Blazor vs Angular Comparison in 2023

Jason Beres [Infragistics] / Thursday, February 4, 2021

(Last updated: April 11, 2023)

Until recently, if you were a C# developer and you wanted to write code for browsers, you pretty much used JavaScript. But the web development world has been changing quickly, and you no longer have to depend on JavaScript for high-end web app development.

What if I told you, then, that you could use Blazor for server-side and client-side app development?

Things that make Blazor such an interesting framework:

  • You can create web apps with pure C# skills.
  • You can run .NET in the browser without add-ons and plugins, thanks to a Blazor technology called WebAssembly.
  • You can cut render times on images.
  • You get progressive web app development.
  • Fully enabled server-side debugging.

Things that make Angular such a popular framework:

  • Ensures effective cross-platform development.
  • Faster builds and high-performance are guaranteed.
  • Web apps are super lightweight, interactive, and dynamic.
  • It’s been around for ages and has a massive Angular dev community.
  • Styling improvements and upgrades to keep it going.

Blazor vs Angular Comparison Article Chapters

What is Blazor?

Blazor is a relatively new Microsoft ASP.NET Core web framework that allows developers to write code for browsers in C#. Blazor is based on existing web technologies like HTML and CSS but then allows the developer to use C# and Razor syntax instead of JavaScript. Razor is a popular template markup syntax for .NET. Blazor (Browser + Razor) enables developers to build interactive and reusable web UI for client-side applications written in .NET and implemented under WebAssembly. With both client and server code written in C#, it allows you to share code and libraries, providing a platform to enable the development of vibrant, contemporary single-page applications (SPA) while using .NET end-to-end.

The biggest highlight with Blazor is that it leverages the latest web standards and does not need additional plugins or add-ons to run in different deployment models, either a client-side WebAssembly option and a server-side ASP.NET Core option. 

Understanding WebAssembly

WebAssembly, often abbreviated Wasm, is a new standard that can be run in modern web browsers bringing language diversity to the web platform. Wasm is a low-level assembly-like language featuring a compact binary format that makes it possible to run code written in multiple languages such as C/C++, Java, and Rust on the web with near-native performance.

The goal of WebAssembly is to facilitate high-performance applications on web pages. However, its format is designed for execution and integration in other environments and can also run alongside JavaScript.

Features of Blazor

  • Build Web UIs with C# instead of JavaScript or TypeScript
  • Build progressive web apps (PWAs)
  • Create and use reusable Blazor components written in C#
  • Full debugging support on the server-side and debugging with some limitations on the client-side
  • Data binding with the HTML DOM (limited two-way binding)
  • Share code between client and server in C#
  • Server and client-side models
  • Server-side rendering (aka pre-rendering) for higher performance
  • Ahead of time compilation
  • Scoped styles
  • WebSocket connections
  • Works offline (client side WebAssembly only)
  • Works in all modern web browsers including mobile browsers
  • Blazor code has the same security sandbox as JavaScript
  • Use JavaScript interop to call JavaScript frameworks and libraries
  • Open source

Ignite UI for Blazor

What is Angular?

Angular, the successor of AngularJS, was created by Google to allow frontend developers to interact with both frontend and backend at the same time. Because Angular is JavaScript based, there are a lot of resources to work with.

Angular has been around for over a decade, while Blazor has been in market for only a few years. Angular is a production-ready framework with full support for MVC/MVVM applications and it is being used by many large companies. Blazor, while being used by some large brands, is early in its lifecycle.

Angular and Blazor both support progressive web apps (PWAs), though Blazor server-side not capable of being deployed as a PWA, only the WASM-based Blazor client-side.  Both Angular and Blazor are supported in major IDE's, with full debugging support, as well as additional tooling for developer productivity. 

Angular is also extremely popular. The Github repo lists Angular with almost 80K stars and over 20K forks compared with Blazor (housed in the ASP.NET Core repo) having 27.2K stars and 7.4k forks. Stack Overflow counts over 275,000 Angular questions while Blazor only has roughly 13,000 questions. There is also much more content in the form of courses, books, blogs, videos, and other materials for Angular. Angular has dedicated tech events held worldwide, a huge community, and it provides a great selection of third-party integrations.

Angular can potentially load apps faster by using “ahead-of-time compilation" or AOT.  AOT converts your Angular HTML and TypeScript code into efficient JavaScript code during the build phase before the browser downloads and runs that code. Compiling your application during the build process provides a faster rendering in the browser. Blazor also supports AOT, but with client-side WebAssembly, which has the increased initial deployment payload with the .NET Framework.

