Angular Vs. Vue: Which JavaScript Framework Should You Choose?

Definition

Angular is an open-source TypeScript-based framework maintained by Google for building dynamic and interactive front-end user interfaces. It provides a structured approach, enabling developers to efficiently create scalable and maintainable web applications.

In a constantly evolving world, more mature technologies like Angular might seem irrelevant to some. The real world has proven a complete contrast. For example, Upwork — A platform where top creative and technical talent gather, utilizes Angular to create a fluid job search and payment experience. Another well-known name, Forbes, also uses Angular to give readers a neat yet intuitive reading and browsing experience.

Key Statistics

• By the time this article was published, 940,336 websites were using Angular globally.
• Angular’s core package, @angular/core, has been downloaded approximately 3,919,452 times in the past week.
• Professional developers ranked Angular as the 5th most popular web framework in 2022. It moved up one spot in the 2023 popular survey and maintained its position in the 2024 survey.

Strengths of Angular

In order to produce the most accurate comparison of the two frameworks, understanding their features, technical strengths and weaknesses is an important step. Angular might not be the most popular frontend framework, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t possess a wide array of strong technical features.

Standalone Components

Traditionally, in Angular, every component needs to be declared in NgModule. In other words, declaring a component means registering it inside a NgModule so that Angular recognizes and uses it within that module.

Standalone components, however, don’t require a declaration in this core module. These components don’t depend on a module to function. In other words, they’re more flexible and independent. However, they do require manual input. This shouldn’t be a problem, as the benefits of standalone components outweigh this minor inconvenience. To be specific:

• These components make Angular more beginner-friendly.
• They make it easier to build lazy-loaded applications (where features are only loaded when needed). Without declaring components in NgModule, developers remove one layer of complexity — they can directly load a component without having it wrapped in a module. More importantly, it also simplifies converting existing apps into fully lazy-loaded ones.
• Without the extra step of declaring components in NgModule, apps improve their loading times and only load the necessary codes.
• Standalone components simplify the development process and reusability of components.

Built-in Features

Angular is well-known for its multiple built-in features. While there are many, we’ll only highlight the most notable ones.

• HTTP Client: Front-end applications need to talk to the server via HTTP protocol. Angular simplifies this process with HttpClient, a built-in service from @angular/common/http, a powerful API to send and retrieve data and update the UI without writing complex lines of code.
• Routing: Angular is a popular choice for building single-page applications, or SPAs. Instead of reloading an entire new page every time, SPAs rewrite the current one by retrieving new data from the server. Angular Router is a built-in tool to help the app understand and navigate from one view to the next. When a user performs tasks or clicks a link, the Router ensures the right view appears without reloading the entire app.
• Form Management: Form management is a crucial function that lets users enter and submit data seamlessly. There are two powerful approaches to handling forms efficiently.
• Template-driven forms: The HTML template contains the majority of the form logic in this straightforward and easy-to-understand technique. For simple forms with little complexity, this method works best.
• Reactive forms: This is a more structured and scalable approach. The form logic is managed in TypeScript, offering dynamic form fields, data handling, and greater control over validation.
• Testing: In Angular, you can perform unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests. Jasmine is Angular’s built-in testing framework and is often used to write unit and integration tests. Developers can use tools like Protractor for end-to-end projects.

Consistent Update Cycle Backed by Google

It’s always beneficial to have an enterprise-level backup of a technology. With Google’s support for Angular, it’s considered a stable technology with long-term support and updates. Additionally, Google ensures consistent innovation, the best available practices, and regular and structured development updates. Having the support of a credible organization means strong community support, a variety of learning resources, and, often, more job opportunities.

Strong TypeScript Integration

TypeScript was created by Microsoft and is Angular’s programming language. It plays a huge role in Angular’s success for the following reasons:

• It brings more structure to coding thanks to it mandating static typing. This also helps in the identification of any errors or problems during the coding process.
• With features like refactoring, code navigation, and autocompletion, TypeScript allows for instant feedback and stronger Integrated Development Environments (IDE) support.
• Thanks to its annotations, TypeScript makes codes easier to follow and understand, which results in better communication and collaboration between members of the team.

Drawbacks of Angular

Despite its many strengths, when choosing Angular, developers should be aware of its potential disadvantages. All technology comes with potential trade-offs, hence teams shouldn’t just solely focus on a technology’s strong points.

• Steep learning curve: Angular is known for being challenging for new developers. This can be attributed to the long list of concepts a developer must learn: TypeScript, components, directives, reactive programming (RxJS), and the list goes on. It’s also a framework with a strict structure, so learners might have a hard time setting up and organizing the application.
• Update overhead: While being backed by a large organization is a huge plus, it can lead to a lot of overhead. Frequent release cycles mean developers need to constantly go over the code to update and maintain it.
• Not fitting for smaller projects: Angular is a great framework for large-scale applications. However, it may introduce unnecessary complexity. The initial setup and strict structure can be time-consuming, and the framework’s larger bundle size may not be the best choice for smaller or lightweight applications.

