Over the past decade, website development has reached new heights, due to the inception of a new-age tech stack. A large-scale surge has been seen in building website development in past years and so it has led to making way for many JavaScript frameworks.

ReactJS is one of the JavaScript frameworks brought by Facebook in 2013, which became instantly famous with time because of its adaptiveness and its reusable components. Despite its popularity, React was considered slow because of its virtual DOM and big comprehensive file structure due to its core implementation, especially for large applications.

The drawbacks of React provided a path for another framework, named Preact alternative to React, tailored for certain types of applications. Preact has gained a lot of attention quite rapidly as one of the go-to frameworks of any developer due to its lightweight, simple API, and small size. It gets along with fast build times and compatibility with React, hence it is good for constructing high-performance apps. The popularity of Preact is reflected in the fact that, at the time of this writing, it has 33,100 stars on GitHub and 1,799,020 weekly downloads on npm.

In this blog, we are going to discuss a few differences between Preact and React: key features, performance, ecosystem, and so on. In the end, you'll have a crystal idea of when and why you would choose either of these options for your web app development projects.

What is ReactJS?

React is a JavaScript library, managed by Facebook, used for building user interfaces. It boasts a large community and wide-reaching ecosystem, and it has become well known due to its use of the Virtual DOM, which performs some sort of optimization to only re-render parts of the UI. In many ways, React has become synonymous with developers who intend to craft complex and reactive web applications.

Key Features of ReactJS

React has some of the richest sets of features for building complex applications. Some of the important features are as follows:

1. JSX: This is an extension of syntax for JavaScript that allows the specification of HTML within the JavaScript itself, hence making it more readable and expressive.
2. Components: These are reusable UI components and composable having the ability to maintain state.
3. Lifecycle Methods: These are hooks into the component lifecycle where code could be executed at particular points of the component's life.
4. State Management: It is what enables React's functionality to provide a dynamic and responsive user interface.
5. Context API: Provides a way to share data throughout the component tree without explicitly passing props down via each level.

Advantages of ReactJS

1. Easy to Learn and Use: ReactJS is relatively easier to learn and use. It's well-documented, and there are a lot of tutorials and training resources available. It has become very easy for any developer who has done development in JavaScript to start understanding and creating web apps using React within a few days.
2. Creating Dynamic Web Applications Becomes Easier: Making a dynamic web application, only with the help of HTML strings, was tricky as it requires complex coding. ReactJS solved that issue and made it easier. It provides less coding and gives more functionality.
3. Reusable Components: A ReactJS web application is made up of several components. Every one of those components contains its logic and controls. These components are responsible for returning a small, reusable piece of HTML code that could be reused wherever you need it. It helps in making your apps more easy to develop and maintain because of the reusable code.
4. Performance Enhancement: ReactJS improves performance by virtual DOM. DOM is an API in cross-platform programs and deals with HTML, XML, or XHTML. Most of the developers faced the problem of slowing down performance once the DOM was updated. ReactJS solved this problem by implementing a virtual DOM.

What is Preact?

Preact is a JavaScript library designed to be an efficient and lightweight alternative to React. It’s also compatible with React, so developers can scale an MVP into a full React application if needed. Preact has a small virtual DOM and, weighing only 3KB in size, it enables quick transfers from server to client and optimizes load times. It provides a compatibility layer with React and works great as a drop-in replacement. This makes it easy for developers to incorporate into their current applications since the same code and libraries can be used but with better performance.

Key Features of Preact

Preact has many similar features to ReactJS but has an alternative focus on being lightweight. Its features include:

1. Similar JSX Support: Preact comes with support for JSX out of the box, which is a familiar development experience.
2. Native ES Module Support: Preact supports ES modules natively. The library is more conveniently loaded directly using the keyword 'import'.
3. Preact Component: Preact itself is implementing components just like React, but they will usually be much smaller.
4. Lifecycle Methods: Lifecycle methods are supported in Preact, with some naming differences and execution.
5. State Management: It is similar in many ways to React, which is a method of displaying interactive user interfaces.
6. SVG Inside JSX: With copied snippets, you could paste into your code to create complex SVG icons or illustration
7. Preact Compat: A separate package that provides a compatibility layer for existing React applications to take advantage of Preact with no heavy refactoring.

