I’ve spent much time doing cross-platform development over the past year with a significant workload on cross-platform desktop development.
During that time, I found some customers and blog readers asking me if they should go for NW.js or if they should go direction Electron. There is no quick answer to this question. It’s this kind of question that has to be answered with It depends.
I’ve used both frameworks for real projects in the past, and both of them worked great for the given projects. Neither Electron nor NW.js is perfect (but they’re close to it) 😃. Each has its pitfalls. However, the communities behind those frameworks are fantastic and keep on answering quickly to questions popping up on GitHub or in tools like Gitter or Slack.
There is already a post on the web comparing both from various perspectives, but the post (available here) is a bit outdated. Especially Electron has evolved a lot since the linked post has been published. So it’s time to compare both frameworks again with all the information publicly available by February 2016.
I’ve created a simple, public sheet on Google which allows anyone to leave comments in it.
Some soft-facts
Since the first public release of Visual Studio Code - which is built using Electron -, the framework gained a lot more attention and tracktion than before.
Since July 2015, we’re waiting for a new NW.js release which has to move all new features and the highly required dependency updates (like migrating from io.js to latest Node.js) from beta status to a release candidate. Testing stuff on beta software is excellent, but shipping “real-world” products on beta frameworks doesn’t work!
If you compare both frameworks based on non-beta releases Electron is far ahead. However, I believe in the team building NW.js to ship their great beta as soon as possible.
Besides the hard facts listed in the Google Sheet, you and your team should invest some time and look at both frameworks. There are some differences when it comes to architecture and usage from a developers perspective. Make yourself comfortable with Electron and NW.js. Decide which one fits better to your needs. Currently, both are under active development, so chances are pretty good that both exist for a long time from now (whatever that means in this age) 😃.
Summary
In the end, it’s once again a personal decision which depends on your requirements. I’ve used NW.js for about 6 months before I moved to Electron. Since that point in time, I’m only using GitHub’s Electron for customer workloads. However, that’s personal preference. Both bring your HTML5 app to Windows, Linux, and macOS.