Last updated: October 2026. Written by Josh Hutcheson. This comparison is based on each framework’s official documentation and release notes, the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey and developer discussions, all read in October 2026. See our review methodology.
React (also called ReactJS or React.js) and React Native share a name, a creator and a way of writing code, which is why people mix them up. They build different things. React builds user interfaces for websites and web apps that run in a browser. React Native builds mobile apps for iPhone and Android that use the phone’s own native controls. If you know one, you are a long way toward knowing the other, but the code is not interchangeable.
The short answer
React = ReactJS = React.js. They are three names for the same JavaScript library, used for web interfaces. The current version is React 19.3.
React Native is a separate framework that uses React to build native iOS and Android apps. The current version is 0.87.
Learn React first if you are new to both. Components, props, state and hooks work the same way in React Native, so the move to mobile is mostly about new components, styling and tooling.
| React (ReactJS) | React Native | |
|---|---|---|
| What it builds | Websites and web apps | iOS and Android apps (plus web, Windows and macOS through add-on projects) |
| Renders to | The browser DOM (HTML elements) | Native platform views (UIView on iOS, Android View) |
| Building blocks | <div>, <span>, <img>, <button> | <View>, <Text>, <Image>, <Pressable> |
| Styling | CSS (files, modules, Tailwind or CSS-in-JS) | JavaScript style objects with Flexbox; no CSS files |
| Recommended start | A framework such as Next.js or React Router, or a build tool such as Vite | The Expo framework |
| Navigation | URLs and a router (Next.js, React Router) | Stack and tab navigators (Expo Router, React Navigation) |
| Current version (Oct 2026) | React 19.3 (9 September 2026) | React Native 0.87 |
| Made by | Meta and the open-source community | Meta and the open-source community |
Version numbers, support dates and platform-stability levels come from the official sources linked in this article, read on 13 October 2026. Frameworks ship new releases every few months, so check the linked release notes before you plan around a specific version.
React Native
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React Native is an open-source framework from Meta, released in 2015, for building native mobile apps with React. You write components in JavaScript or TypeScript, and React Native turns them into the platform’s real UI widgets, so a scrolling list on iPhone is a genuine iOS list.
It has changed a lot since older comparisons were written. Since version 0.76 (October 2024), the New Architecture is the default, replacing the asynchronous bridge with direct JavaScript-to-native calls, and the Hermes engine runs your JavaScript. The current version is 0.87, and the official docs recommend starting with Expo, a free framework that adds routing, builds and a standard library of native modules. Apps built with React Native include Facebook, Meta Quest, Microsoft Office, Outlook and Teams, and Amazon Shopping, according to the official showcase.
ReactJS
React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces, open-sourced by Meta (then Facebook) in 2013. “ReactJS” and “React.js” are older names for the same thing; the official site, react.dev, just calls it React. The latest version is 19.3, released on 9 September 2026.
React describes the UI as components, functions that return what the screen should look like for a given state. When the state changes, React works out the minimal set of updates and applies them to the page. React itself only handles the UI. Routing, data loading and server rendering come from a framework, which is why the React team now recommends starting a new app with a framework such as Next.js or React Router, and for native apps, Expo.
React Native vs ReactJS: Usage
Use React for anything that runs in a browser: marketing sites, dashboards, web apps, e-commerce storefronts and internal tools. Use React Native for apps people install from the App Store or Google Play.
React Native is a cross-platform framework, so one codebase covers iOS and Android. It does not use a WebView like hybrid tools such as Ionic; see our React Native vs Ionic comparison for that difference. Both platforms can also share code with a React website through React Native for Web, which Expo supports, though most teams keep separate web and mobile UIs and share business logic instead.
React Native vs ReactJS: Setup and Bundling
This section has changed the most since older comparisons. The usual way to start a React web app used to be Create React App or a hand-built Webpack configuration. The React team deprecated Create React App on 14 February 2025 and now points developers to frameworks (Next.js, React Router) or to modern build tools such as Vite, Parcel and Rsbuild. Setting up a new React project now takes a single command and a few minutes.
React Native has its own bundler, Metro, and needs platform tooling to run apps. With Expo, you create a project with npx create-expo-app, scan a QR code, and the app runs on your phone through Expo Go. Without Expo, you install Xcode (Mac only) for iOS and Android Studio for Android. Expo’s cloud build service can also produce iOS builds without a Mac.
| Step | React (web) | React Native |
|---|---|---|
| Create a project | npx create-next-app, a React Router template, or npm create vite |
npx create-expo-app |
| Run it | Open localhost in a browser | Expo Go on a phone, or an iOS simulator / Android emulator |
| Bundler | Turbopack, Vite, Parcel or Rsbuild | Metro |
| Ship it | Deploy to any web host or CDN | Build and submit to the App Store and Google Play |
React Native vs ReactJS: Developer Tools
Both have fast feedback loops. React web frameworks use hot module replacement, so edits appear in the browser almost instantly, and React Native’s Fast Refresh updates the running app on your phone within a second or two while keeping its state. Older versions of this page quoted a “30% faster development” figure for hot reloading; we could not find a source for it and have removed it.
For debugging, React developers use the browser’s DevTools plus the React Developer Tools extension to inspect components and state. React Native now ships its own React Native DevTools, introduced with 0.76, which gives a similar component inspector, console and profiler for mobile. Redux DevTools still works in both if your app uses Redux.
React Native vs ReactJS: UI Rendering
This is the core technical difference. Both use JSX, the HTML-like syntax inside JavaScript, and both use components, props, state and hooks. What the JSX turns into is different.
- React renders to the browser DOM. Your <div> and <button> elements become real HTML, styled with CSS. React compares what the UI should look like with what is on the page and updates only the parts that changed.
