Best Development Frameworks for Windows

React

React makes it painless to create interactive UIs. Design simple views for each state in your application, and React will efficiently update and render just the right components when your data changes. Declarative views make your code more predictable and easier to debug. Build encapsulated components that manage their own state, then compose them to make complex UIs. Since component logic is written in JavaScript instead of templates, you can easily pass rich data through your app and keep state out of the DOM. We don’t make assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, so you can develop new features in React without rewriting existing code. React components implement a render() method that takes input data and returns what to display. This example uses an XML-like syntax called JSX. Input data that is passed into the component can be accessed by render() via this.props.

2 Ratings

Starting Price: Free

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Titanium SDK

Write in JavaScript, and run natively everywhere. Titanium lets you develop cross-platform native mobile applications and build great mobile experiences using JavaScript. Access your application's hundreds of native UI and non-visual components (such as networks and media APIs). Easily include third-party modules in your apps with Titanium's wide selection of community modules and premium support integrations. The Titanium SDK helps you build native cross-platform mobile applications using JavaScript and the Titanium API, which abstracts the native APIs of the mobile platforms. Titanium empowers you to create immersive, full-featured applications, featuring over 80% code reuse across mobile apps. TiDev licenses Titanium under the OSI-approved Apache Public License (Version 2) and is free for personal and commercial use. Create a basic UI, manage event handling and learn about animations, gestures, and orientation modes.

1 Rating

Starting Price: Free

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jQuery

jQuery is a fast, small, and feature-rich JavaScript library. It makes things like HTML document traversal and manipulation, event handling, animation, and Ajax much simpler with an easy-to-use API that works across a multitude of browsers. If you're new to jQuery. Return a collection of matched elements either found in the DOM based on passed argument(s) or created by passing an HTML string. All the aspects of the API that were deprecated in the corresponding version of jQuery. These methods get and set DOM attributes of elements.

1 Rating

Starting Price: Free

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Svelte

Svelte is a radical new approach to building user interfaces. Whereas traditional frameworks like React and Vue do the bulk of their work in the browser, Svelte shifts that work into a compile step that happens when you build your app. Instead of using techniques like virtual DOM diffing, Svelte writes code that surgically updates the DOM when the state of your app changes. We're proud that Svelte was recently voted the most loved web framework with the most satisfied developers in a pair of industry surveys. We think you'll love it too. Read the introductory blog post to learn more. Svelte is a tool for building fast web applications. It is similar to JavaScript frameworks such as React and Vue, which share a goal of making it easy to build slick interactive user interfaces. But there's a crucial difference: Svelte converts your app into ideal JavaScript at build time, rather than interpreting your application code at run time.

1 Rating

Starting Price: Free

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Next.js

Vercel

Next.js gives you the best developer experience with all the features you need for production: hybrid static & server rendering, TypeScript support, smart bundling, route pre-fetching, and more. The interactive course with quizzes will guide you through everything you need to know to use Next.js. Next.js has built-in support for internationalized (i18n) routing since v10.0.0. You can provide a list of locales, the default locale, and domain-specific locales and Next.js will automatically handle the routing.

1 Rating

Starting Price: Free

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Onsen UI

Experience streamlined development with zero-time setup, using the technologies you already know and love - Javascript, HTML and CSS. Worried that PhoneGap / Cordova apps are slow? Fear not! All animations in Onsen UI have been tuned and optimized to perform well on a wide range of devices. We take great care to ensure that apps made using Onsen UI feel smooth even on lower end devices. Onsen UI is easy to learn while being a powerful tool to create complex mobile apps. We have lots of learning resources including official documentation, an interactive tutorial and a community forum where your questions get answered. A rich variety of UI components specially designed for mobile apps. Onsen UI provides tabs, side menu, stack navigation and tons of other components such as lists and forms.

1 Rating

Starting Price: Free

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Mithril.js

Mithril.js is a modern client-side JavaScript framework for building Single Page Applications. It's small (< 10kb gzip), fast and provides routing and XHR utilities out of the box. Mithril.js is used by companies like Vimeo and Nike, and open source platforms like Lichess. If you are an experienced developer and want to know how Mithril.js compares to other frameworks, see the framework comparison page. An easy way to try out Mithril.js is to include it from a CDN and follow this tutorial. It'll cover the majority of the API surface (including routing and XHR) but it'll only take 10 minutes. You can now update the label of the button by clicking the button. Since we used m.mount, you don't need to manually call m.render to apply the changes in the count variable to the HTML; Mithril.js does it for you.

