Analytical comparison between the homotopy perturbation method and variational iteration method for differential equations of fractional order

Comparison of homotopy perturbation method (HPM) and variational iteration method (VIM) is made, revealing that the two methods can be used as alternative and equivalent methods for obtaining analytic and approximate solutions for different types of differential equations of fractional order. Furthermore, the former is more general and powerful than the latter. Numerical results show that the two approaches are easy to implement and accurate when applied to differential equations of fractional order.