Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Ultralight VS Electron

Compare Ultralight VS Electron and see what are their differences

Ultralight logo Ultralight

Fast, light HTML UI solution for C++ apps

Electron logo Electron

Build cross platform desktop apps with web technologies
  • Ultralight Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-07-25
  • Electron Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-02-01

Ultralight features and specs

  • Lightweight
    Ultralight is designed to be extremely lightweight, making it ideal for applications where performance and resource usage are critical.
  • Cross-Platform
    The software is built to work across different operating systems, allowing developers to create applications that can run on multiple platforms without significant changes.
  • High Performance
    Ultralight includes optimizations for speed and efficiency, which can enhance the performance of any application using it.

Possible disadvantages of Ultralight

  • Limited Features
    Compared to full-feature browsers or rendering engines, Ultralight might lack certain advanced features or capabilities.
  • Smaller Community
    Being a less mainstream option, Ultralight might have a smaller community, which can impact the availability of community-driven support and resources.
  • Potential Compatibility Issues
    Due to its lightweight nature, some complex web technologies or scripts might not be fully supported, leading to potential compatibility issues.

Electron features and specs

  • Cross-Platform Compatibility
    Electron allows developers to create applications that run on Windows, macOS, and Linux using a single codebase, making it easier to reach a broader audience.
  • Web Technologies
    Developers can utilize HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (including popular frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue) to build Electron apps, enabling a more accessible development process for web developers.
  • Rich Ecosystem
    Electron benefits from the vast ecosystem of Node.js, granting access to a multitude of packages and modules, and simplifying the inclusion of various functionalities in applications.
  • Auto-Update Mechanism
    Electron has built-in support for auto-updating applications, which saves developers time and effort in managing updates and improves the user experience by keeping the application up-to-date seamlessly.
  • Active Community
    An active community and extensive documentation provide a wealth of resources for developers, from tutorials to plugins, making it easier to find support and improve productivity.

Possible disadvantages of Electron

  • Large File Size
    Because Electron packages both the application code and a version of Chromium, applications tend to be significantly larger in file size compared to native counterparts.
  • High Memory Consumption
    Electron apps can consume more memory because each window runs its instance of Chromium, which can lead to inefficient resource usage, especially on systems with limited memory.
  • Performance
    Due to its reliance on web technologies and Chromium, Electron applications may not perform as well as optimally coded native apps, particularly in resource-intensive scenarios.
  • Security Concerns
    Electron's use of web technologies and features like Node.js integration increases the attack surface, requiring careful handling of security practices to prevent vulnerabilities such as injection attacks.
  • Complexity in Debugging
    Debugging Electron applications can be more complex due to the blend of backend (Node.js) and frontend (browser-like) code, requiring developers to be proficient in multiple debugging tools and techniques.

Ultralight videos

GTA Ultralight Review

More videos:

  • Review - Alpha-Z1, Ultralight & Havok review! - GTA Online
  • Review - E234 Our Ultralight "Stealth" Glider Customization & Review! - Lets Play GTA 5 Online PC 60fps

Electron videos

💻 Why You Should Build Desktop Software With Electron

More videos:

  • Review - What is Electron: The Hard Parts Made Easy
  • Review - Electron Matrix Review Video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Ultralight and Electron)
Development Tools
23 23%
77% 77
Rapid Application Development
Cross-Platform Development
Application Builder
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Ultralight and Electron

Ultralight Reviews

We have no reviews of Ultralight yet.
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Electron Reviews

