Best Frontend Frameworks for Web Development in 2024

1. Single-page apps (SPAs): Applications that load a single HTML page and dynamically update the content as the user interacts with the application. Frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue are commonly used for building SPAs.
2. Social media platforms: Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are built using frontend frameworks like React and Angular. These frameworks allow for real-time updates, data binding, and interactive user interfaces.
3. Content management systems (CMS): Frontend frameworks like WordPress and Drupal provide a powerful foundation for building websites and web applications. They offer features like content management, user management, and plugin integration.
4. Progressive web applications (PWA): PWAs are web applications that are designed to work seamlessly across different devices and platforms. Front-end frameworks like React and Angular provide the necessary tools for building PWAs, including service workers, offline support, and responsive design.
5. Mobile applications: Frontend frameworks like React Native and Ionic enable developers to build mobile applications for iOS and Android platforms using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Benefits of Frontend Frameworks

 While you don't necessarily need a frontend framework to build a website or web application, especially if your project is relatively simple and doesn’t require a lot of functionality or complexity, picking one brings numerous benefits to the development process:

1. Reduced Development Time. Frontend frameworks provide pre-designed components and tools, which can save a lot of development time and effort;
2. Excellent Performance. The majority of frontend frameworks include optimization features, such as code splitting and lazy loading, which significantly improve the app performance of your website or web application;
3. Consistency and Maintainability. Frameworks often have established design patterns and best practices, which ensure a more consistent and maintainable codebase;
4. Strong Community Support: Popular frontend frameworks have large and active communities of developers who contribute to the development and improvement of the framework, providing resources, documentation, and support to other developers;
5. Faster Time-to-market: Frameworks offer reusable components that can be easily integrated into different projects, reducing the time and effort required to create new applications.

Top Frontend Frameworks to Use for Web Development in 2024

 The latest edition of The State of JavaScript report clearly indicates that the market for JavaScript frameworks is stabilizing, with the top three players remaining unchanged for the past four years. React, Angular, and Vue.js continue to reign as the most widely used frameworks.

However, some interesting developments are occurring outside of the top three, particularly with the emergence of Svelte. This open-source software has experienced an impressive surge in usage, almost doubling its user base. Its fourth-place ranking comes as no surprise, as it offers a fresh approach to creating frontend web applications. With Svelte currently ranking as the most “interesting” framework for the second year in a row, with over 65% interest, it's likely that it will continue to gain popularity and become one of the most commonly used JavaScript frameworks in the future.                   

 Now, let’s have a detailed look at top frontend frameworks and evaluate their advantages and disadvantages.

#1 React

 React JS is a popular, open-source JavaScript library that allows developers to create interactive interfaces. Thanks to its origins at Facebook, React JS benefits from a wealth of resources, including detailed documentation, a large pool of contributors, and ongoing updates and improvements. As a result, React JS has become a go-to choice for web developers looking to build robust, rich user interfaces that can be easily integrated into a wide range of applications.

Advantages React JS

• Reusability of components allows developers to reuse code, making it easier to manage and maintain;
• Virtual DOM enables efficient and swift updates of UI without requiring a full page refresh. This results in faster rendering, excellent performance, and UX;
• React JS is highly scalable, making it a great choice for building large and complex projects. Its modular structure allows developers to easily add or remove components as needed;
• The framework has a large community that regularly contributes to the framework;
• Developers proficient in JavaScript can master React in a matter of days.

Disadvantages of React JS

• The React environment is growing so fast that frequently the documentation is not keeping up with it;
• JSX syntax, state management, and virtual DOM may be hard to understand and learn for inexperienced developers;
• React JS is primarily focused on the view layer of an application, which means it may not be the best choice for applications that require complex backend logic or server-side rendering.

When to Use and Not

 React JS is a perfect choice for building complex UIs that require a lot of dynamic updates and for developing single-page apps that require high performance and responsiveness. However, it might not be the best choice for building a simple static website with minimal interactivity and apps that have complex backend logic or require a lot of server-side processing.

#2 Angular

Angular is a UI framework based on TypeScript and established by Google. It’s a component-based framework that possesses an extremely strong typing system that enables it to statically analyze the code and build dynamic web and single-page applications. Mastering this framework is difficult and time-consuming due to its MVC architecture. 

 Advantages of Angular

• Two-way data binding makes it easier to develop and maintain applications as any changes made to the model are automatically reflected in the view and vice versa;
• Component-based architecture makes it easy to reuse code and create modular apps;
• Angular has built-in support for dependency injection, which makes it easy to manage dependencies and services within an application;
• Angular has a large developer community and a lot of resources available online, including comprehensive documentation, tutorials, and third-party libraries.

