Create React App vs Expo

Overview

Create React App

Stacks1.0K

Followers1.0K

Votes4

Expo

Stacks811

Followers693

Votes66

Create React App vs Expo: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will compare the key differences between Create React App and Expo. Both of these tools are widely used in the React Native ecosystem for developing mobile applications. Understanding the differences between them will help developers choose the right tool for their specific needs.

Setup and Configuration: Create React App provides a simple and minimal setup, allowing developers to quickly start building React applications. It generates a basic project structure, sets up the necessary build tools and configurations, making it easy for developers to get started. On the other hand, Expo provides a more opinionated setup that focuses on providing a full development environment for building React Native applications. It includes a command-line interface, a development server, and allows for easy management of assets and dependencies.
Platform Support: Create React App is primarily aimed at building web applications using React. It provides optimized configurations for creating web applications that can run in modern web browsers. Expo, on the other hand, is specifically designed for developing React Native applications that can run on both iOS and Android devices. It abstracts away many platform-specific details and provides a unified development experience for targeting multiple platforms.
Native Module Support: Create React App does not provide direct support for integrating native modules, such as native device features like camera, sensors, or location. It is primarily focused on web development and does not have built-in support for accessing native APIs. Expo, on the other hand, provides a wide range of pre-built native modules, called "Expo SDK", that can be easily integrated into React Native applications. This allows developers to access native functionalities without writing platform-specific code.
Over-the-Air Updates: Expo provides a built-in feature for over-the-air updates, allowing developers to push updates to their app without requiring users to download a new version from the app store. This is particularly useful for making quick bug fixes or adding new features without going through the app store review process. Create React App, being primarily focused on web development, does not provide a similar feature out of the box.
Application Binary Size: Create React App generates optimized web bundles for the application, resulting in relatively smaller-sized app files. These optimized bundles only contain the code and assets required for the specific user's device and browser, resulting in a smaller overall application size. Expo, on the other hand, generates larger-sized app binaries since it includes a runtime and all necessary dependencies for the app to run on different platforms.
Ejecting: Create React App provides an option to "eject" from the pre-configured environment, allowing developers to customize and configure the build system based on their specific needs. This gives developers more flexibility and control over the build process and configurations. Expo, on the other hand, does not have a similar ejecting feature. This means that developers cannot easily customize the underlying build system provided by Expo, limiting their flexibility in certain advanced scenarios.

In summary, Create React App provides a simple setup for building web applications using React, while Expo is designed for developing React Native applications that can run on both iOS and Android devices. Create React App has smaller app file sizes and allows for easy customization through ejecting, while Expo provides in-built support for native modules, over-the-air updates, and a unified development experience for multiple platforms.

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Advice on Create React App, Expo

Furqan

Jul 16, 2020

Needs adviceon

React Native

Hello guys, I am new here. So, if I posted without specific guidelines, please ignore.

Basically, I am an iOS developer and developing native apps for the last three years. Recently, I started learning React Native to develop apps for both platforms. If anyone out there knows any useful resources that will become a better react native developer.

@{#newbie}|topic:null|

325k views325k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Create React App	Expo
Create React apps with no build configuration.	It is a framework and a platform for universal React applications. It is a set of tools and services built around React Native and native platforms that help you develop, build, deploy, and quickly iterate on iOS, Android, and web apps.
Statistics
Stacks 1.0K	Stacks 811
Followers 1.0K	Followers 693
Votes 4	Votes 66
Pros & Cons
Pros 2 No config, easy to use 2 Maintained by React core team Cons 1 No SSR	Pros 15 Free 13 Hot Reload 9 Easy to learn 9 Common ios and android app setup 6 Streamlined
Integrations
React	React Native

What are some alternatives to Create React App, Expo?

jQuery

jQuery is a cross-platform JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML.

AngularJS

AngularJS lets you write client-side web applications as if you had a smarter browser. It lets you use good old HTML (or HAML, Jade and friends!) as your template language and lets you extend HTML’s syntax to express your application’s components clearly and succinctly. It automatically synchronizes data from your UI (view) with your JavaScript objects (model) through 2-way data binding.

React

Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project.

Ionic

Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.

Vue.js

It is a library for building interactive web interfaces. It provides data-reactive components with a simple and flexible API.

Flutter

Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.

React Native

React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.

jQuery UI

Whether you're building highly interactive web applications or you just need to add a date picker to a form control, jQuery UI is the perfect choice.

Xamarin

Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

NativeScript

NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms.

Related Comparisons

Create React App vs Expo: What are the differences?

Introduction

Setup and Configuration: Create React App provides a simple and minimal setup, allowing developers to quickly start building React applications. It generates a basic project structure, sets up the necessary build tools and configurations, making it easy for developers to get started. On the other hand, Expo provides a more opinionated setup that focuses on providing a full development environment for building React Native applications. It includes a command-line interface, a development server, and allows for easy management of assets and dependencies.
Platform Support: Create React App is primarily aimed at building web applications using React. It provides optimized configurations for creating web applications that can run in modern web browsers. Expo, on the other hand, is specifically designed for developing React Native applications that can run on both iOS and Android devices. It abstracts away many platform-specific details and provides a unified development experience for targeting multiple platforms.
Native Module Support: Create React App does not provide direct support for integrating native modules, such as native device features like camera, sensors, or location. It is primarily focused on web development and does not have built-in support for accessing native APIs. Expo, on the other hand, provides a wide range of pre-built native modules, called "Expo SDK", that can be easily integrated into React Native applications. This allows developers to access native functionalities without writing platform-specific code.
Over-the-Air Updates: Expo provides a built-in feature for over-the-air updates, allowing developers to push updates to their app without requiring users to download a new version from the app store. This is particularly useful for making quick bug fixes or adding new features without going through the app store review process. Create React App, being primarily focused on web development, does not provide a similar feature out of the box.
Application Binary Size: Create React App generates optimized web bundles for the application, resulting in relatively smaller-sized app files. These optimized bundles only contain the code and assets required for the specific user's device and browser, resulting in a smaller overall application size. Expo, on the other hand, generates larger-sized app binaries since it includes a runtime and all necessary dependencies for the app to run on different platforms.
Ejecting: Create React App provides an option to "eject" from the pre-configured environment, allowing developers to customize and configure the build system based on their specific needs. This gives developers more flexibility and control over the build process and configurations. Expo, on the other hand, does not have a similar ejecting feature. This means that developers cannot easily customize the underlying build system provided by Expo, limiting their flexibility in certain advanced scenarios.

Create React App vs Expo

Overview

Create React App vs Expo: What are the differences?