React, and Svelte are two frontend JavaScript frameworks that enable developers to create web apps efficiently. Stack Overflow’s 2021 developer poll has to React in the top rank for web frameworks, but Svelte has a great deal to offer and should not be underestimated.

We will examine the primary differences between React and Svelte and some of Svelte’s merits that may be obscured by React’s dominance in the frontend community.

Svelte vs React 2024

React’s virtual DOM vs. Svelte’s compiler

React interprets application code using a virtual DOM at runtime. It encapsulates a certain amount of overhead code that will execute in the browser’s JavaScript engine to monitor and update the DOM. The virtual DOM monitors changes and determines the optimal approach for implementing them in the actual DOM.

Svelte is a compiler that converts application source code to JavaScript. This guarantees that no framework code is injected into the browser while your application is executing in the DOM.

At the time of compilation, Svelte converts the components into a very efficient imperative code that surgically changes the DOM. Svelte has proved that outstanding performance can be achieved without virtual DOM. Therefore they opted to eliminate it.

Because all of your Svelte code is reduced to minimum JavaScript before it reaches the browser, you can build code with exceptional performance.

Simplicity of usage

When considering whether to study React or Svelte, the simplicity of use of these two frameworks is an essential consideration.

Even though it is increasingly popular, understanding React might be challenging when you must master JSX and CSS-in-JS to construct even the most fundamental apps.

Svelte is easier to understand and get started with than React since its primary components are basic JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Svelte adheres closely to JavaScript’s traditional web development methods and offers just a few additions to HTML, making learning much more straightforward.

Server-side rendering

Server-side rendering (SSR) is the capability of an application to turn HTML files on the server into a fully rendered HTML page for the client’s browser. When a user requests a page, the server delivers fully rendered HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to the client.

SSR has several benefits, including a quicker initial page load time and enhanced SEO. Additionally, SSR sites are ideal for consumers with a sluggish Internet connection since they may see rendered HTML while JavaScript is being processed.

React may be the victor in this comparison with Next.js, the most popular framework for developing SSR apps.

Svelte contains SvelteKit. SvelteKit is a full-stack Svelte web development framework. Like Next, SvelteKit includes routing, layouts, API endpoints, static site creation, server-side rendering, and other capabilities.

There are various distinctions between Next and SvelteKit, one of which is how they handle photos. The Image component of Next makes image manipulation a breeze for developers. No longer are we responsible for compressing and optimizing photos; Next, they do these tasks for us.

Next has an additional benefit over SvelteKit due to its popularity and community. Moreover, Next has 83.3k GitHub stars, while SvelteKit has 7.5k stars. Next’s developer community is more active, resulting in more templates, tools, courses, and articles.

Performance

Svelte converts your code to highly optimized vanilla JavaScript when executing a Svelte application’s production build. This implies that no framework code is introduced at runtime, which enhances the overall speed of the application by reducing the browser’s workload.

Svelte updates the DOM without a mediator or sophisticated reconciliation processes. The Svelte compiler monitors changes to variables and modifies HTML appropriately. It scans your code for components dependent on your variables, then changes those components when the values change. Therefore, Svelte is reactive without requiring a third-party API.

Developer recognition

React remains the most widely used web framework. However, this study was not confined to frontend frameworks; it also covered ASP.NET, Ruby on Rails, Laravel, and other frameworks.

According to the State of JS 2021 poll, developer satisfaction with Svelte is more significant. Eighty-four percent of developers are pleased with React, whereas 90 percent are pleased with Svelte. In the same poll, Svelte was chosen as the most popular framework.

Bundle size

React’s bundle size is much larger than Svelte’s, another nice feature of Svelte. This significantly impacts performance, particularly in low-powered devices or CPU-intensive apps. When gzipped, Svelte has a reduced bundle size. Svelte’s gzipped version is 1.6KB, whereas React’s gzipped version is 42.2KB.

Conclusion

The Svelte environment is undergoing fast expansion. With the launch of Sapper, which is Svelte’s equivalent of Next.js, and Svelte Native for developing native mobile apps, Svelte has expanded its capabilities.

Svelte continues to attract the attention of developers year after year. With Rich Harris’s move to Vercel, Svelte now has the financial and community support of the Vercel ecosystem and is poised for rapid growth with this new product. Never before has it been more important to pay greater attention to Svelte.

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Also read: NestJS vs. ExpressJS | Nextjs vs Svelte | Solidjs vs React |