partial view() is Reusable view.but view() is a single page means which will render a normal .aspx page

View can basically contains a complete markup which may contain a master view(or master page) with all the design(s) etc. whereas Partial view is only a portion of page or a small markup which don't have master page. It is basically used as user control in mvc and it can be used at more than one views.

Partial view is similar to ascx in asp.net i.e- usercontrol where as View is a whole cshtml page

View:It means only one view in page. Partial View:It means one view with different views or coloumns

• MVC view contains the layout page. • Before any view is rendered, viewstart page is rendered. • View might have markup tags like body, html, head, title, meta etc. • Partial does not contain the layout page. • In MVC Partial view is designed specially to render within the view and just because of that it does not consist any mark up. • Partial View is lightweight as compare to View.

Returning a View() will render a normal .aspx page that can also consist of Partial Views, while returning PartialView() will render an .ascx control (Basically a portion of HTML that can be requested through AJAX requests).return View(); //Returns a fully-featured HTML page with associated headers etc.return PartialView(); //Returns a portion of HTML that can be called via AJAX requests. However - if you are using the Razor View Engine, there will not be a major difference between the two. You could have a specific View that could be rendered as either a Partial View or as a traditional View, the difference would be if you used View or PartialView to call it.

View: • MVC view contains the layout page. • Before any view is rendered, viewstart page is rendered. • View might have markup tags like body, html, head, title, meta etc.Partial View: • Partial does not contain the layout page. • In MVC Partial view is designed specially to render within the view and just because of that it does not consist any mark up. • Partial View is not lightweight as compare to View.

it does not contain html body.

A partial view is a "sub-view" that you embed within a main view - something that you might reuse across multiple views, like a sidebar

View have layout , But partial view not have

best article i have found on this is http://completedevelopment.blogspot.com/2014/01/is-there-really-no-difference-between.html