Disadvantages of Angular 

• Angular has a steep learning curve, especially for software engineers who are not familiar with TypeScript or reactive programming;
• The framework can be slower than competitors, especially for small projects;
• Angular applications can have a large bundle size, which can affect the application's performance and load times.

When to Use and Not

 Angular is a top frontend framework if you want to build large and complex apps that require a lot of functionality and features, real-time data updates, and a dynamic user interface. However, it might not be the most popular frontend framework for simple apps with basic functionality.

#3 Vue.js

Evan You, a former Google employee with years of experience working with Angular, decided to create a lightweight framework that combines the best features of Angular, React, and Ember. The result was Vue.js, a highly versatile framework that excels at interface-related tasks and is particularly well-suited for complex front-end operations.

 Advantages of Vue.js

• Vue aims to achieve maximum results with minimal effort. Its single-file components contain all necessary code, including JS, CSS, HTML, and more. With just a few lines of code, developers can achieve great functionality;
• Vue can be seamlessly integrated into other frameworks like React or Angular, allowing developers to easily customize their projects. The integration process is straightforward and one of the key factors contributing to Vue's popularity;
• Vue's use of the MVVM architecture significantly improves the UI experience by simplifying event-driven programming for UI elements.

Disadvantages of Vue.js

• Vue is not backed up by any tech giant yet, therefore is mainly used for building single-page applications and UIs rather than big complex apps;
• A relatively small core library can make it harder to manage dependencies and ensure stability;
• Language barrier with plugins and components.

When to Use and Not Vue.js

 Being easy and flexible, Vue.js is a perfect choice for the rapid development of prototypes, small to medium-sized projects, building reactive interfaces, and handling complex front-end operations. It’s not the most popular frontend framework for enterprise huge projects, projects that require a high level of customization, and extensive third-party libraries.

#4 jQuery

jQuery is one of the earliest frontend frameworks but still remains among the most used tools. It’s mainly used to optimize the interactivity of user interfaces. By leveraging jQuery's versatile API, developers can efficiently manipulate CSS and DOM elements, manage event handling, execute animations, facilitate AJAX communication, and perform other functions that contribute to seamless user experience.

Advantages of jQuery

• jQuery provides a simple and consistent API for working with the DOM, which makes it easier to write cross-browser compatible code;
• It’s a lightweight library that makes it easy to include in web pages without affecting load times;
• A large community of developers and a vast amount of resources and proper documentation are available online.

Disadvantages of jQuery

• jQuery can be slower than writing native JavaScript code, especially for complex applications or large-scale projects;
• DOM APIs are outdated.

When to Use and Not jQuery

 jQuery is mainly used for building desktop JavaScript applications or older websites that heavily rely on it. However, we wouldn’t recommend using it for scalable or complex web applications that require a modular and organized code structure and mobile-first or responsive design projects.

#5 Emberjs

Similarly to Angular, Ember is a component-based framework that offers two-way data binding. It follows the MVVM model for UI architecture which allows developers to create highly functional and interactive websites. 

 Advantages of Emberjs

• Ember comes with a product-based architecture that has proactive features which makes it capable of delivering a better UX in large apps;
• It allows caching and querying in a very easy way, also eliminating the overhead of fetching, storing, retrieving, and caching the data from the client side;
• A powerful data binding system allows for easy two-way binding between data models and UI elements.

Disadvantages of Emberjs

• Being a huge data library, Ember lags behind lightweight frameworks like React and works a bit slowly;
• The learning curve is steep and time-consuming because of its inflexible structure. Though, once it’s mastered, it can be used to fulfill the demands of very complex web applications;
• It is not as popular as other JavaScript frameworks like React or Angular, which can make it harder to find resources or hire developers proficient in Ember.js.

When to Use and Not Emberjs

 Ember is mainly used for creating single-page applications and is also suitable for long-term projects. Though it’s not the best frontend framework for web development of small projects.

#6 Backbone.js

Backbone is a JS library available with a RESTful JSON interface and is dependent on MVP design structure. It’s an extremely lightweight library that includes more than 100 extensions and allows developing the client-side web apps in a structured and well-organized manner.

Advantages of Backbone.js

• Backbone is one of the simplest and most flexible frontend frameworks that require only a few minutes to get started;
• Due to its extensibility, it offers a wide variety of libraries that are always available;
• It’s very light so is frequently used to build responsive apps with significantly reduced loading speeds.

