Updated April 19, 2023
Difference Between NativeScript vs Ionic
NativeScript can be defined as a framework that uses Angular, Typescript, Javascript for developing native mobile apps which is an open-source that can communicate directly with Native API’s which means it can develop cross-platform apps for both Android and iOS mobile apps and can also transpile from one programming language to another using various other app developing programming languages. Ionic is defined as a UI toolkit that is open source and is used for building or creating hybrid-cross-platform apps where this framework uses similar Javascript codebases such as Angular, React, Vue, etc and is mainly known for its efficient performance with DOM manipulation.
Head to Head Comparison between NativeScript vs Ionic (Infographics)
Below are the top 10 differences between NativeScript vs Ionic:
Key Differences between NativeScript vs Ionic
Some of the key differences between the NativeScript vs Ionic are given below:
1. Performance
NativeScript animations or apps perform well without facing any difficulties at 60 FPS and also offers certain types of long-running process to maintain a balanced speed for fast performance and some practices for improving performance are merging manual tool instrumentation and tracing of execution time within apps. Whereas Ionic developed apps also offer great performance at 60 FPS for both mobile and desktop apps as it uses some of the plugins and hybrid approaches to speed up the performance at the development process and this ionic is a non-native framework that provides touch-optimization, pre-rendering, hardware accelerated transitions, etc.
2. Learning and Understanding the Framework
NativeScript makes developers or beginners easy to learn and they can easily switch between Angular JS, Typescript, Javascript, therefore, making the developers or beginners more feasible and compatible for learning and understanding and mainly they must learn about core modules and design patterns, but sometimes it might be slightly difficult for the beginners with resources and developments as and how they learn it they can find it easier and useful. Whereas Ionic would be easier to learn and understand for beginners or developers as it uses HTML, CSS which is very easy and it provides hands-on for Angular so that it makes it easier to learn the only thing the beginners should learn about is Cordova Plugins and CLI’s.
3. Some Useful Features
Native Script is mainly for accessing native API and components which use Javascript. It provides Native platform layouts along with high performance. It is one code base for developing apps with a variety of different platforms and also offers a seamless user experience. Whereas Ionic has features such as it provides fast development testing cycles due to which it has rapid functionalities. This also provides a very huge plugin with Apache Cordova polished and also has huge community support. This also has single code base use for web apps, Windows, Android, and iOS. This mainly uses Angular JS to work with or create customized components and also provides good performance.
NativeScript vs Ionic Comparison Table
|
NativeScript |
Ionic |
| It is an open-source framework that is used for building cross-platform apps using Angular, Vue JS, and Typescript which is used for developing native mobile apps. | It is also an open-source and UI toolkit framework for developing hybrid cross-platform mobile apps using similar Javascript codebases such as Angular, Vue, React, etc. |
| NativeScript can run directly on the native devices without the need for any cross-compiling or any browser interaction. | Ionic uses plugins to run on native devices so that it can cover app in a native appearance which is done without any command-line tool. |
| NativeScript is also a great framework for close-to-native performance which also provides development than Xamarian and React Native. | It is a most budget-friendly framework which is used for developing apps with moderate traffic in mind or any temporary apps for specific events. |
| NativeScript also uses architecture for the development of apps that is MVC or MVVM pattern but it is mainly composed of modules, plugins, and CLI for enabling and building apps using a certain set of its features. | Ionic uses a particular architecture for developing an application that is Angular JS MVC which helps to develop optimized cross-platform apps for all mobile devices. |
| NativeScript is one of the greatest frameworks among other frameworks that can work well even in building complex apps. | The Ionic older version has little chance of developing or building complex apps but the latest ionic v5 which is not suitable for developing complex apps. |
| NativeScript is faster when compared to ionic as it directly connects with native APIs which h directly injects these API’s to Javascript VM and therefore it improves more performance. | Ionic’s performance is poor as compared to NativeScript which uses technologies to render an app which this rendering reduces the speed and hence make the performance wise very low. |
| NativeScript can give access to the entire native API and therefore it is more suitable for building truly native mobile apps with a high performance where these apps are UI-UX based apps. | Ionic can access hardware devices using apache Cordova API and therefore it more suitable for building hybrid cross-platform apps and in this due to this ionic having rapid testing functionality the development of apps will be faster compared to NativeScript. |
| NativeScript uses Visual Studio code for writing code and it has its extensions for debugging or editing code for its VS code editor. | Ionic also uses Visual Studio code but it needs some tricks to debug or edit the code directly from VS Code. |
| Companies using NativeScript are GeekyAnts, Zdravel, Work Box, Navadra, Zege Technologies, Whoz.com, etc. | Companies using Ionic are TD Trading, Untapped, Techstars, Sworkit, MarketWatch, Cryptochange, Nationwide, Chefsteps, etc. |
| Popular apps that are built using NativeScript are Portable North Pole (PNP), Airbnb design, SAP, PUMA, Sennheiser, MDBootstrap. | Popular apps that are built using Ionic are Sworkit, MarketWatch, Diesel, TD Ameritrade Mobile, and Microsoft flow. |
Conclusion
In this article, we conclude that NativeScript and Ionic both are meant for creating mobile apps but use different models. According to performance developers go for NativeScript as it gives high performance among all the native frameworks and according to the faster development of apps the developers go for Ionic as it provides rapid functionalities than NativeScript. Both NativeScript and Ionic use Angular JS and both are cross-platform frameworks. Therefore this can sometimes help both developers and organizations and hence the choice between them should be made according to the developer’s need.
Recommended Articles
This is a guide to NativeScript vs Ionic. Here we also discuss the NativeScript vs Ionic key differences with infographics and a comparison table. You may also have a look at the following articles to learn more –
