Top JavaScript Frameworks for Web Development in 2024

JavaScript is an interpreted, multi-functional, high-level programming language conforming to the ECMA (European Computer Manufacturers Association Script) specification.

Covering a whopping 95% of over 1.6 billion websites worldwide, JavaScript is also characterized as a dynamic, multi-paradigm, prototype-based, or weakly typed programming language.

Though JavaScript is a text-based programming language used both on the server and client sides, it functions as the scripting language for web pages and creates interactive effects within web browsers.

Some common examples of best Javascript frameworks you might use daily include the news recap video on The New York Times website, a search box on Amazon, or refreshing your Twitter feed.

To summarise, in a simple sentence – JavaScript is the language of the web, or as Charlie Cambell once said – “JavaScript is the duct tape of the internet.”

Many different frameworks and libraries are built on top of JavaScript, each having its unique features, capabilities, importance, and uses.

This blog compiles the top JavaScript frameworks 2024 for front-end, back-end, and testing.

What is a JavaScript Framework?

A JavaScript framework is a cluster of JavaScript code libraries that help web developers create user interfaces, manage data, and do DOM manipulation, all through its pre-written code.

Frameworks come with a pre-built set of features that help reduce development time and simplify the development process. Some people understand frameworks as a template that handles multiple programming patterns. You can hire Dedicated JavaScript Developers from JS Panther, who can reduce the time of your web development project.

For instance, every time you build a web application, you don’t need to write code for every single feature from scratch. Instead, you can build upon an existing feature set provided in the framework.

What is a JavaScript library?

JavaScript libraries are collections of pre-written code snippets that can be used to perform everyday JavaScript tasks. A JS library code can be plugged into the rest of your project’s code to develop standard features. For example, if you insert a jQuery (Open-source JavaScript library) code snippet into your project’s code to add an autocomplete feature to a search bar on your site, the code will automatically retrieve the element from the jQuery library and display it in your users’ web browser.

A common confusion in the software community is the fundamental difference between a framework and a library, which we like to resolve in simple terms with the help of this example:- JavaScript frameworks are like a template you use to build a house, whereas JavaScript libraries are like pieces of furniture that add style and function to an already constructed house.

Which is better – JavaScript framework or library?

We have seen this question frequently asked in so many JavaScript communities and always reply to it, saying that both have their usage and importance. A framework provides developers with something more generic and reusable, and a Library is used to solve a specific problem or add a particular feature to your program.

We believe you’ve got a general idea of what is a JavaScript framework and library. Now, let’s review the best JavaScript frameworks individually.

List Of Top JavaScript Frameworks

1. React

Constantly topping the list of the most popular JavaScript frameworks & libraries, React.js is a popular front-end JavaScript library created by Facebook.

React is often employed as a basis for developing single-page or mobile applications. As it’s designed to render data to the DOM, utilizing React necessitates additional libraries for managing state, routing, and interfacing with an API. Furthermore, it boasts high performance due to its utilization of a virtual DOM, thereby expediting the view re-rendering process when state changes occur. 

Benefits of using React

• Virtual DOM: Virtual DOM (Document Object Model) represents the original DOM object. Whenever any modifications happen in the web app, the entire UI is re-rendered in the virtual DOM representation helping us build apps faster, more efficiently, and with creative transitions, ensuring less buggy code.
• Declarative: React’s declarative nature quickly updates and renders the right components when data changes. The declarative approach makes the code readable and easy to debug while engineering interactive UI for websites and mobile applications.
• One-way data-binding: Components are supposed to be immutable, and the data within them cannot be changed. Facebook has designed React to follow unidirectional data flow, AKA one-way data binding to make the application more flexible and efficient.
• JSX: JSX is a JavaScript syntax extension that enables you to embed HTML within JavaScript. It looks like a template language, but it comes with the full power of JavaScript. JSX makes writing React components more accessible by making the syntax identical to web page HTML.

Top brands using React

2. Angular

Supporting over 75K websites alone in the US, Angular is one of the most popular and best JavaScript front-end frameworks for developing high-performance single-page web apps with the smoothest animations. Angular’s security modules and ability to embed stable, clean, and reusable code make it one of the most time-saving frameworks within the JavaScript community. 

Benefits of using Angular

• Templates: Angular’s built-in templates provide powerful syntax to create UI views. In simple words, it is a massive time-saving technology for front-end development.
• Cross-Platform: We often use Angular for cross-platform development. It offers us modern web platform capabilities to deliver progressive web apps -like experiences such as fast page loading, zero-step installation, offline usability, etc. You may hire dedicated angular developers who can help you with cross-platform development.
• Intelligent Testing: Protractor is an open-source testing framework for Angular that makes our scenario tests run faster and more stable.
• Code Splitting: With the new Component Router, Angular apps load faster during automatic code splitting. This benefits JavaScript developers like us to load the code required to render the view they request.

