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I was wondering if someone knows what has faster performance speed ionic2 or nativescript? Does ionic2 still run on top of Cordova's webview? Or is it similar to nativescript?

Enrique Carro
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Daniel Izhar
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2 Answers2

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Ionic 2 still uses the webview. Things have gotten faster and newer devices are faster of course. Ionic is doing some great stuff, but you'll have a better performing application using NativeScript IMO. I don't have any benchmarks right now but I can assure you if someone does have benchmarks NativeScript will likely win on all fronts because it's not a webview. It's similar to react native and xamarin. As with most choices it depends on what you need and factors of time, cost, etc. All of these frameworks have pros and cons. Personally I settled on NativeScript since I didnt know react for react native, and i wanted to have native UI not native looking components in a webview. However for a quick prototype or an app that you might want to reuse as a PWA (progressive web app) ionic is a good choice in that regard. You can of course get code reuse with them all using angular and react in react native but the UI is different since its not shared with the web DOM. Hope that helps some.

So that answers your question, here is a xamarin and NativeScript comparison article from Burke Holland (works for telerik) but the tests seem very impartial as I've used both products and I am aware of the items he goes over https://www.nativescript.org/blog/details/nativescript-and-xamarin

Brad Martin
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    Thank for the quick reply, I appreciate that. IONIC2 has a lot of great looking CSS that make the components of the app look native. How do you handle this issue with nativescript? – Daniel Izhar Aug 28 '16 at 14:05
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    The components in NativeScript are the native components so there is no 'faking' it to make a button look like its native component on android or iOS. The NativeScript team chose to use css for styling the native components. This eases the transition for web developers since they already know CSS. For example if you want a blue button you style the component in your UI using a property `backgroundColor="#3489db"` or create a class in a .css file and set the class on the component. It's very simple and how it works is the css props are mapped to the native methods for styling native components. – Brad Martin Aug 28 '16 at 14:28
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    You should check the NativeScript example app on the play store and iTunes. The source code is on github. Then you can see how easy it is. It's pretty awesome once you start digging into it and if you ever make a plugin it's stupid easy to bring a native library into your app for great code reuse from native libraries. After you check NativeScript sample app on your device try ionic2 and see what you like better. – Brad Martin Aug 28 '16 at 14:29
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    I have a friend who swears by Ionic. He pretty much quotes ease of use and rapid development for why he prefers it. Personally, after writing an Ionic 1 app with him, I never want to use hybrid again, but that's just me :P – James Parsons Nov 02 '16 at 13:21
  • They both have their strengths and weaknesses for sure but things seem to point to end of life for Cordova from what I can tell with react native, fuse, and NativeScript. – Brad Martin Nov 02 '16 at 13:47
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    Ionic 4 is very bugged, for example, ios app written using ionic, after 1 week of installation would crash on startup. If you want a reliable app, then don't use ionic, better go with nativescript or flutter. – Alexander Kim May 28 '19 at 04:11
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Ionic's payload is smaller with the phone already carrying the browser.

The performance of Ionic 3 is simply superb.

I have noticed an unfounded snobbery when it comes to webview based frameworks saying they're slow. Most people are not making the next Facebook or Youtube but more generally applications for CRUD operations with a little bit of mobile goodness.

That's the audience for this product.

James West
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