1 Rating

Starting Price: Free

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.NET MAUI

Microsoft

.NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) is a framework for building modern, multi-platform, natively compiled iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows apps using C# and XAML in a single codebase. .NET MAUI uses the latest, modern technologies for building native apps on Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows abstracting them into one common framework built on .NET 6. Native apps look and feel like the operating system on which they belong by default and layouts are fully adapted to each device automatically with no additional code. Platform APIs are available directly from C# to access over 60 platform features from a single cross-platform API including access to things like isolated storage, sensors, geolocation, camera, and a whole lot more with no compromises.

1 Rating

Starting Price: Free

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Bootstrap

Powerful, extensible, and feature-packed frontend toolkit. Build and customize with Sass, utilize prebuilt grid system and components, and bring projects to life with powerful JavaScript plugins. Jump right into building with Bootstrap, use the CDN, install it via the package manager, or download the source code. Bootstrap utilizes Sass for modular and customizable architecture. Import only the components you need, enable global options like gradients and shadows and write your own CSS with our variables, maps, functions, and mixins. Import one stylesheet and you're off to the races with every feature of our CSS. The easiest way to customize Bootstrap, include only the CSS you need. Bootstrap 5 is evolving with each release to better utilize CSS variables for global theme styles, individual components, and even utilities. We provide dozens of variables for colors, font styles, and more for use anywhere.

1 Rating

Starting Price: Free

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Vue.js

Builds on top of standard HTML, CSS and JavaScript with intuitive API and world-class documentation. Truly reactive, compiler-optimized rendering system that rarely requires manual optimization. A rich, incrementally adoptable ecosystem that scales between a library and a full-featured framework. Vue is a JavaScript framework for building user interfaces. It builds on top of standard HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and provides a declarative and component-based programming model that helps you efficiently develop user interfaces, be it simple or complex. Vue extends standard HTML with a template syntax that allows us to declaratively describe HTML output based on JavaScript state. Vue automatically tracks JavaScript state changes and efficiently updates the DOM when changes happen. Vue is a framework and ecosystem that covers most of the common features needed in frontend development.

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Ruby on Rails

Over the past two decades, Rails has taken countless companies to millions of users and billions in market valuations. Over six thousand people have contributed code to Rails, and many more have served the community through evangelism, documentation, and bug reports. Rendering HTML templates, updating databases, sending and receiving emails, maintaining live pages via WebSockets, enqueuing jobs for asynchronous work, storing uploads in the cloud, providing solid security protections for common attacks. Databases come to life with business logic encapsulated in rich objects. Modeling associations between tables, providing callbacks when saved, encrypting sensitive data seamlessly, and expressing SQL queries beautifully. Controllers expose the domain model to the web, process incoming parameters, set caching headers, and render templates, responding with either HTML or JSON.

Starting Price: Free

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Laravel

Laravel is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. We’ve already laid the foundation — freeing you to create without sweating the small things. We love clean code just as much as you do. Simple, elegant syntax puts amazing functionality at your fingertips. Every feature has been thoughtfully considered to provide a wonderful developer experience. Dispatch background jobs to perform slow tasks like sending emails and generating reports while maintaining blazing fast response times. Stop sweating authentication. Laravel provides scaffolding for secure, session-based authentication, while Laravel Sanctum provides painless authentication for APIs and mobile applications. Laravel is committed to delivering the best testing experience you can imagine. No more brittle tests that are a nightmare to maintain. Beautiful testing APIs, database seeding, and painless browser testing let you ship with confidence.

Starting Price: Free

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jQuery Mobile

OpenJS Foundation

jQuery Mobile is an HTML5-based user interface system designed to make responsive websites and apps that are accessible on all smartphones, tablets, and desktop devices. jQuery Mobile framework takes the "write less, do more" mantra to the next level: Instead of writing unique applications for each mobile device or OS, the jQuery mobile framework allows you to design a single highly-branded responsive website or application that will work on all popular smartphone, tablet, and desktop platforms. We believe that your website or app should feel like your brand, not any particular OS. To make building highly customized themes easy, we've created ThemeRoller for mobile to make it easy to drag and drop colors and download a custom theme. For polished visuals without the bloat, we leverage CSS3 properties. We recommend using our tool to build a custom bundle that contains only the components you need.