Definition

Vue or Vue.js is an open-source, progressive JavaScript framework for building user interfaces. Created by Evan You in 2014, Vue is designed to be lightweight and flexible, combining Angular-inspired concepts with a simpler, more intuitive structure. It builds on standard HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Netflix adopts Vue for cloud data storage utilities and other internal tools as it is not only lightweight but also creates responsive and interactive interfaces. Adobe chose Vue.js for Portfolio’s frontend migration, enhancing user experience and adaptability. Its component-based architecture and reactive approach cater to large-scale and specialized projects.

Key Statistics

• There were 8,675,456 Angular websites in use worldwide at the time this article was published.
• In 2024, Vue was voted the 8th most popular technology by professional developers. It slipped one spot from its 2023 ranking.

Strengths of Vue

Vue 2 and Vue 3 are the framework’s major versions. In today’s article, we’ll focus on discussing the features of Vue 3 – as it offers a number of important improvements and highlights this framework’s prioritization of lightweight design and simplicity.

Composition API

Released in 2020, Vue 3 offers composition API – a new way to structure Vue components, making logic more reusable and scalable. It is an alternate method to the Options API — one of Vue’s main features since the beginning. Options API is the conventional approach to creating Vue components.

Compared to Options API, Composition API gives developers more space to be expressive and flexible when defining component behavior with a reactive programming style. Vue 3’s Composition API unlocks the full potential of JavaScript for defining component behavior, making it easier for developers to integrate advanced features like Promises and async/await seamlessly.

Improved TypeScript support

While both Vue 2 and Vue 3 work with TypeScript, Vue 3 — the latest Vue major version, provides improved TypeScript support. Vue 3 itself is written in TypeScript, making type definitions more stable. The Composition API works seamlessly with TypeScript and there is no need for extra libraries like vue-class-component (which was required in Vue 2).

All in all, TypeScript results in better coding experience, error checking, and fewer runtime errors.

Lightweight Core and Fast Reactivity

Vue is known for being lightweight — only around 20KB. Being lightweight doesn’t mean the framework compromises its performance and other aspects of the app. As a matter of fact, the framework strives to streamline the app development process even more by automating tasks like:

• Linking data to DOM. The Document Object Model or DOM is a programming interface that represents a web page as a structured tree, allowing JavaScript to dynamically modify its content and appearance. Vue utilizes a Virtual DOM — an optimized, lightweight copy of the actual DOM. In Vue, it is a reactive data model, which means DOM is updated automatically when there is a change in data. This eliminates the need for manual DOM manipulation and errors caused by humans.
• Configuration. Compared to other frameworks, Vue takes a more flexible approach to structure and configurations. While developers can start easy with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, they can also introduce more complicated features as needed with minimal configuration required.
• Automating watchers. Vue automatically creates watchers for each component, meaning it tracks and reacts to changes in the data properties.

Highly Approachable for Newcomers

Vue is beginner-friendly. With only the basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, software developers can start coding. The framework’s syntax is also simple and intuitive, allowing developers to quickly kickstart a project using Vue, even if they are unfamiliar with the framework.

Drawbacks of Vue

Vue doesn’t come without challenges. While striving for simplicity, the framework inevitably stumbles across limitations.

• It might lack enterprise-level features. Vue is still a growing framework; hence, it offers fewer resources like plugins or libraries than other frameworks like Angular. It particularly lacks testing tools, state management libraries, and UI component libraries. Though Vue has some tools available, they’re not as robust and well-documented. This poses a challenge for enterprise-grade applications, complex projects, or when developers wish to follow the current trends.
• Language barrier: Vue is adopted in large organizations like Xiaomi or Alibaba. While this adoption contributes to its rising popularity, it also means a large portion of documents or discussions is in Chinese. This language barrier hinders aspiring Vue developers who wish to learn more about the framework but can’t find suitable resources, especially if they don’t know Chinese.
• Over-flexibility. Flexibility is certainly one of Vue’s biggest strengths, but it can also become a weakness. For example, in big projects, having the freedom of options might lead to a variety of programming approaches in one team, which ultimately complicates the project, introduces new errors, and even pushes back the timeline.

Use Cases

Angular, with its extensive built-in tools and libraries, is suitable for large and intricate projects. Its modular structure makes it easy to break down and manage the app effectively, and TypeScript plays an important role in keeping the code base error-free. Having Google backing Angular ensures long-term support – stability that every enterprise-scale app needs.

