All three remain genuinely solid choices, and most of the “which is best” debate online is really a proxy for “which do I already know.” Here’s how they actually differ when you strip that out.
React
A library more than a full framework, which means more flexibility and more decisions left to you — state management, routing, and structure are all choices you make rather than conventions handed to you. Its ecosystem is the largest of the three, which matters when you need a specific integration or a developer who already knows it.
Angular
The most opinionated and complete of the three, with structure, typing, and conventions built in from the start. That discipline is genuinely valuable on large applications with many developers, where consistency matters more than flexibility — and a real cost on smaller projects, where its structure can feel heavier than the problem requires.
Vue
The gentlest learning curve of the three, and flexible enough to be dropped into an existing server-rendered site incrementally rather than requiring a full front-end rewrite. Its ecosystem is smaller than React’s, which occasionally matters for niche integrations, but rarely for standard application needs.
What should actually decide it
Team familiarity first — fluency beats theoretical fit nearly every time. After that: project scale (Angular’s structure pays off more at scale), whether you’re adding to an existing site incrementally (Vue’s strength), and how much flexibility versus convention your team actually wants.