Starting Price: Free

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Svelte Native

Svelte Native is a mobile application framework powered by Svelte, build mobile apps using the friendly web framework you already know. Build cross-platform, native iOS and Android apps without web views. Get truly native UI and performance while sharing skills and code with the web. Use the full power of Svelte including transitions, stores, and reactivity. One of the smoothest development experiences available for mobile. Svelte Native is a new approach to building mobile applications using NativeScript. Where other JavaScript mobile development frameworks like React Native and NativeScript-Vue do the bulk of their work on the mobile device, Svelte Native shifts that work into a compile step that happens when you build your app. Instead of using techniques like virtual DOM diffing, Svelte writes code that surgically updates the native view widgets when the state of your app changes.

Starting Price: Free

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Ember.js

Ember.js is a productive, battle-tested JavaScript framework for building modern web applications. It includes everything you need to build rich UIs that work on any device. Some of the best development teams in the world have been iterating on their products for years with Ember. With scalable UI architecture baked-in from the start, you'll be working with the same patterns these organizations use every step of the way. Ember’s out-of-the-box experience has everything you need to start building on day one and keep shipping for years. Benefit from our years of experience to help your team be productive—faster. Ember CLI is the backbone of modern Ember apps, providing code generators to create new entities and putting the necessary files in the right place, every time. Ember apps come with a built-in development environment with fast rebuilds, auto-reload, and a test runner!

Starting Price: Free

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Framework7

Framework7 is a free and open-source framework to develop mobile, desktop, or web apps with a native look and feel. It is also an indispensable prototyping tool to show a working app prototype as soon as possible in case you need to. With such a stunning set of UI components that Framework7 provides right from the box, it allows to create web apps, progressive web apps (PWA), and iOS and Android apps with a native look and feel. Framework7 paired with extra tools like Electron and NW.js allows to build native desktop apps. You can use any tools you love when working with Framework7. It doesn’t force you to use anything except plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Creating apps with Framework7 is easy as creating a website. And in addition to vanilla JavaScript library, Framework7 comes with Vue.js, React, and Svelte components to bring components-syntax, structured data, and data bindings with the power and simplicity of Vue.js, React, or Svelte.

Starting Price: Free

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NW.js

NW.js (previously known as node-webkit) lets you call all Node.js modules directly from DOM and enables a new way of writing applications with all web technologies. A new way of writing native applications using web technologies, HTML5, CSS3, and WebGL. Full support for the features in the browser. Complete support for Node.js APIs and all third-party modules. Call Node.js modules directly from the DOM and web workers. Available on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. NW.js is based on Chromium and Node.js. Further, you can easily package a web application into a native application. It enables endless possibilities for writing apps. Easy to use, native UI library, frameless window, packaging and distribution, compatible with npm, debugger support, a rich documentation, kiosk mode, file dialogs, and media. Supports web components, drag & drop, WebGL, WebRTC, datalist, and CSS3. NW.js is also data persistent.

Starting Price: Free

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Electron

Thousands of organizations spanning all industries use Electron to build cross-platform software. Build cross-platform desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. If you can build a website, you can build a desktop app. Electron is a framework for creating native applications with web technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. It takes care of the hard parts so you can focus on the core of your application. Electron uses Chromium and Node.js so you can build your app with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Electron is an open-source project maintained by the OpenJS Foundation and an active community of contributors. Compatible with Mac, Windows, and Linux, Electron apps build and run on three platforms. To get started with Electron, check out the resources available. Learn how to wrap your web app with Electron, access all the APIs, and generate installers. Also, Electron Fiddle lets you create and play with small Electron experiments.

Starting Price: Free

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Express

OpenJS Foundation

Express is a minimal and flexible Node.js web application framework that provides a robust set of features for web and mobile applications. With a myriad of HTTP utility methods and middleware at your disposal, creating a robust API is quick and easy. Express provides a thin layer of fundamental web application features, without obscuring Node.js features that you know and love. Express has no notion of a database. This concept is left up to third-party Node modules, allowing you to interface with nearly any database. In Express, 404 responses are not the result of an error, so the error-handler middleware will not capture them. This behavior is because a 404 response simply indicates the absence of additional work to do; in other words, Express has executed all middleware functions and routes, and found that none of them responded.

