Angular vs SolidJS for Solo Developers

Quick Comparison

Angular Overview

Angular is Google's full-featured frontend platform. It ships with routing, HTTP client, forms, dependency injection, a powerful CLI, and testing utilities. Everything has an official Angular way, and the framework enforces architectural patterns through decorators, modules, and services.

For enterprise teams, this opinionated approach prevents chaos. When 30 developers touch the same codebase, having one official way to do everything avoids arguments and keeps things consistent. But for solo developers, many of these patterns solve problems you don't have.

I've used Angular on team projects, and the structure makes sense in that context. Dependency injection is useful when multiple teams share services. Modules organize code for large codebases. RxJS handles complex async workflows. When you're building alone, though, you're paying the complexity tax without getting the coordination benefits.

Recent improvements like standalone components and signals have reduced some boilerplate. Angular is getting better for smaller projects. But the core learning curve remains steep.

SolidJS Overview

SolidJS is a reactive UI library that uses JSX (like React) but executes fundamentally differently. Components run once. Signals provide fine-grained reactivity that updates only the exact DOM nodes that need to change. No virtual DOM, no reconciliation, no wasted re-renders.

The performance story is remarkable. Solid consistently tops JS Framework Benchmarks, outperforming React, Vue, Svelte, and Angular in rendering speed and memory usage. For applications with lots of dynamic data and frequent updates, Solid's architecture has real advantages.

SolidStart, the meta-framework, adds SSR, file-based routing, and server functions. It's comparable to Next.js or SvelteKit in concept but younger in execution. The community is small but growing, and the documentation improves with each release.

Key Differences

Architecture philosophy. Angular prescribes a complete architecture with dependency injection, services, modules, and decorators. SolidJS gives you reactive primitives and lets you organize your code however you want. Angular's approach is more structured. Solid's is more flexible.

Performance. SolidJS is dramatically faster than Angular in benchmarks. Fine-grained reactivity without a virtual DOM versus change detection with Zone.js. In real-world applications, the gap narrows because most apps aren't hitting performance limits. But when they are, Solid has significantly more headroom.

Bundle size. SolidJS ships a tiny runtime because the compiler does most of the work at build time. Angular ships a larger runtime that includes change detection, dependency injection, and the template compiler. For performance-sensitive projects, the bundle size difference matters.

Learning curve. Angular requires learning TypeScript decorators, RxJS, dependency injection, the module system, and Angular-specific template syntax. Solid requires learning signals, effects, and memos. If you know React, Solid feels familiar within hours. Angular takes weeks to feel comfortable.

Ecosystem. Angular has a massive ecosystem built over nearly a decade. Angular Material, PrimeNG, NgRx, and thousands of community packages. Solid's ecosystem is much smaller. You have Kobalte for accessible components and a handful of community libraries, but you'll build more things from scratch.

Enterprise readiness. Angular has a clear story for large organizations. Testing utilities, architecture patterns, corporate backing from Google, and a predictable release schedule. Solid is newer and doesn't yet have the same enterprise adoption or tooling maturity.

When to Choose Angular

• You're building for or joining an enterprise team
• The project will be maintained by many developers over years
• You need comprehensive tooling and testing out of the box
• Enterprise UI component libraries (Angular Material) are important
• You already know Angular well and can leverage your experience

When to Choose SolidJS

• Performance is a primary concern for your application
• You want a small, fast framework without enterprise overhead
• You're comfortable with JSX and want React-like DX with better performance
• You enjoy working with newer tools and smaller communities
• Your project has lots of reactive, frequently-updating UI elements

The Verdict

SolidJS gets the higher solo developer rating because it's better suited for individual productivity. Less boilerplate, faster performance, lower learning curve. Angular's strengths (structure, consistency, team coordination) are wasted when you're building alone.

That said, neither is my top recommendation for solo developers. SolidJS is held back by its smaller ecosystem, and Angular is held back by its enterprise-oriented complexity. If you're picking between exactly these two for a solo project, Solid is the more practical choice. But if you're open to alternatives, SvelteKit or even React with Next.js would give you a better balance of ecosystem, performance, and developer experience.

SolidJS is the framework I'd pick if raw performance were my top priority. Angular is the framework I'd pick if I were joining a large team. Neither is wrong. They're just optimized for different situations, and solo development favors Solid's approach.