My career has spanned the arrival of the Internet, HTML, ASP, ASP.NET, MVC, Angular, React, and for a number of years now – Blazor.

I’ve had significant exposure to both React and Blazor, and can give you the advice you need to decide which one is best.

The answer – particularly if you’re more familiar with .NET – is Blazor, but lets discuss a little further.

Cutting to the chase – Blazor gets it out the door much faster

My first application in Blazor was a fairly complex data warehouse application with a WebAPI back end.

It took 3 months from start to rollout, and that’s impressive considering the same would’ve taken me 6+ months in React for the same goal (and that’s with a few years React experience).

Learning curve

React is powerful, and beautiful, but it comes with a steeper learning curve than Blazor, especially if you’re more familiar with the .NET ecosystem.

JSX, state management, hooks, and bucket loads of libraries can be overwhelming, and I found I never really knew if the library I was using was better or worse than another one which did the same thing.

Blazor, on the other hand, uses C# and Razor syntax, and perhaps a 3rd Party Control library if you’re smart (or your company is smart (and by this I meant Telerik or Kendo rather than Syncfusion).

So, if you’re already a .NET developer, you’re practically at home from day one with Blazor.

React has a much steeper learning curve, and a lot more faff, so why make life hard for yourself?

Real life story: We recently hired a graduate, and with only a few weeks she’d become fairly capable at Blazor. She’s not a software engineer grad either, she did process engineering.

I am confident in saying React wouldn’t have been as successful.

Sticking with the Microsoft “Big Boy”

As a smart young developer I read a lot of books, and happened to be a fan of an architecture CSLA which allowed .NET objects to work on both the client and server – cool stuff really, and I proposed CSLA for a new development.

My company brought in a Microsoft consultant, who of course promoted the boring norm which Microsoft recommended (side note: I wrote for Microsoft on architecture at a later date (yes, I’m gloating)).

Of course I disagreed with him, but we went with his advice – after all, my company had paid for his advice.

In hindsight he was right – software is much simpler if you go with the recommended norm. There’s more help and support, and as long as you don’t do anything daft or overengineered, your software will work.

Sticking with the Microsoft Stack should be seen as a good thing, and as a general rule – if your code is proving complex, you’re doing it wrong!

Performance

React has been around longer and is highly optimised for client-side rendering.

Blazor WebAssembly has improved significantly, but still carries some overhead for initial load times.

Blazor Server sidesteps this by keeping the logic on the server, and despite being more “old hat”, can still be a great option as it’s simpler – users simply want an application to do it’s job, and do it’s job easily, so server side can still win if it means simplicity.

However, despite React being faster technically, in my experience “bad code” is often the real performance issue, which means simpler Blazor code can result in an application with better performance than a React application.

Ecosystem and libraries

React’s ecosystem is massive.

You may consider that a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing.

When ASP.NET came out, life was simple. Even when AJAX came out (and I don’t expect you to know what that is), it still meant life was simple through limited choice.

The arrival of Angular, and later React, gave developers too much choice, and so much evolution in the React space meant an application you did one day was behind the times the following day.

However, with React, whatever you want to do you’ll find a library for it (a bit like WordPress where there’s a plugin for everything). As of writing this, the Blazor ecosystem has also grown significantly, as has community and support (discussed next).

I love .NET, and having been a programmer since before .NET even existed, and it’s really solid. As Blazor is pretty much .NET, you’re working with the same .NET libraries in both your front end UI and your back end (whether it’s WebAPI, GraphQL, CQRS, or whatever).

In contrast, when I worked as a React developer I was lucky to understand both React (for the UI) and .NET (for the backend). But why have the developers in your team split by that divide, or needing to understand two vastly different technologies?

Blazor is much simpler when integrated with a .NET stack, making server-side logic, database access, and authentication much simpler if you stick with Microsoft.

Development experience

Blazor allows you to use the same language, tooling, and debugging experience across client and server.

React requires juggling JavaScript, TypeScript, Node, and often multiple build tools. If consistency and maintainability matter to you, Blazor definitely has the edge.

Don’t make it hard for yourself, and opt with Blazor.

Community and support

React has a huge community, tons of tutorials, and every problem you can imagine already solved somewhere online. It’s also fun hunting things down and making cool things work, but that satisfies our inherent need to build stuff and fix fun problems – not to create reliable, simple software.

Blazor’s community is smaller, but Microsoft’s support and documentation are excellent, and that goes a long way.

Final thoughts

When I first wrote a Blazor UI, my thoughts were – This is what web development needed 20 years ago.

Creating a web application has never been simpler, and I say that as someone who writes Enterprise-level software for big data warehousing in complex environments.

If you’re deep in .NET, Blazor will make your life easier, reduce context switching, and keep your stack consistent.

If you need maximum client-side performance, flexibility, and are comfortable in JavaScript, React is still a solid choice, but keep in mind React code gets wordy, fast.

For most .NET developers looking to modernise web apps without learning a completely new language, Blazor is the clear winner.

Oh, and if you’re simply starting out and trying to decide which technology to opt for, learn .NET, and go with Blazor. If our non-programmer grad can get up to speed with Blazor in only a few weeks, so can you!

Reference: Pros and cons of React vs Blazor

Still undecided?

Perhaps because you love JavaScript so much and have an inherent fear of all things Dot Net?

Here’s a comparison table of pros and cons to help you decide:

Feature	Blazor	React
Language	C# and Razor	JavaScript / TypeScript
Best For	.NET developers wanting full-stack consistency	Front-end developers focused on client performance
Learning Curve	Easier for .NET developers	Steeper – requires understanding JSX, hooks, and state
Performance	Fast (Blazor Server) but WebAssembly has initial load overhead	Highly optimised for client rendering
Ecosystem	Smaller but tightly integrated with .NET libraries	Massive ecosystem with endless third-party packages
Tooling	Excellent with Visual Studio and .NET debugging	Great with VS Code, Node.js, and browser tools
Community	Growing with strong Microsoft backing	Huge, open-source, and widely adopted
Hosting Options	Server-side or client-side (WebAssembly)	Client-side, often paired with Node or Next.js
Best Choice If…	You’re already in the Microsoft stack	You want flexibility, broad library support, or cross-platform focus