Difference between Astro JS vs React JS?
What is React JS?
React is a open-source JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It is developed by Facebook (Meta organization), aims to simplify UI designing and development process. ReactJS uses component based architecture which simplify building small, large scale, or even complex applications. ReactJS provides minimal and solid feature set to kick-start a web application.
Features of React JS
- Component-based architecture
- Only Client-side rendering supported.
- Comparatively slower than Next.js and Astro
- Also supports development of mobile applications.
What is Astro JS?
Astro is a new JavaScript framework optimized for static site generation, with support for server-side rendering. Astro focuses of optimizing content focused website which are not regularly updated. For example, once a blog page has been written and published, its contents are unlikely to be modified, making it appropriate for serving from static hosting.
Features of Astro
- Uses Island Architecture to reduce JavaScript load.
- Highly optimized for static content as no JavaScript is loaded by default.
- Supports SSG by default, but can also be configured to support SSR
- Markdown/MDX support
- Includes optimization for images and other assets
Features Comparison Astro vs React JS
Here is tabular comparison of Astro vs React JS features.
| Feature | Astro.js | React.js |
|---|---|---|
| Framework Type | Static site generator | JavaScript UI library |
| Rendering | SSG by default; supports SSR with adapters | Client-side rendering (CSR), SSR, SSG with Next.js |
| Component Support | Supports multiple UI frameworks (React, Vue, Svelte, Solid, etc.) | Uses only React components |
| Performance | Highly optimized for static content; ships zero JS by default | Performance depends on hydration and JavaScript bundling |
| Server-side Support | Requires adapters for SSR | Requires Next.js or another framework for SSR |
| Hydration | Islands architecture loads JavaScript only where needed | Full React hydration by default |
| State Management | No built-in state management (relies on framework components) | Uses React hooks, Context API, Redux, etc. |
| Routing | File-based routing (like Next.js) | Requires React Router or a framework like Next.js |
| Bundling & Optimization | Optimized for minimal client-side JS; removes unused JavaScript | React apps can be optimized with tools like Webpack, Vite |
| Middleware | No built-in middleware support | No middleware by default (handled by frameworks like Next.js) |
| Deployment | Works well with static hosts (Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare) | Requires a hosting service that supports React apps |
| Best Use Case | Content-heavy sites, blogs, documentation | Interactive UI designing, SPAs, dashboards |
Architecture Comparison Astro vs React JS
Here we made detailed comparison of Astro and Next.js architecture using flowchart.
React JS Architecture
The flowchart below, shows the working of React JS framework. React uses JavaScript-XML (JSX) file to create UI components, which is a combination of HTML and JavaScript code. Then react component combines with CSS to create a virtual DOM in browser.
Astro Architecture
The flowchart shows the working of Astro framework. Astro supports any frontend framework for UI code, which then combined with backend code to generate full stack website. The static websites can be hosted on platforms like GitHub, Firebase, and AWS S3, while server-rendered websites are commonly hosted on Vercel, Netlify, or AWS S3.