Top brands using Angular

3. Vue.js

With the highest 91.2% satisfaction rate among all JavaScript frameworks, Vue.js is another preferred JS framework for creating high-end single-page applications. Though Vue.js emerged after Angular and React, it combines the best features of both its peer frameworks. Are you in search of skilled Vue Js developers for hire to add to your team? Before that, let us discuss its benefits. 

Benefits of using Vue.js

• Virtual DOM: Similar to React.js, Vue also has its dedicated Virtual DOM enabling faster and easier render of the UI components. Due to this feature, Vue managed to secure a place among the best javascript frameworks for front-end development.
• Template: Identical to Angular.js, Vue also provides HTML-based templates that bind the DOM with the Vue.js instant data. It helps us use the render functions and replace the template with the render function for productive web development with unnecessary code reproduction.
• MVVM Architecture: Vue.js has Model-View-View-Model architecture that helps in enhancing the UI experience. MVVM helps simplify user interface event-driven programming, which results in improved system performance.
• Best in support: Vue.js is supported by a vast open-source community of talented developers. It relies on the donation of local developers and sponsorships to grow ahead. Due to the strong community, the framework also receives regular updates, making it the best javascript framework for experimental projects.

4. Node Js 

Ryan Dahl founded Node.js in 2009 as a JavaScript runtime environment for server-side development. This platform has become incredibly popular since its inception, running on the same V8 engine that powers Google Chrome. Today, Node.js is a highly utilized platform for JavaScript programming. Node.js enables developers to create powerful and effective applications utilizing the JavaScript language. We can assist you if you want to hire Node Js developers for your next project.

Benefits of Node.js

• Fast: Thanks to the powerful Chrome V8 JavaScript engine, Node.js is incredibly swift in its code executions.

• Single-Threaded: Using an event looping system and a single-threaded approach, Node.js can react to events asynchronously, thus making it significantly more scalable compared to other servers.

• Event Driven: Node Js remarkable speed can be attributed to the event-driven, asynchronous architecture that it follows. Upon launch, all variables and functions are initialized, and occurrences are constantly monitored. This feature eliminates the need for callbacks to obstruct the server’s execution, thus allowing Node.js to process different connections simultaneously.

• No Buffering: Node.js applications offer no buffer; they instead process information bit by bit.

Top brands using Node Js

• LinkedIn
• PayPal
• Uber Technologies Inc
• NASA
• Groupon
• Yahoo!
• GoDaddy
• Trello
• eBay

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5. Next JS

Developed by Vercel, Next.js is a free and open-source React framework for creating UIs and static websites. It further facilitates building server-side rendered and universal applications by leveraging React components, Node.js, React Router, Webpack, and various community libraries. An outstanding feature that makes it stand out from other frameworks is the ability to generate pages from the project file system automatically. Don’t wait any longer, hire remote Next.js developers now.

Benefits of Next.js

• Image Optimization: The HTML element image has been updated to the modern web with an enhanced image component. This updated feature can optimize images across any device by automatically resizing them and only loading them when they appear in the viewport.

• Pages: By utilizing the file routing system of Next, it is possible to create pages and view them in a browser. To use this feature, the pages must be created in the pages folder, specifically in pages/first-post.js. Generally, the initial route is usually associated with the pages/index.js file.

• TypeScript Support: With Next.js, integrating TypeScript into existing and new projects is effortless. No configuration is needed when starting a project from scratch; the language is ready for you to use.

• Layout: To ensure that your Navbar and Footer appear on every application page, you do not need to repeat their inclusion manually. Instead, Next.js allows you to split a page into individual components and apply the Navbar and Footer components on every page automatically.

• Supported Browsers: Next.js is fully compatible with all modern browsers, including IE11. Any polyfills needed to enable IE11 support are injected and disposed of in production when unnecessary, as modern browsers can handle IE11 compatibility without needing extra files.

Top brands using Next Js

• Netflix 
• TikTok
• Twitch
• Hulu
• Notion
• Target

6. Meteor.js

Securing a reputable position in the list of top 5 js frameworks is Meteor.js – Another open-source but isomorphic JavaScript web framework. Although Meteor is written on the codebase of Node.js, it is an incredible framework for prototyping, cross-platform development, and as a companion framework with Vue, React, Angular, or Blaze.

Benefits of using Meteor.js

• Full Stack Solution: Meteor proves to be a self-reliant framework for developing and deploying powerful web applications. It has built-in reactive templates, automatic CSS, and JS modifications on the production server, helpers, templates, and events. Moreover, Meteor’s cloud platform – GALAXY, helps in deploying, scaling, and monitoring client applications rapidly.
• Superior Development Ecosystem: Meteor.js is not just limited to being a JavaScript framework. It is a full-fledged Isomorphic Development Ecosystem (IDevE), enabling us to build real-time web applications from scratch through its inherited front-end and back-end components.
• Time-Saving Packages: Meteor brings different innovative packages to create the system’s front end. These smart packages help us speed up writing applications, automatic compilation, and bootstrap integration. These packages are genuinely smart. For instance, when we add the code to build a user account system, it automatically adds a smart package to the project to undertake any time-taking task such as signing up users using different templates.
• Huge Community: Meteor.js offers Crater – a Reddit-like site to help us stay updated on what’s trending and upcoming in Meteor. The framework is backed by a massive community of supportive developers, offering detailed documentation, resources, and tools that have helped JS Panther many times.

