Traditional tank armour, usually made of steel or composite materials, offers a basic layer of protection, while reactive armor is emerging as a solution designed to more effectively counter today's more advanced threats. Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA) works by using explosive elements, sandwiched between armour plates, that detonate on impact. The paper explores the mechanism of operation, structure and effectiveness of ERA and NERA against a variety of threats, including shaped charged and kinetic missiles. Although ERA provides significantly greater protection, it has disadvantages such as the risk of collateral damage and the complexity of maintenance, and more complex transportation. Non-explosive reactive armor (NERA) uses non-explosive materials such as composites and metal alloys. NERA is activated by mechanical deformation upon impact, absorbing and dispersing projectile energy, and its advantages are: safety, lower maintenance and transportation costs, and the main disadvantage is lower effectiveness against certain threats. A comparative analysis highlights the strengths and weaknesses of ERA and NERA, and factors considered include protection effectiveness, weight, size, cost and maintenance. ERA generally offers superior protection, but with greater operational complexity and risk. Although NERA is more secure and easier to maintain, it will not provide equal protection against all threats compared to ERA. The paper concludes with a summary of the key comparison of ERA and NERA, and recommendations are given for the selection of appropriate armour systems based on specific operational requirements.