a standardized project setup to streamline the development process.
  • Projects that do not require a highly customized build process, as Create React App might be restrictive for advanced use cases that need significant flexibility.

StackBlitz videos

StackBlitz - Online Code Editor For Angular and React - Introduction

More videos:

  • Review - Using Stackblitz for html css javascript, make websites, web development

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 StackBlitz and Create React App)
Text Editors
100 100%
0% 0
Javascript UI Libraries
0 0%
100% 100
Programming
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
36 36%
64% 64

User comments

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Reviews

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

StackBlitz Reviews

  1. Has almost everything I need

    I've started using this as my main IDE for new projects when I'm trying things out. If it keeps getting better at the rate it has been, it'll be even better than coding locally.

    ๐Ÿ Competitors: replit
    ๐Ÿ‘ Pros:    Easy to get started and operate|Fast|Supports common extensions|Works with most npm packages
    ๐Ÿ‘Ž Cons:    Still not as good as local development|Can be hard to debug|Build times can be slower than local

12 Best Online IDE and Code Editors to Develop Web Applications
All applications created on StackBlitz also get deployed automatically on their servers! So, this Angular toy app I just created is hosted automatically on https://angular-yvyi2j.stackblitz.io/. Most likely, the URL is still working (will load slowly, though, as youโ€™d expect when hosted for free)!
Source: geekflare.com
Best Online Code Editors For Web Developers
StackBlitz claims to allow you to code the future in your browser. And after trying it, Iโ€™m confident youโ€™ll agree that this web application is extremely useful for coders.
Source: techarge.in

Create React App Reviews

We have no reviews of Create React App yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Create React App might be a bit more popular than StackBlitz. We know about 121 links to it since March 2021 and only 112 links to StackBlitz. 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.

StackBlitz mentions (112)

  • RS-X: Framework-agnostic reactive state and expressions for JavaScript/TS
    Managing reactive state and dependent computations in JavaScript can get complex, especially when combining asynchronous and synchronous data. RS-X is a library that allows you to bind expressions to plain objects and makes the parts of the model used by those expressions fully reactive. Dependent computations automatically update when the underlying data changes. RS-X is framework-agnostic. While it can drive UI... - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Show HN: I combine Htmx, LiveView and SolidJS for interactive server components
    I like htmx, LiveView, React and Solid. They are great at different points, so I try to combine them in Solv (Stateless Offline-capable LiveView) and write a prototype to show the benefits. Solv's main idea is that stateless servers keep client's state in a volatile cache. It enables server components that are also interactive, which is best of both worlds between LiveView and htmx. Then fine-grained reactivity is... - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Show HN: Solv โ€“ Stateless Offline-Capable LiveView โ€“ Prototype 03
    I like htmx, LiveView, React and Solid. They are great at different points, and this is a prototype trying to combine them. Solv's main idea is that stateless servers keep client's state in a volatile cache. It enables server components that are also interactive, which is best of both worlds between LiveView and htmx. Then fine-grained reactivity is added to achieve efficient DOM updates + minimal payload size.... - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • AutoView - turning your blueprint into UI components (AI Code Generator)
    In the code editor tab (powered by StackBlitz), navigate to the env.ts file and enter your OpenAI key. Run npm run generate in the terminal to see how @autoview generates TypeScript frontend code from example schemas derived from both TypeScript types and OpenAPI documents. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • 22 Unique Developer Resources You Should Explore
    URL: https://stackblitz.com What it does: An online IDE for coding, previewing, and deploying web apps instantly. Why it's great: Rapidly spin up projects without local setups โ€” great for experimentation. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
View more

Create React App mentions (121)

  • Understanding Docker multi-stage builds
    Let's start by preparing a sample application that we want to place in a Docker image. This will be a web application created using the React framework and its create-react-app tool. It will generate a code template and configuration, allowing us to focus on the image creation aspects. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Those Golden Era of React...๐Ÿ‘ฉโ€๐Ÿ’ปโ˜บ๏ธ
    This project was bootstrapped with Create React App. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year 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 / over 1 year 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 / over 1 year 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 / almost 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing StackBlitz and Create React App, you can also consider the following products

CodeSandbox - Online playground for React

React - A JavaScript library for building user interfaces

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

React.run - Quick in-browser prototyping for React Components!

CodePen - A front end web development playground.

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