Top brands using Meteor.js

• Mazda Motor Corporation
• Worldlabs
• Phenix
• Coygo
• CodeSignal

7. Ember.js

Ranked as the 4th most popular front-end JavaScript framework in the State of JS Survey, Ember.js is an open-source javascript framework used to create scalable web applications through its component-service pattern. Being commonly used for large-scale projects and when the development team is big, Ember.js helps everyone stay on the same page regarding the written code and contribute collaboratively to a common project.

Benefits of using Ember.js

• Giant Ecosystem: Ember presents a massive selection of over 1,500 add-ons, most of which can be installed in one line. These add-ons are well-optimized to handle common instances of internal complexity such as managing authentication, authorization, abstracting away common patterns, and OAuth authentication.
• Methodical CLI: Ember’s command-line interface provides a project structure including Brocolli.js that ensures live reloads and quick rebuilds. With Ember’s CLI, an experienced JavaScript developer can productively create a full application with just one command while having complete control over the app’s functionalities.
• Highly Stable: The release of Ember 2.0 brought the idea of stability without stagnation into reality. Ember is backward-compatible so that upgrading won’t damage apps built with earlier versions of the framework. Besides, Ember.js release new yet stable versions every six weeks.
• Strong Community Support: Having 800 above volunteers on GitHub and over 22K comments on StackOverflow, Ember has one of the most active and reliable JavaScript communities. Every issue we run across or a feature we want has already been handled by someone.

Top brands using Ember.js

• Netflix
• TED
• LinkedIn
• Microsoft
• Twitch
• Fitbit

8. Aurelia.js

If you are looking for a modern JavaScrit framework for building seamless user interfaces, Aurelia JS fits right into your project. This framework successfully enhances the JS capabilities and also provides greater flexibility. Additionally, it is non-intrusive in nature, which helps with quick development of UI designs. 

Benefits of Aurelia.js

• Custom elements: It comes with a handy custom elements feature that lets you extend HTML with new tags and dedicated views.
• Language support: This JS framework is with modern scripting languages like TypeScript, CoffeeScript, and AtScript. 
• Forward-thinking: You are only dependent upon polyfills, so it becomes easier to leverage futuristic technologies while still targeting today’s environments. 
• Compatible with other frameworks: It is highly modular and seamlessly integrates with different frameworks.

Top brands using Aurelia.js

• Qatar Airways
• Tesla
• BCG
• Microsoft
• Concentrix
• Mastercard

9. Svelte

Svelte is considered one of the best JavaScript frameworks because it is lightweight and helps create scalable web pages. The technology framework is ideal for building screen-responsive, data-intensive, or real-time applications. With Svelte, JavaScript developers can write concise application code that offers optimal functionalities.

Benefits of Svelte

• Component reusability: Developers can leverage component reusability, which makes it ideal for building large-scale software solutions for enterprises.
• Good SEO capabilities: The Svelte framework allows you to access advanced capabilities like server-side rendering and automatic hydration, which help ensure good page rankings.
• Built-in features: Svelte provides several handy features like componentization, conditional rendering, and animations.
• Better performance: It provides your application with a lean codebase. This means the browser has less code to process, leading to the development of faster and more reliable apps.

Top brands using Svelte

• Apple
• Ikea
• Meta
• Reuters
• Spotify
• Yahoo

10. Polymer.js

Polymer.js is a modern JS framework with various futuristic features like component-based model, component reusability, command-line interface, widgets creating, etc. You can tailor elements that are reusable within the HTML pages in a declarative manner. It also eliminated the need to understand the in-depth processes involved in building reusable components. 

Benefits of Polymer.js

• Data binding: JavaScript developers can use both one-way and two-way data binding, with the Polymer.js framework. 
• Third-party libraries: You can easily connect the application code with third-party libraries. 
• Create and reuse custom elements: You can tailor custom elements by enclosing HTML, CSS, and JS and also reuse them in the web application.
• Cross-browser compatibility: This JS framework successfully bridges the gap between browsers that don’t support web components. 

Top brands using Polymer.js

• Google
• Comcast
• Nuxeo
• Coca-Cola
• IBM
• Interxion

Conclusion

The above-listed technologies are the top JavaScript frameworks for web application development. We examined the advantages of each framework and considered the learning curve, complexity, and compatibility documentation when creating this list.

While this list may change over time, staying up-to-date on the latest technologies and trends is essential to succeed as a developer or an agency.

If you want to learn more about any of these frameworks or need free expert consultation for your next project, JS Panther is here to help.

Thanks for reading!