Mithril vs React Native: What are the differences?
What is Mithril? Client-side MVC framework - a tool to organize code in a way that is easy to think about and to maintain. Mithril is around 12kb gzipped thanks to its small, focused, API. It provides a templating engine with a virtual DOM diff implementation for performant rendering, utilities for high-level modelling via functional composition, as well as support for routing and componentization.
What is React Native? A framework for building native apps with React. 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.
Mithril can be classified as a tool in the "Javascript MVC Frameworks" category, while React Native is grouped under "Cross-Platform Mobile Development".
Some of the features offered by Mithril are:
- Only 12kb gzipped, no dependencies
- Small API, small learning curve
- Safe-by-default templates
On the other hand, React Native provides the following key features:
- Native iOS Components
- Asynchronous Execution
- Touch Handling
"Lightweight" is the primary reason why developers consider Mithril over the competitors, whereas "Learn once write everywhere" was stated as the key factor in picking React Native.
Mithril and React Native are both open source tools. React Native with 78.3K GitHub stars and 17.5K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Mithril with 11.3K GitHub stars and 859 GitHub forks.
According to the StackShare community, React Native has a broader approval, being mentioned in 701 company stacks & 782 developers stacks; compared to Mithril, which is listed in 5 company stacks and 5 developer stacks.