- React Native renders to native views. A <View> becomes a UIView on iOS and an Android View on Android, and <Text> becomes a native text view. There is no HTML and no CSS; styles are JavaScript objects that use Flexbox, with column as the default direction.
Older versions of this page said React Native makes it “hard to custom style your views.” That is less true today: libraries such as NativeWind bring Tailwind-style classes to React Native, and most design systems now ship React Native versions. But you cannot paste web CSS into a React Native app, and components built for the web will not run on mobile without changes.
React Native vs ReactJS: Animations
On the web, React apps animate with CSS transitions and animations, or libraries such as Motion (formerly Framer Motion). On mobile, React Native has a built-in Animated API, and the community standard for smooth, gesture-driven animation is Reanimated, which runs animations on the UI thread so they stay smooth even when JavaScript is busy.
This page used to say React Native “falls flat on its face” with animation and recommended Velocity.js for the web. Both points are out of date. Velocity.js is no longer a common choice, and with Reanimated and the New Architecture, React Native handles complex animation well. Truly graphics-heavy apps, such as games, are still better served by a game engine or native code.
React Native vs ReactJS: Community Support
Both have very large communities. React is the most widely used web UI library, and JavaScript is used by 66% of developers in the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, with TypeScript at 43.6%. React Native’s community is smaller than React’s but is the largest of the cross-platform mobile frameworks alongside Flutter, with Expo adding its own active community.
This page previously quoted GitHub star counts and Stack Overflow question totals from several years ago. Those numbers change constantly and are not a good measure of quality, so we have removed them.
React Native vs ReactJS: Popularity
React powers a huge share of the modern web, including Meta’s own sites and countless startups and enterprise apps. React Native is used in apps from Meta, Microsoft and Amazon, as the showcase above shows.
React Native also has critics. Developer forums in 2026 carry reports of well-known companies moving specific apps back to fully native Swift and Kotlin, and threads asking whether React Native “still makes sense” draw hundreds of replies. The usual conclusion is that it remains a strong choice for teams that already know React and need one codebase for two platforms, while apps that depend on cutting-edge platform features may be better native. Our React Native vs Swift and React Native vs Kotlin guides cover that trade-off.
The 3 surprising differences between React Native and ReactJS
- React is a library; React Native is a framework. React handles only the UI layer, and you add a framework for routing and data. React Native includes its own components, bundler and native build system.
- They target different platforms. React builds for browsers; React Native builds installable iOS and Android apps.
- They render differently. React renders HTML elements in the DOM; React Native renders real native views, with no HTML or CSS.
Should you learn React or React Native first?
For most people, React first. It has more learning material, more jobs and a gentler setup, and everything you learn about components and hooks carries straight into React Native. Once you are comfortable building a small React app, React Native mainly asks you to learn its core components, Flexbox styling, navigation and the Expo tooling.
Go straight to React Native only if your goal is specifically a mobile app and you already know modern JavaScript. Either way, solid JavaScript (and ideally TypeScript) is the real prerequisite.
Best courses to learn React and React Native
Checked live in October 2026. Prices and ratings change; Udemy runs frequent sales.
| Course | Platform | Best for | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meta Front-End Developer Professional Certificate | Coursera | Beginners aiming for a web job | Covers HTML, CSS, JavaScript and React; over 1.3 million learners |
| React: The Complete Guide (incl. Next.js, Redux) | Udemy | Thorough React from scratch | Maximilian Schwarzmüller; 4.6 from 242,000+ ratings; updated January 2026 |
| Meta React Native Specialization | Coursera | Moving from React to mobile | Taught by Meta engineers; shareable certificate |
| React Native: The Practical Guide | Udemy | Project-based React Native | 4.7 from 46,000+ ratings; updated January 2026; uses Expo |
See the Meta Front-End Developer Certificate on Coursera →
For longer lists, see our guides to the best React courses and the best React Native courses. Comparing mobile frameworks? Read React Native vs Flutter and React Native vs Xamarin, or our overview of mobile app programming languages. If you decide mobile is your path, our best Flutter courses, iOS courses and Udacity Android Kotlin Nanodegree review cover the alternatives to React Native.
Conclusion
React and React Native are siblings, not twins. React builds web interfaces that render HTML in the browser; React Native builds iOS and Android apps that render native views. They share JSX, components and hooks, so the skills transfer, but the components, styling, tooling and deployment are different. If you are starting out, learn React and modern JavaScript first, then add React Native when you want to ship to the app stores.
Frequently asked questions
Are React and React Native the same?
No. They share the same component model, JSX and hooks, but React builds web interfaces that render HTML in a browser, while React Native builds iOS and Android apps that render native platform views.
Is ReactJS the same as React?
Yes. React, ReactJS and React.js are three names for the same JavaScript library. The official site, react.dev, simply calls it React.
Should I learn React before React Native?
Usually yes. React has more learning material and jobs, and your knowledge of components, props, state and hooks carries straight over. React Native then adds native components, Flexbox styling, navigation and mobile tooling such as Expo.
Can I use React code in React Native?
Your logic, hooks and state management usually carry over, but UI code does not. React Native has no HTML elements or CSS, so components built with div, span and CSS must be rewritten with View, Text and style objects. React Native for Web can let one codebase target both.
Is React Native harder than React?
A little. The React concepts are the same, but React Native adds mobile-specific work: native components, device testing, app store builds and occasional native code. Expo removes much of that setup.
What is the latest version of React and React Native?
As of October 2026, React 19.3 (released 9 September 2026) and React Native 0.87 are the current versions, according to react.dev and reactnative.dev.
Is Create React App still used?
It is deprecated. The React team deprecated Create React App for new apps on 14 February 2025 and recommends frameworks such as Next.js or React Router, or build tools such as Vite, Parcel or Rsbuild. For native apps it recommends Expo.