Angular vs React: Popularity
A year ago I wrote “Angular vs. React: Show me the Money”. I claimed that Angular practically owns the enterprise market in regards to single page applications. At least here in Switzerland AngularJS was a de-facto standard for enterprise SPA projects and Angular could inherit that momentum.
I think this is about to change. For creating modern SPAs there are viable alternatives to Angular.
Most of the courses I taught in 2017 were Angular courses. But lately I get increasing requests for React courses and coaching from companies with traditional enterprise environments.
Of course we all live in our own echo chamber.
I tried to look beyond my echo chamber and find some indicators about the popularity of Angular and React.
This post is part of a series. Check out the other posts in Observations about Angular vs. React.
Public Usage
There are many examples of known companies using or promoting React. Some prominent examples are:
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
- Airbnb: https://www.airbnb.com/
- Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/home
- Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/node/2528919011
- Apple: https://developer.apple.com/documentation
- Microsoft: https://outlook.live.com and also as base for a development library http://dev.office.com/fabric
I had a hard time finding relevant public sites using Angular. There are many sources hinting that Angular is widely used internally at Google:
But Google is using Angular in a very different way than the rest of the Angular community.
Downloads
Looking at npm downloads React is a clear winner:
However traditional enterprise software projects often use a corporate registry for software artifacts. If Angular is more popular in enterprise environments this could explain less downloads from the public npm registry.
Surveys
VisionMobile claims in their “State of the Developer Nation Q1 2017” that Angular is more Popular than React:
This report is based on 21’200 developers in over 160 countries.
The “State of JavaScript 2016” claims a higher usage rate and much higher satisfaction rate of React compared to Angular.
This report is based on 20’000+ developers.
Update Dez 2017: The State of JavaScript 2017 Report claims:
“Vue is making big gains on the back of Angular’s diminishing popularity”
In the Stackoverflow Developer Survey 2017 React is the most Loved Framework/Library:
This report is based on 64’000 developers.
Update Dez 2017: Thoughtworks Technology Radar 2017 moves Angular from the “hold” category into “trial”:
“We’re moving Angular into the Trial ring in this Radar, to signify that some of our teams now consider it a solid choice. Most of our teams, however, still prefer React, Vue or Ember over Angular.”
Github
React has more than double the stars of Angular on Github:
Stackoverflow
Stackoverflow reports a dramatic increase in Angular usage:
Angular has more questions and followers on Stackoverflow than React:
Community
Just a final fun fact: Below is the most clapped comment on the Angular Blog-Post that announced the release of Angular 5:
