react vs wordpress: two different answers to two different questions
tech · 2026-10-20 · 4 min
comparing react and wordpress is like comparing a box of bricks with a house. react is a javascript library for building interfaces; wordpress is a content management system that happens to render pages. one is a material, the other is a building with a maintenance contract.
that said, the question is real: "should my next site be react or wordpress?" here is the honest version.
what wordpress is good at
- publishing — non-technical people can write, schedule and edit without calling anyone. this is the actual product.
- the ecosystem — plugins for bookings, shops, forms, translations, seo. some are excellent, many are abandoned.
- the labour market — someone in every city can work on it. that matters when you change supplier.
- the cost at the low end — a small site can be live in a week for a few hundred euro.
what wordpress costs
the licence is free; the ownership is not. you pay for hosting that can run php and mysql, for updates, for the plugin that breaks after an update, for the security incident, for the speed work. a wordpress site with 25 plugins is a small system with 25 suppliers and no architect.
why wordpress sites get slow is the technical version. the business version: the yearly bill is not zero, it is just spread across invoices.
what react is good at
- interfaces with state — dashboards, configurators, booking flows, anything where the page changes without reloading.
- performance control — you ship what you choose, not what a plugin decides.
- long-lived products — typed code, tests, a repository you own, a build that fails when something is wrong.
what react costs
you need a developer for every content change, unless you pair it with a cms or a markdown pipeline. the initial build is more expensive. the maintenance is real: dependencies move fast, and a react site left alone for three years is a renovation.
this site is react, prerendered to static html, with content in typescript files. that works because i am the only editor. for a client who wants to publish three posts a week, it would be the wrong tool.
the decision, in one table
- you publish often and edit yourself → wordpress (or another cms), and spend the money on speed and security.
- you need an interface with accounts, states, calculations → react (or another framework), and budget the maintenance.
- you need a five-page brochure site → neither matters; the content matters. pick the cheaper maintenance.
the trap
"react is modern" and "wordpress is old" are not arguments. both are tools with a decade of production behind them. the question is who will maintain the thing in year three, and whether that person can read the code.
faq
is react faster than wordpress?
a well-built react site can be faster, because you control what ships. a badly built react site is slower than a clean wordpress site. the framework is not the performance; the build is.
can i use wordpress as a backend for react?
yes, headless wordpress is a common pattern: wordpress for editing, react for the front end. it doubles the moving parts and is worth it only when the editing experience is the point.
which is cheaper over five years?
wordpress is cheaper to start and usually more expensive to keep fast and secure. react is more expensive to build and cheaper to extend if the product grows. neither is cheaper in general.