Electron.js Alternatives For Cross-Platform Development
All of this changed when Electron.js came into the picture. The framework allowed developers to create a unique cross-platform desktop application without any hurdles. However, it uses up quite a bit of resource making it harder for developers to create lightweight applications. With this blog, we will look into suitable alternatives for Electron.js.
Source: www.atatus.com
12 Best Frameworks and Toolkits to Build Desktop Applications
If you are looking for an alternative to the Electronjs desktop application development framework, Neutralinojs is a viable option. A few applications may become bulky with Electron, but Neutralinojs can help avoid such problems.
Source: geekflare.com
10 Best Tools to Develop Cross-Platform Desktop Apps 
Electron.js is compatible with a variety of frameworks, libraries, access to hardware-level APIs and chromium engine, and Node.js support. Electron Fiddle feature is great for experimentation as it allows developers to play around with concepts and templates. Simplification is at the center of Electron because developers don’t have to spend unnecessary time on the packaging,...
Electron Alternatives﹣5 Best JavaScript Frameworks for Desktop Apps
If you’re a JavaScript developer, you’re going to need to learn a few relatively simple things on how Electron works and it’s API. You will most probably be able to set up your first Electron desktop application in just a few days.
Source: brainhub.eu
Frameworks & Tools to Develop Cross-Platform Desktop Apps – Best of
Enyo is an open-source JavaScript framework, like Electron, that allows developers to create native-quality apps for desktop, mobile, and TV. Enyo can run across all the relatively modern and standard web-based environments. It’s battle-tested and comes with a beautiful cross-platform UI toolkit for creating rich user interfaces.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Ultralight should be more popular than Electron. It has been mentiond 33 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.

Ultralight mentions (33)

  • Lightpanda: The headless browser designed for AI and automation
    Another browser in this space is https://ultralig.ht/, it's geared for in-game UI but I wonder how easy it would be to retool it for a similar use case. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Verso – web browser built on top of the Servo web engine
    All mainstream web browsers are bloated and use a lot of resources. I am looking for a tiny lightweight web browser with good HTML5 support but without bloat for older computers. Servo, Ladybird and Ultralight (https://ultralig.ht) are promising. I even started developing Qt Ultralight Browser. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • Ode to the M1
    What I'd really like to see with CEF et al, is JS being dropped, in favor of directly controlling the DOM from the host language. Then we could, for example, write a Rust (or Kotlin, Zig, Haskell, etc) desktop application that simply directly manipulated the DOM, and had it rendered by a HTML+CSS layout engine. Folks could then write a React-like framework for that language (to help render & re-render the DOM in... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Ode to the M1
    > I hope Electron/CEF die soon, and people get back to building applications that don't consume hundreds of megabytes of RAM to render a hello world. Web technologies are fine, but what we really need is some kind of lightweight browser which allows you to use HTML/CSS/JS, but with far lower memory usage. I found https://ultralig.ht/ which seems to be exactly what I am looking... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Anselm's Jazz Distributed Infrastructure Framework
    I'm curious if the project will be open-source or do you have plans to go the Awesomium/Ultralight route with both open/closed sources and volume licenses? Or do you plan to offer commercial support services like other open source software? Source: almost 2 years ago
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Electron mentions (14)

  • Design Systems with Web Components
    So we talked a lot about the Atomic Design Principle, but you could just use that in any system and start creating. You could have Angular components, React Components, and Vue Components. But if you notice these don't easily work Everwhere. So the solution is to use Web Components because the modern browser can already understand these, and any Front-End framework can then utilize these components. You can use... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Building Apps with Tauri and Elixir
    For the longest time, building desktop apps was a daunting task to web developers. That is, until technologies like Electron made creating these apps more approachable to a wider audience. Today, we’ve got a wide array of native applications built with solutions like Electron, Tauri, Capacitor, and many more. While these are great solutions, sometimes configuration can be tricky and the applications we create can... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • SvelteKit + Electron: Create your desktop web app
    I make a new Adapter for SvelteKit apps that prerenders your entire site as a collection of static files for use with Electron. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • Electron: Build Desktop Applications Using Plain Javascript
    Electron is a cross-platform shell — a user interface for accessing operating system services both via command line (CLI) and graphical user interface (GUI). - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • Circuit To Turn On Desktop PC
    Electron (https://electronjs.org/) is a framework for developing cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. This is the technology behind many popular apps like Slack, Discord and Visual Studio Code. Join for discussions around Electron! Source: over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Ultralight and Electron, you can also consider the following products

Sciter - Embeddable HTML/CSS/script engine

Qt - Powerful, flexible and easy to use, Qt will help you not only meet your tight deadline, but also reduce the maintainable code by an astonishing percentage.

Coherent GT - Fast user interface runtime for PC and Consoles

Flutter - Build beautiful native apps in record time 🚀

NoesisGUI - User Interface library for games and real-time applications.

React Native - A framework for building native apps with React