Starting Price: Free

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Preact

Preact provides the thinnest possible Virtual DOM abstraction on top of the DOM. It builds on stable platform features, registers real event handlers and plays nicely with other libraries. Most UI frameworks are large enough to be the majority of an app's JavaScript size. Preact is different: it's small enough that your code is the largest part of your application. That means less JavaScript to download, parse and execute - leaving more time for your code, so you can build an experience you define without fighting to keep a framework under control. Preact is fast, and not just because of its size. It's one of the fastest Virtual DOM libraries out there, thanks to a simple and predictable diff implementation. We automatically batch updates and tune Preact to the extreme when it comes to performance. We work closely with browser engineers to get the maximum performance possible out of Preact.

Starting Price: Free

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Lit

Building on top of the Web Components standards, Lit adds just what you need to be happy and productive: reactivity, declarative templates and a handful of thoughtful features to reduce boilerplate and make your job easier. Every Lit feature is carefully designed with web platform evolution in mind. Weighing in at around 5 KB (minified and compressed), Lit helps keep your bundle size small and your loading time short. And rendering is blazing fast, because Lit touches only the dynamic parts of your UI when updating — no need to rebuild a virtual tree and diff it with the DOM. Every Lit component is a native web component, with the superpower of interoperability. Web components work anywhere you use HTML, with any framework or none at all. This makes Lit ideal for building shareable components, design systems, or maintainable, future-ready sites and apps.

Starting Price: Free

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Solid

SolidJS

Solid stands on the shoulders of giants, particularly in React and Knockout. If you've developed using React Hooks, Solid will come naturally to you. In fact, more natural, since the Solid model is simpler, without the rules of the Hooks. Each component is executed once and it is the Hooks and bindings that are executed as many times as the dependencies are updated. Solid follows the same philosophy as React with one-way data flow, read/write segregation, and immutable interfaces. At the same time, it has a completely different implementation by dispensing with the Virtual DOM.

Starting Price: Free

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Inferno

Inferno doesn't have a fully synthetic event system like React does. Inferno has a partially synthetic event system, instead opting to only delegate certain events (such as `onClick`). Inferno provides lifecycle events on functional components. This is a major win for people who prefer lightweight components rather than ES2015 classes. Inferno is able to use the React Dev Tools extensions for Chrome/Firefox/etc to provide the same level of debugging experience to the Inferno user via inferno-devtools. Inferno has a partial synthetic event system, resulting in better performance via delegation of certain events. Inferno provides lifecycle events on functional components. This is a major win for people who prefer lightweight components rather than ES2015 classes.

Starting Price: Free

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Koa

Koa is a new web framework designed by the team behind Express, which aims to be a smaller, more expressive, and more robust foundation for web applications and APIs. By leveraging async functions, Koa allows you to ditch callbacks and greatly increase error handling. Koa does not bundle any middleware within its core, and it provides an elegant suite of methods that make writing servers fast and enjoyable. A Koa application is an object containing an array of middleware functions that are composed and executed in a stack-like manner upon request. Koa is similar to many other middleware systems that you may have encountered such as Ruby's Rack, Connect, and so on - however, a key design decision was made to provide high-level "sugar" at the otherwise low-level middleware layer. This improves interoperability, and robustness, and makes writing middleware much more enjoyable.

Starting Price: Free

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Phoenix Framework

Build rich, interactive web applications quickly, with less code and fewer moving parts. Join our growing community of developers using Phoenix to craft APIs, HTML5 apps and more, for fun or at scale. Interact with users and know who is connected right now, across one or dozens of nodes, by using our built-in Channels and Presence technologies. Or try LiveView for a refreshing new way to develop real-time apps without the client-side complexities. At its core, Phoenix is a rock-solid web framework that improves the tried and true Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture with a fresh set of functional ideas. Phoenix puts the focus on your business domain, bringing you immediate productivity and long-term code maintainability.

