React Native vs Flutter vs Xamarin: A Comparative Guide [2020]

It’s the known fact that to keep your business expanding, you need the help of the trending technologies. As per the report and analysis, there are over 5 billion smartphone users across the globe which would be more than 7 billion by 2021. When it comes to worldwide statics, there are 85% of the android users and 15% of the iOS users.

With all these, the mobile app accounts for 57% of smartphone usage. It shows the importance of having an application for your business.

But here comes the main question which technology to select to build an app? Which platform to go for iOS or Android or Both? Whether to go for a native app or hybrid app or cross-platform app development? Or how much does it cost to make an app on different platforms?

Relax, you will get all the answers to each question in this blog. Let us start with which platform to go for building your business application.

Which Platform to Select For Your Business Application?

If you’re planning to develop an application for Android as well as iOS, then cross-platform app development is what you should opt for. Here, you can run the same code on different platforms.

You can cut the cost of your application development by half, by using the cross-platform app development. You will have a shortened development cycle with the help of cross-platform app development. It is estimated that approximately 97% of the code can be shared across various platforms.

The most popular cross-platform frameworks are React Native, Xamarin and Flutter. But, which to select out of three? We’ll go through each one of them and by the end of this article, you will get the one which suits best for your business.

Let’s start with Google’s Flutter.

What is Flutter? Its Pros & Cons

Flutter is an open-source framework by Google. Take a note to the point that Flutter is not a language, but it is an app development framework for crafting UI. Flutter was specially developed for Google Fuchsia, later they made it an open-source for various platforms.

Flutter offers readymade widgets, command-line tools, APIs and almost every tool need to build an application. By now, Flutter has expanded Flutter SDK to embedded devices, desktop, and web.

Here are the pros and cons of Flutter.

Pros	Cons
Flutter supports faster bug fixing and code implementation.	When compared with native development, it is not yet that robust and rich.
An extra advantage with Flutter is that it has now expanded to desktop, web and embedded devices.	It is not supported by Continuous Integration.
It is based on object-oriented programming Dart, hence easy to code.	Flutter is not in a mature state yet. It’s running in its beta version.
It is opensource, and its architecture depends on reactive programming.	As Flutter is new, its libraries are not built yet. Thus developers need to build it.

What is Xamarin? Its Pros & Cons

It is one of the most popular cross-platform app development frameworks with C#. Xamarin was launched in 2011 and now is acquired by Microsoft. It is not a completely free tool for everyone. If you have a team of more than five developers, you need to buy a license. Thus, it can increase the cost of app development.

The technology is mainly divided into three main parts, that are

• Xamarin Platform
• Xamarin Cloud
• Xamarin Insights

Xamarin Platform is an important part of Xamarin as it consists of runtime engines, authentication, encryption, APIs, controls, virtual machines, etc. To track the crashes and exceptions, Xamarin Insights will help the developers. Consequently, the Xamarin cloud will provide automated testing to assure the quality of the products.

Pros	Cons
Xamarin gives full support for hardware features like GPS, camera, etc.	It is a high size app and has a slow deployment time.
It offers platform special elements with custom interfaces and functions.	Community support is a real concern over here. It has minimal community support.
Xamarin development can be made faster with the help of Xamarin and NuGet Plugins.	The development of the core User Interface is not mobile-friendly, hence it is time-consuming.
It comes with MVC and MVVM architecture compatibility.	Xamarin is not completely free, it costs a few bucks to get a paid framework.

What is React Native? Its Pros & Cons

React Native is an open-source app development framework applied with JavaScript and a bunch of native APIs. It is used for the iOS and Android application development. It was developed by Facebook, especially for iOS, but now is available for Android too. As React Native comes with the native modules and components, the performance of the app can be improved.

Pros	Cons
React Native gets a large supportive community.	The output for the application is slower.
It builds high-quality UI for mobile applications.	They allow for third party plugin integration but will not give security for the same.
With pre-installed elements of react-native, you can have a faster development process.	React Native is not able to perform on multiple screens.
You can have a live app inspection with React Native.	Frequent upgradations in the framework are painful.

Flutter vs Xamarin vs React Native

After having every note clear on all the three frameworks, let’s get through their difference to get the best out for your application.

1.Popularity

As per the Google Trends, Xamarin has overcome React Native. More and more developers are now moving towards Xamarin. It is becoming a more popular choice in comparison to Flutter and React Native. The below-given graph can make things more clear for you.

We know that the cross-platform app development is in trend as it will allow you to use the same code for various platforms. Therefore, every 6 months new framework popups and the position fluctuates. But, it can be observed here that, the position of React Native and Xamarin still remains the same.

2.Performance Analysis

In terms of performance, Flutter wins the race. It rank top among the list followed by React Native. The reason for Flutter to deliver the best performance is the Dart code. And this code complies with native machine code, which eliminates the bridge of Javascript.

As React Native is dependent on Javascript, there comes an issue for rendering the large datasets.

From the performance point of view, Xamarin’s performance is almost comparable to native mobile apps.

3.The Diameter of the Framework

Flutter’s app size is the largest among the three, henceforth sometimes developers get frustrated. For providing a clear version, the Flutter core engine takes up to 2.7 MB of the space + the code space, which makes it a bit larger in the diameter. For React Native, the mobile application code is differentiated to various blocks which makes it easy to proceed.

Xamarin uses MVC and MVVM architecture which accelerates the process of an app with less diameter. So, depending on the size of your application, you can select the one that suits you best.

4.Community Support

Community Support is imperative for pointing out the errors in the framework and providing support for the same. Here, Xamarin has the least community support. In contrast, Flutter and React Native has very good community support to provide users better support. According to the GitHub, React Native has the highest follower for the community support. Therefore, this round goes to React Native.

Popular Websites That Use Flutter, Xamarin and React Native

Let me give you an exact idea on which cross-platform app development framework suits best to your app. Below given are some of the popular applications build on this framework.

Xamarin	React Native	Flutter
SuperGaint Games	Facebook	Alibaba
Skulls of the Shogun	UberEats	Google Ads
Captio	Instagram	Birch Finance
Storyo	AirBnB	Reflectly
The World Bank	SoundCloud	Hamilton Musica

Conclusion- Which is the Best for Your Needs?

After going through the whole article, I guess you might have got an idea for which framework for your application development.

In a nutshell, Flutter offers you the fastest development, therefore if you want an app in a short period of time, go for it. On the contrary, React Native is popular, simple and with good community support if you’re looking for these qualities you should select React Native over Xamarin or Flutter. At last, Xamarin allows 96% reuse of the code, which is higher than any other cross-platform development.

Henceforth, it totally depends on your needs for the selection of a cross-platform app development framework.

All in one, it completely depends on your requirements. What are your thoughts on Cross-platform frameworks? Let us know your views in the comment section below!