Angular also allows usage of Scoped styles, in which you can apply a CSS style specifically for related Angular Components.

With Angular elements and modules, this framework is designed to be fully customizable, giving more power to the developer and designer. Angular provides support for features such as lazy loading, the I18n Internationalization standard to support local languages and cultural settings, and Ionic cross platform mobile apps for iOS and Android.

As mentioned briefly, there is a huge repository of open-source packages available for Angular developers, including:

  • Ignite UI for Angular
  • NgBootstrap
  • Angular Google Maps
  • NgRx
  • NgTranslate
  • AngularFire
  • NgxTextEditor
  • Angular Material
  • Ng2 Pdf Viewer
  • ... and many more

Ignite UI Angular

As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, the state of web development is being taken to another level. Software engineers no longer have to rely on the typical frameworks and outdated tools for the solutions they build. Now they have a chance to transform and streamline the way their software comes to life. And here is something interesting.

The last couple of months have been really busy for our technical teams at Infragistics as we were working out ways to enhance our App Builder for Angular apps and make it available for Blazor app development as well. And the App Builder for Blazor is already out now!

If this is the first time you come across this new tech from Infragistics, here are a few things to help you understand the value and capabilities of the WYSIWYG App Builder:

  • A complete design-to-code solution ideal for product managers, designers, and developers.
  • The only WYSIWYG drag and drop tool for Angular and Blazor apps available on the market.
  • Works as a low-code tool generating clean Angular code from your design & soon to be able to do the same with Blazor.
  • Helps companies design and build complete business apps 80% faster than ever before.
  • Eliminates silos, reduces friction, miscommunication, and expensive errors.

So, if you’re looking for Angular Data Grids/Table, you can try out the Infragistics’ Angular Data Grid with features like quick data binding, cell and row selection, cell and row editing and error validation, column summaries, interactive Outlook-style grouping, Microsoft Excel-style filtering, and virtualized rows and columns. It also features an intuitive API for easy theming and branding. In the latest Angular Grid tutorial you can quickly learn how to create a full-featured Angular UI Grid from scratch.

Comparing Blazor and Angular

Both Blazor and Angular are open-source web frameworks. Their primary difference is that Angular is based on JavaScript while Blazor leverages C# to develop for the web. Some key differences include:

 

Angular

Blazor

Production Ready

Angular is production-ready today with years of battle-tested deployments.

With the release of .NET 6 in November of 2021, Blazor has made huge improvements, and can be considered production ready for most applications.

Learning Curve

Bigger learning curve when compared to Blazor, especially for .NET / C# developers.

Easy on-ramp for C# and Visual Studio developers.

Performance

More tuned for performance as the framework is very mature.

Microsoft continues to tune Blazor performance, .NET 6 addressed many of the issues from prior releases.

PWA (Progressive Web App) Support

Yes

Yes (Blazor Web Assembly)

     

Requires an active connection per client

No

Yes (Blazor Server)

Stores the component state server-side for each client

No

Yes (Blazor Server)

Scoped styles for components

Yes

Yes

Bundle Size

< 50KB (Ivy with gZip)

Minimal for Blazor Server.  As low as 393kb, up to 780kb  for .NET Framework in a Client-side WASM app.

Tooling

CLI plus many 3rd party options. 

CLI, Visual Studio and 3rd party options.

Optimized for SEO / Crawlers

Angular server-side rendering.

Yes

Shipping Cadence

2 major releases per year, which is a lot for enterprises to keep up with.

1 major release per year with .NET, with minor updates throughout the year.

Code Style

Very verbose, lots of boilerplate to get started.

Optimized for less boilerplate, easy to get started.

Should You Choose Blazor or Angular?

Both Blazor and Angular are viable options for your next project. It comes down to a few considerations:

  • Are you willing to deal with some bumps in the road with a newer framework like Blazor?
  • Are you willing to take the dive and spend the time to learn Angular to get the benefit of a battle-tested framework?
  • Are you a C# developer that wants an easier on-ramp to modern web apps?
  • Are you a hard-core JavaScript developer that would never even consider using .NET for the web!

We believe that no matter which you choose, there are tradeoffs.

At Infragistics, we support both frameworks. Visit our Ignite UI for Angular and Ignite UI for Blazor pages to learn the details of each.

If you want, you can also read our comparison article on Blazor vs React.