Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

React.run VS Create React App

Compare React.run VS Create React App and see what are their differences

React.run logo React.run

Quick in-browser prototyping for React Components!

Create React App logo Create React App

Create React apps with no build configuration
  • React.run Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-11
  • Create React App Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-18

React.run features and specs

  • Simplified Setup
    React.run provides a streamlined and efficient setup for starting new React projects, minimizing the initial configuration time.
  • Pre-configured Environment
    It comes with a pre-configured environment that includes essential tools and libraries, reducing the need for additional setup and compatibility checks.
  • Boost developer productivity
    By automating much of the setup process, React.run allows developers to focus more on coding and less on configuring their development environment.
  • Consistency
    Ensures a standardized environment across different projects, which can be particularly beneficial for teams and large-scale applications.
  • Community Support
    Being an officially supported tool, it benefits from strong community support and timely updates from the React team.

Possible disadvantages of React.run

  • Limited Flexibility
    The pre-configured setup may not suit all project requirements, and making customizations can sometimes be challenging or require additional steps.
  • Learning Curve
    Developers new to React.run might face a learning curve as they adapt to the specific configurations and conventions used by the tool.
  • Dependency on Tool
    Relying heavily on React.run can create dependency, making it harder to switch to different tools or configurations if needed in the future.
  • Updates and Compatibility
    Although it receives updates, there's always a risk that a new version might introduce breaking changes or compatibility issues with existing projects.
  • Potential Overhead
    The inclusion of tools and libraries that may not be necessary for all projects can potentially add overhead and bloat to the development environment.

Create React App features and specs

  • Ease of Setup
    Create React App provides a simple command to quickly set up a new React project. This reduces the time required for initial configuration.
  • Zero Configuration
    The tool comes with a large set of defaults out of the box. You don't need to configure Webpack, Babel, or other build tools manually.
  • Best Practices
    It encapsulates a lot of best practices for building React applications, ensuring you start off on the right foot.
  • Development Server
    Includes a local development server with hot-module reloading powered by Webpack, which improves the development experience.
  • Community Support
    As a Facebook-backed project with a wide user base, Create React App benefits from extensive documentation and community support.
  • Testing Setup
    Initial Jest configuration is included, providing a straightforward way to start writing and running tests.
  • Production Optimizations
    Built-in optimizations for production builds, such as code splitting and minification.

Possible disadvantages of Create React App

  • Limited Customization
    While the zero-configuration approach is convenient, it can be limiting if you need to modify the underlying configurations (Webpack, Babel, etc.).
  • Monolithic
    Create React App is a single monolithic package, which can make it difficult to understand or change certain aspects without ejecting.
  • Eject Complexity
    Ejecting from Create React App exposes all underlying configurations, which can be overwhelming and increase the complexity of your project.
  • Dependency Management
    Because it abstracts away many details, you may not be aware of what dependencies are being used in your project.
  • Less Control
    Advanced users may find Create React App restrictive as it abstracts many details and does not easily allow for deep customization.
  • Performance Overhead
    For very small applications, the built-in tooling might be overkill and add unnecessary complexity and performance overhead.

React.run videos

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Create React App videos

Why You Should Stop Using Create React App | React.js Todo List | Code Review #4 Part 2

More videos:

  • Review - Create React App Explained

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to React.run and Create React App)
Javascript UI Libraries
63 63%
37% 37
Developer Tools
62 62%
38% 38
Front-End Frameworks
82 82%
18% 18
JS Library
51 51%
49% 49

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, React.run should be more popular than Create React App. It has been mentiond 187 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

React.run mentions (187)

  • You should know this before choosing Next.js
    [2] https://react.dev/learn/creating-a-react-app. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • CVE-2025-29927 – Next.js
    > What do you get out of Next.js over vanilla React? The biggest problem is that React itself recommends against using Vanilla React. https://react.dev/learn/creating-a-react-app > If you want to build a new app or website with React, we recommend starting with a framework. This, frankly, is insane. The whole point of React was that it was this relatively lightweight UI library you could drop into pretty much any... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • How much traffic can a pre-rendered Next.js site handle?
    I think people reasonably expect, say, an aws lambda to be aws specific. That's a very different story to React, which is supposed to be a library for general application ui development, and the official react documentation recommending Next as the way to use it. https://react.dev/learn/creating-a-react-app. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • Sunsetting Create React App
    Interestingly, the Creating a React App page (https://react.dev/learn/creating-a-react-app) does not mention Remix. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • React v19 has been released
    The Getting Started docs recommend against using vanilla React and nudge you towards NextJS and similar frameworks because you're gonna end up needing that stuff eventually https://react.dev/learn/start-a-new-react-project So new projects have to actively not follow the recommended approach in the docs if they want to use vanilla React. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
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Create React App mentions (120)

  • Those Golden Era of React...👩‍💻☺️
    This project was bootstrapped with Create React App. - Source: dev.to / 3 days ago
  • You should know this before choosing Next.js
    I could totally see how you'd arrive there. Backstory: create-react was a starter boilerplate for React built and maintained by Facebook. This was when webpack was the standard and just getting a local development environment to "hello world" for React could be challenging.[1] That project was depreciated and the popularity of the Next.js site framework for react projects (plus I certainly assume heavy lobbying... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • Updating my website's tech stack in 2025
    My website's previous iteration was built in 2021. It was bootstrapped using (the now deprecated) Create React App and it took approximately 2 months to build. The home page included a bunch of photos that I had taken myself of my desk and keyboard as background for several sections and it included most of the information on the website. In the middle of the page I put the SkillsTerminal (which also features in... - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Micro-libraries need to die already
    This is just a discourse based on "I need to churn out something, I need that fast and I didn't start in the web game when Backbone and E4X were a solid corporate choice". If you are not in a hurry, work in a solid team and have a good attention span, a lot of clickbait idiocy around JS may not happen. I'm presenting you one of countless examples: a lot of coding bootcamps teach React, maybe with TS, maybe with... - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • 45 NPM Packages to Solve 16 React Problems
    Create-react-app -> Building a single-page application. Good for beginners. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing React.run and Create React App, you can also consider the following products

React - A JavaScript library for building user interfaces

NativeExpress - The ultimate React Native & Expo boilerplate with everything you need to build, launch, and monetize your mobile app as fast as possible. Including step-by-step submission guides and all the resources you need to submit your app to the stores

Vite - Next Generation Frontend Tooling

Next.js - A small framework for server-rendered universal JavaScript apps

React Boilerplate - Offline-first, highly scalable foundation for your next app

Node.js - Node.js is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications