A fundamental question in invasive plant ecology is whether invasive and native plants have different ecological roles. Differences in functional traits have been explored but we lack a comparison of the factors affecting the spread of co-occurring natives and invasives. Some have proposed that to succeed, invasive plants would colonize a wider variety of sites than native plants, that invasive plants would disperse farther, or that invasive plants would be better at colonizing sites with more available light and soil nutrients. Others have argued that native and invasive plants are more similar than we typically perceive and share similar environmental preferences. We examined patterns of spread of shrubs and lianas over 70 years in a regenerating forest in Connecticut where both native and invasive species acted as colonizers. We compared the characteristics of colonized plots, the variation in characteristics of colonized plots, and the importance of site variables for predicting colonization between seven invasive and 19 spreading native species. We found little support for the hypotheses that invasive plants succeed either by dispersing farther than native plants or by having a broader range of site tolerances. In addition, colonization by invasive plants was not more dependent on light than colonization by native plants and in fact, light availability had relatively low impact on colonization success for most species. Similar to native understory species, invasive plants were able to spread into closed canopy forest and species rich communities despite earlier predictions that these communities would resist invasion. The biggest differences between natives and invasives were that soil nitrate and the forest being younger increased the odds of colonization for most invasives but only for some natives. The narrower range of spread patterns for invasives with respect to these variables is consistent with a known bias in the selection of nonnative plants for introduction. In large part, the spread of native and invasive plants was affected by similar factors, adding to growing evidence that research in native community assembly and succession is also useful for understanding invasive plant spread.