Disadvantages of Backbone.js

• It lacks features like two-way data binding and requires users to write and input most of the necessary code;
• Backbone’s architecture is often hard for understanding and requires some time to master

When to Use and Not Backbone.js

 Backbone.js is widely used for building dynamic applications like Trello, for example. It’s also a good choice for creating small, single-page, and simple applications. Still, it offers a minimalist requirement for building web apps compared to other MVC frameworks.

#7 Semantic UI

Semantic UI is a newcomer among frontend frameworks but is quickly gaining popularity. Its intuitive interface and simplicity make the framework a popular choice for beginners while experienced developers enjoy the streamlined development process it offers.

Advantages of Semantic UI

• Semantic UI includes tons of UI components for almost any type of project;
• The elements offer a great amount of customization;
• It has a beautiful and futuristic design and clear documentation which is easy to understand for beginners.

Disadvantages of Semantic UI

• Packages are much bigger compared to competitors;
• It’s challenging to make significant changes to the pre-designed components without significant modifications to the underlying CSS and JavaScript code;
• A big amount of pre-designed components and styles may have a negative impact on page load times and performance. 

When to Use and Not Semantic UI

 Semantic UI is a good option if one needs to quickly prototype and build responsive user interfaces. It’s not the best choice for complex applications.

#8 Foundation

Foundation by ZURB is a collection of HTML, CSS, and JS which allows users to easily design beautiful and responsive websites and applications. However, Foundation is an advanced and challenging framework, not meant for beginners. The framework provides GPU acceleration for seamless animations, fast mobile rendering capabilities, and data-interchange attributes that enable the loading of lightweight sections for mobile apps and heavier sections for larger devices.

Advantages of Foundation

• With Foundation, developers have the flexibility to customize their applications by including or removing specific elements, defining column sizes, colors, font sizes, and more;
• It allows for making the markup neat and clean without sacrificing utility and speed;
• A large library of pre-built UI components, including navigation menus, forms, buttons, and more, that can help to speed up the development process;
• Flexible grids and widgets.

Disadvantages of Foundation

• The framework is not recommended for beginners;
• It’s less popular than its main competitor Bootstrap.

When to Use and Not Foundation

 Foundation is designed with accessibility in mind and offers extensive customization, it’s a perfect choice for large enterprise projects but might be overkill for small projects and simple layouts.

#9 Svelte

Svelte is one of the simplest frameworks in JavaScript mainly used for the development of reactive applications. It has a unique approach to building applications, which involves compiling code at build time, which results in incredibly fast JavaScript applications. The combination of using .svelte files, and keeping the DOM in sync with the app state, makes it a powerful tool for building standalone apps.

 Advantages of Svelte

• Less boilerplate code to write;
• Svelte apps run very fast, even compared to Angular or React;
• It’s a highly-scalable framework.

 Disadvantages of Svelte

• Svelte has a much smaller community compared to other frameworks;
• There is a lack of IDE support;
• There aren’t many Svelte dev toolkits available.

 When to Use and Not Svelte

 You can get the most out of Svelte for building fast and slick web apps of small size as the framework lacks enough tooling and has a small community for complex projects.

#10 Preact

Preact, developed by Jason Miller, is an alternative to React that was designed to provide identical features and APIs in a compact framework. With a size of only 3kb, Preact frees developers from worrying about their JavaScript framework or library consuming a significant portion of the app's total JavaScript size.

Preact's speed is not just a result of its small size. It is currently one of the fastest Virtual DOM libraries available, thanks to its predictable and straightforward diff implementation.

Advantages of Preact

• Preact is one of the fastest virtual DOMs due to its compact size;
• It’s highly efficient when it comes to memory usage;
• Preact provides a powerful command-line interface (CLI) tool that allows developers to quickly create innovative projects without the need to handle webpack or Babel configurations. 

Disadvantages of Preact

• Unlike React, the Preact community is relatively small;
• Synthetic event handling in React can cause performance and maintenance issues.

When to Use and Not Preact

 Preact's compact size makes it an ideal choice for developing web components, small web widgets, landing pages, and Progressive Web Apps that require fast loading times and quick interactivity. However, it’s not the best option for large-scale and complicated projects.

Conclusion

 The world of front-end is vast and full of opportunities for development and even the most choosy person will find the framework that will meet all the project’s requirements. Though it’s important to understand the needs of your application and compare the merits of the popular frontend frameworks.

If you’re up for creating your web solution, we at inVerita are ready to develop it for you. Our dedicated teams have extensive expertise in developing software solutions with React, Vue, and Angular, so we will help you to choose the right one for your specific requirements.