React Native vs. Ionic: A Comparison of Pros and Cons

Many of the “X vs. Y” articles we post on our blog, like Python vs. Node.js or Python vs. Java, don’t have a clear winner in the strict sense of the word.

However, in the case of React Native vs. Ionic, we’re not comparing apples and oranges. As far as mobile app development goes, the winner is quite clear and it is React Native.

Granted, Ionic is not all bad, especially in certain use cases, but most of the time it is simply worse than React Native. There are two exceptions to this:

1. no one on your development team is familiar with React;
2. you already have a web app based on Angular that could be wrapped with Ionic and distributed to app stores.

Ionic may also be more efficient as far as your budget is concerned, but that’s about it.

Read on to learn:

• the basic theory of mobile app development,
• what React Native and Ionic are,
• how they compare in terms of performance,
• the advantages and disadvantages of both.