Vue is an ideal choice for a lightweight, small app or a prototype with new features. Even if your main aim is simplicity, Vue still provides developers with the tools to build and structure the app as they wish with a fast and responsive user interface.

Performance and Efficiency

Angular is a high-performance framework, thanks to its Ivy renderer—a powerful rendering engine that optimizes how applications load. Ivy minimizes DOM manipulations and processes app components before the browser downloads and renders them, improving efficiency and speed.

Vue, on the other hand, utilizes a virtual DOM to optimize app performance and rendering efficiency. It also features lazy loading and automatic dependency management, ensuring smoother and more efficient application performance.

Even though both are high-performing frameworks, Vue still comes out on top thanks to its lightweight architecture. Angular has more built-in features, making it heavier and, thus, a bit slower.

Application Architecture

Angular follows an MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture. It breaks down an app into three layers:

• Model – Handles data and business logic.
• View – Defines how information is displayed.
• Controller – Acts as a middle layer, processing user input and coordinating between the Model and View.

Vue follows the MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) architectural pattern. There are also three layers, but their functions differ from the three layers of Angular:

• View – Manages the user interface, including styling, templates, and interactions. Vue’s declarative syntax makes defining UI layouts straightforward.
• Model – Represents application data and business logic, which can come from APIs, user input, or other sources. The data is typically stored in JavaScript objects or arrays.
• ViewModel – Serves as the connection between the View and Model, ensuring that changes in the data are reflected in the UI through two-way binding.

Ease of Testing

Angular has a wide array of built-in tools, including testing tools. It covers numerous types of testing with tools for each, like Jasmine or Karma, making testing easy and convenient for developers.

Vue lacks efficient built-in testing tools, along with its over-flexibility, which poses a challenge to keep the app free of bugs and vulnerabilities. Even with tools like Vue Test Utils and Cypress for end to end testing, developers might still need to use performance testing tools developed for other apps.

Scalability and Maintainability

By now, you’re probably aware that Angular is a top choice for enterprise applications. One reason behind this is its scalability. Complex projects benefit greatly from Angular’s command-line interface (CLI) and structured module-based architecture. Typescript and its built-in tools help control and keep the large components organized.

For smaller apps, we have Vue. While it isn’t as scalable as Angular, it can still be broken down into multiple repositories, using Webpack for modular builds and leveraging Vue’s Mixin elements to extend functionality. Still, scaling for Vue is not as straightforward as it is for Angular.

Security Considerations

Angular offers robust security features, including built-in tools like DomSanitizer and AOT compilation, to protect against cross-site scripting (XSS) threats. Vue, on the other hand, lacks built-in sanitization due to its size concerns but offers protection by managing executable HTML, URLs, and JavaScript.

In short, Angular provides more built-in security features, making it a safer choice for enterprise applications. Vue, while secure, requires additional security measures and external tools to ensure protection against vulnerabilities.

User Experience

Angular delivers a seamless user experience using its template syntax that enables data binding to ensure as little delay as possible. The frameworks’ built-in reactivity and asynchronous programming create fluid and highly responsive apps.

Vue focuses more on interactivity and visual appeal. Virtual DOM plays an important role in rendering optimization and updating only the essential components. UI elements can easily be modified without disrupting the core logic.

Development Speed

Angular aims to speed up the development process with reusable and shorter lines of code. Its architecture is strict to ensure the app is organized and developers can easily keep track of any modifications.

As Vue is a top choice for prototype and small apps, it offers users a variety of tools like Bit or Vue DevTools to speed up the development process without compromising the quality.

App Size

Angular apps are generally bigger and heavier. A medium app built using Angular is between 250 KB and less than 500 KB. Developers can utilize a compiler to compress the bundle sizes.

Being lightweight can be considered Vue’s signature. A simple Vue app’s size is anywhere between 50kB to 100kB. Tools like NuxtJS, Vuex and Vue-router remove any redundant codes and the need to write codes from the ground up.

Learning Curve

Vue is often deemed the framework with one of the most gentle learning curves, as developers only need to understand the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to get started. Angular has a steeper learning curve, as developers need to familiarize themselves with an array of concepts like components and their logic, directives, etc.

Job Demand

Based on our research, Angular currently has a stronger demand in the job market.

• According to a 2023 Stack Overflow survey, Angular is utilized by 17.46% of developers, while Vue.js is used by 16.38%.
• Even though both frameworks have decreased the number of job openings, Angular still holds a stronger presence.
• According to Zero Mastery, the number of job ads on Angular decreased from around 37,000 in 2024 to 23,070 in 2025. With just 2,031 available positions, Vue is still the least in-demand in the US.