Do you desire to build applications more swiftly and to diminish costs with cross-platform development? What if you don’t know about cross-platform app development frameworks also if you are not sure which technology you should choose? No worries, this article will clear your every doubt if you are confused with Flutter and React Native, the leading market players. We will be conducting a comparative study on these two from the app owners’ perspective to help them distinguish which framework adequately suits their application development idea. Cross-platform app development is gaining enormous popularity these days. Flutter and React Native app development frameworks are leading market players, but you must analyze which one approach best fits your requirements before heading towards app development.
Flutter Vs React Native: in a Nutshell
| Flutter | React Native | |
| What is it? | A compact UI toolkit for developing natively-compiled apps across mobile, Web, and desktop with a single codebase. | Framework for developing native applications applying React. |
| Official release | December 2018, Google I/O | March 2015, F8 Conference |
| Created by | ||
| Free and open-source | Yes | Yes |
| Programming language | Dart | JavaScript |
| Popularity | 68,000 Stars on Github till June 2019 | 78,400 stars on Github till June 2019 |
| Hot Reload | Yes | Yes |
| Native Performance | Great | Great |
| UI | Flutter apps resemble as good on the modern operating systems as they appear on earlier versions. | Application components seem exactly similar To the native ones (Take, for example, a button on an iOS device that looks the same as to native iOS button, and likewise on Android). |
| As it has a single codebase, the applications appear and perform likewise across iOS and Android. Thanks to Material Design and Cupertino widgets, they can also copy the platform design itself. | The reality is that React Native uses native components under the hood, which assures you that, after each OS UI update, your app’s components will also instantly upgrade. | |
| Flutter comprises two sets of widgets that adhere to particular design languages. Material Design widgets implement Google’s design language of the same name, and Cupertino widgets imitate Apple’s iOS design. | This might break the app’s UI, although it occurs very seldom. | |
| That indicates that your Flutter the app will look and behave exactly like native apps on each platform, imitating their native components. | If you crave that your application looks near-identical across platforms and also on older versions of the operating system same as that of Flutter), then examine using third-party libraries. They will empower you in using Material Design components, in place of native ones. | |
| Sharing Code | Presently on iOS and Android – Although the long-term insight for Flutter is offering an integrated solution. These integrated solutions enable mobile app developers to write a single code for both desktop & mobile, as well as for the Web. | iOS and Android – but there are preferred libraries that let you apply the same code to create iOS, Android, web, and Windows10 apps. |
| However, Flutter for Web is not stable, and it is now accessible just as a preview. | Also, you may derive shared code in mobile, desktop, and web apps, to a separate repository; and treat it as a different project; then add it in the same approach as other dependencies. | |
| APIs are in their initial stages of development when it comes to building desktop apps with Flutter, and so will be apparently released, just further down the line. | This enables cross-platform app developers to converge onto writing code for a particular platform without considering the compatibility with another one. | |
| Best apps produced employing this technology | Xianyu app by Alibaba | |
| Hamilton app for Hamilton Musical | ||
| Google Ads app | Facebook Ads | |
| Skype | ||
| Tesla | ||
| Time-to-market | Usually, very quicker than native development. | Probably as fast as Flutter app development. |
| Competitive advantage | Excellent appearance and feel because of the rich widgets. | It has Stability as it has competed for 4+ years in the market. |
| A swiftly expanding community and popularity | Various thriving and leading market players have employed React Native. | |
| Exceptional documentation with robust support from the Flutter team, making it easy to start development with Flutter. | Mature and has a broad community and Easy-to-learn technology. | |
| Advancing Flutter for Web, giving the potential for single codebases across mobile and web platforms. | Lots of tutorials and libraries are available that allow agile and secure development. | |
| Tough to overcome time-to-market length. | Code can be easily reused for the web app and desktop app development. |
Final Words
Remember that each application is different, which makes it essential for business owners to consider each one on its own merits. It’s always worth discussing your project with a cross-platform application development company to discover different approaches, with a varied skillset when it comes to cross-platform development. Both Flutter and React Native are eminent technologies and have immense popularity and enduring trust. Also, both can help your application spread its wings and fly and possess key reasons that compel you to consider either framework for your project.