Starting Price: Free

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NativeScript

Improve OSS repository management using multiple monorepo setups. Improved onboarding: tutorials for all flavors, linked from the home page. Improved Dialog handling with core-provided abstract APIs. Core: split out architectural level packages for advanced use-cases and scalability. This page will walk through installing everything you need to build your first NativeScript app. Setting up the Android development environment can be daunting if you are new to Android development, however following the next steps carefully will get you up and running in no time. Setting up the Android development environment can be daunting if you are new to Android development, however following the next steps carefully will get you up and running in no time.

Starting Price: Free

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QUnit

The powerful, easy-to-use JavaScript testing framework. Easy, zero-configuration setup for any Node.js project and minimal configuration for browser-based projects. Tests can be run anywhere; Node, your browser, even inside a web worker. Test your code where it runs. Flexible APIs for custom assertions, runners, and reporters mean you can extend QUnit to fit your needs. Getting started with QUnit for Node.js projects is quick and easy. First, install the QUnit package using npm. You can now run the test suite through the QUnit CLI. It is recommended that you run the QUnit command via an npm script, which will find the QUnit command automatically from your local dependencies. Check out the API documentation to learn more about the QUnit APIs for organizing tests and making assertions.QUnit follows the Node.js Long-term Support (LTS) schedule and provides support for current, active LTS, and maintenance LTS releases.

Starting Price: Free

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WinUI

Microsoft

The Windows UI Library (WinUI) is a native user experience (UX) framework for both Windows desktop and UWP applications. By incorporating the Fluent Design System into all experiences, controls, and styles, WinUI provides consistent, intuitive, and accessible experiences using the latest user interface (UI) patterns. With support for both desktop and UWP apps, you can build with WinUI from the ground up, or gradually migrate your existing MFC, WinForms, or WPF apps using familiar languages such as C++, C#, Visual Basic, and Javascript (via React Native for Windows).

Starting Price: Free

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Marionette

Organize your app in terms of small Views. Marionette makes it easy to compose rich layouts out of small components. We've added tons of features from templateHelpers, to a declarative UI hash, that will keep you from ever wanting to go back. Share complex UI interactions across views. Behaviors are like mixins, without all of the pain associated with property collision. Decoupled communication between your application components with a powerful messaging system. Write classes with the same API as your views. Marionette Objects support features like extend, events, initialize, and more. Marionette community is home to the most welcoming and vibrant discussions in the Backbone ecosystem. Stop spending more time thinking about your framework than your app. Marionette will never get in the way of you and your code.

Starting Price: Free

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Sails

Build practical, production-ready Node.js apps in a matter of weeks, not months. Sails is the most popular MVC framework for Node.js, designed to emulate the familiar MVC pattern of frameworks like Ruby on Rails, but with support for the requirements of modern apps, data-driven APIs with scalable, service-oriented architecture. Sails makes it easy to build custom, enterprise-grade Node.js apps. Building on top of Sails means your app is written entirely in JavaScript, the language you and your team are already using in the browser. Sails bundles a powerful ORM, Waterline, which provides a simple data access layer that just works, no matter what database you're using. Sails comes with blueprints that help jumpstart your app's backend without writing any code. Since Sails translates incoming socket messages for you, they're automatically compatible with every route in your Sails app. Sails offers commercial support to accelerate development and ensure best practices in your code.

Starting Price: Free

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Compare the Top Development Frameworks for Windows as of April 2025

What are Development Frameworks for Windows?

React

Titanium SDK

jQuery

Svelte

Next.js

Onsen UI

Mithril.js

.NET MAUI

Bootstrap

Vue.js

Ruby on Rails

Laravel

jQuery Mobile

Svelte Native

Ember.js

Framework7

NW.js

Electron

Express

Preact

Lit

Solid

Inferno

Koa

Phoenix Framework

NativeScript

QUnit

WinUI

Marionette

Sails

Best Development Frameworks for Windows

Compare the Top Development Frameworks for Windows as of April 2025

What are Development Frameworks for Windows?

React

Titanium SDK

jQuery

Svelte

Next.js

Onsen UI

Mithril.js

.NET MAUI

Bootstrap

Vue.js

Ruby on Rails

Laravel

jQuery Mobile

Svelte Native

Ember.js

Framework7

NW.js

Electron

Express

Preact

Lit

Solid

Inferno

Koa

Phoenix Framework

NativeScript

QUnit

WinUI

Marionette

Sails

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