.

Advantages of Preact

1. Compatible With React: It's React compatibility makes it ideal for lightweight, feature-rich apps. Developers can implement most React capabilities with Preact and utilize Preact/Compat to pull in extra components if needed.
2. Faster Build Time: It's transpilation-free use is a major benefit. In contrast to React, developers must transpile code into JavaScript, which slows development. Preact, however, speeds up application startup. It speeds up build times, helping developers start and test ideas faster. Developers can focus on designing apps instead of learning complex frameworks due to their simple architecture.
3. Reduced Package Size: Preact is suitable for performance-focused apps because of its compact size and fast response times. Uber's web app illustrates this. Uber's app requires Preact instead of React to work with all recent web browsers and low-end smartphones.
4. Well-suited For building MVPs: Preact is excellent for fast development and response initiatives. Lightweight design and short build times make it ideal for MVPs because developers can quickly implement basic application functionality and receive product feedback. Because Preact is compatible with React, developers can simply scale MVPs into full-blown products using any essential feature from React or Preact.

Virtual DOM in React and Preact

React and Preact revolve around the virtual DOM. The virtual DOM abstracts the actual DOM, enabling fast user interface updates and displays. Both frameworks update only altered components rather than the entire UI when a component's state changes.

React's well-optimized virtual DOM has helped spread its use. It finds and applies the most efficient changes using a different method.

A lightweight virtual DOM is used in Preact. Preact's virtual DOM has React's benefits but a lower footprint. This makes Preact ideal for web projects that need space and performance.

Difference Between React and Preact

React and Preact are very popular JavaScript libraries with which one can build user interfaces, but there are some differences between them. Since React boasts a gigantic ecosystem and has a larger bundle size of 45KB, it is appropriate for complex and feature-rich applications. Given that fact alone, React has broad community support. Preact is a 3KB lightweight library, oriented to simplicity and performance; it is well-suited for smaller projects and when every millisecond of performance counts.

Contrasting with React, Preact concentrates its functionality on the core rather than having an enormous set of features, although it keeps high compatibility with the React API due to its Preact/compat layer. The choice between React and Preact for any web development project should be on balancing the comprehensive toolkit provided by React against the speed and efficiency of Preact. Both support server-side rendering and component-based architecture.

When to Use React?

React would be a good choice for complicated, enterprise-level applications that demand the widest range of features and strong ecosystem support. In cases when advanced features such as suspense, lazy loading, and the potential to use a wide array of third-party libraries are present, React is suitable.

It is suitable for projects when bundle size is less important compared to development speed and ecosystem compatibility. React is also a better choice when your team understands its conventions or if you're making enterprise-level applications that may increase greatly in the future.

When to Use Preact?

Preact was designed to help one create projects quickly, simply, and efficiently without sacrificing any of the current Web Development Techniques. Preact fits applications targeting people with slow internet or Progressive Web Apps much better, where bundle size and performance are of greater importance.

For projects that don't need the full feature set of React and whose scope is small to medium-sized, Preact is great. That's cool if you want to continue developing in a way quite similar to React but lighter.

Conclusion

In the end, with their respective benefits, React and Preact create a force to be reckoned with in modern web application development. While Preact, with its lightweight design and performance-oriented approach, seems tailor-made for projects of a smaller scale and applications sensitive to speed, React is perfect for bigger, more complex projects boasting an extended feature set and strong ecosystem.

Which one would be the best depends on your concrete project needs, expertise within your team, and the required performance. The secret to success is in having knowledgeable developers who know how to use these tools efficiently, no matter which library you decide on. Here's where working with our team as a partner can really help. With our front-end developers' proficiency with both React and Preact, your project will profit from the best of both worlds.

With our developers, you can hire experts who not only can handle the complexities of those libraries but also squeeze the most out of performance to provide great user experiences. Let's come together to revolutionize your web development projects by applying our knowledge to creating scalable, efficient, and user-friendly applications that will leave their mark in the competitive world of the internet today.