A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a collection of wireless mobile nodes dynamically forming a network topology without the use of any existing network infrastructure or centralized administration. Routing is the process which transmitting the data packets from a source node to a given destination. The main classes of routing protocols are Proactive, Reactive and Hybrid. A Reactive (on-demand) routing strategy is a popular routing category for wireless ad hoc routing. In this paper work an attempt has been made to compare the four Reactive (on-demand) routing protocols for MANETs: - Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV), Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocols, Temporally Ordered Routing Algorithm (TORA) a nd Associativity Based Routing (ABR) protocol .