Introduction
Mobile apps are the need of today. No business can survive in today’s time without having a strong online presence, and mobile apps play an inevitable role in this. Although native app development is quite popular among the entrepreneurs for the sheer performance they deliver, cross-platform app development gradually seems to overtake it.
As we can see the trend for BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is continuously rising, so there is a need for mobile apps that can run across various platforms, irrespective of the operating systems, and in a situation like this cross-platform app development comes handy. There is plenitude of reasons why entrepreneurs and even mobile app development companies prefer cross-platform app development, some of them are listed below:
- Code reusability
- Saves time and effort
- The agile app development process
- Cost-efficient
- Uniform design elements
- Easy to integrate
- Easy to maintain
- Early time-to-market
- Easy to deploy
- Native-like look and feel
Now that you know the benefits of cross-platform app development, let us talk about the frameworks that are available in the market. There are many mobile app frameworks available for us to use, but as per the recent survey, React Native is the most popular cross-platform mobile framework. Around 42 percent of software developers use React Native to develop amazing cross-platform apps followed by Flutter. Approx. 39% of the mobile app developers use Flutter to create notable mobile app solutions.
We know how difficult it can get in choosing the right framework for your mobile app development solution. So today, we are here comparing these two, most popular cross-platform app development frameworks, for you. This would ease up your task in choosing the perfect framework for your next app development project. So, without much ado, let’s get started in knowing both of these frameworks a little more.
What is Flutter?
Flutter, developed by Google, is an expressive and fast UI development toolkit. This framework is used to develop fast and highly optimized cross-platform apps. The apps created using Flutter offer the look and feel of a native app. It is one of the most popular open-source frameworks, giving the best of both worlds to both developers and entrepreneurs. As per the leading Flutter app development company, there are a number of benefits, which this framework offers over the other available frameworks.
Let’s have a look at both pros and cons of using Flutter:
Pros
- C++ rendering engine
- Offers the full set of widgets
- Hot Reload
- Code reusability
- Complete SDK
- Faster app development
- Uniform UI on both Android and iOS devices
- Instant Fuchsia Support
- Stable Performance
Cons
- Limited libraries
- Dependence on Native tools
Above given some of the most popular apps developed using Flutter.
What is React Native?
React Native, launched by Facebook, is a multi-functional and highly popular, open-source cross-platform app development framework. This framework is known to create user-friendly, scalable, and robust mobile apps for both iOS and Android platforms. This framework is based on one of the most popular programming languages, i.e. JavaScript.
If you are planning to launch your mobile app on various platforms, all you need to do is opt for proficient react native app development services from a top app development company, and you are all done. App developers across the globe love using this framework due to the sheer number of advantages it offers. In the recent survey for 2020, it is voted as the top cross-app development framework by mobile app developers, globally.
Read Also: Top Reasons to Choose React Native for App Development
Let’s have a look at some of the pros and cons of using this outstanding mobile app development framework:
Pros
- Faster development process
- Hot reloading
- Simple and uniform design elements
- Native-like performance
- Built-in debugging
Cons
- Poor documentation
- Dependency on third party components
- May require native developers
Above given some of the most popular apps developed using React Native.
Now that we are clear about both the frameworks individually, let’s begin with comparing them side by side, to have a better understanding of both of these frameworks.
Flutter vs. React Native: A Detailed Comparison
Both Flutter and React Native are highly popular app development frameworks and developers all across the world love creating apps using these frameworks. There is a huge demand for both React Native developers and Flutter developers in the market. However, each framework has something different from the other and hence, today we are going to compare these frameworks on the basis of:
- Development Time
- Development Cost
- User Interface
- Performance
- Documentation Support
Let’s begin with discussing all these features in detail.
1. Development Time
The hot reloading feature in React Native facilitates developers to test UIs and change them without closing the app. One can immediately see the changes made and this saves a lot of development time. Also, as React Native is based on JavaScript, it has a rich set of modules and libraries, which makes the app development so much easier for React Native developers.
Talking about Flutter, it can sometimes be difficult to use this framework if you do not have experts working for you. Learning new concepts of Flutter can be a bit of a challenging task, which can also hamper the development time. Unlike React Native, Flutter is based on Dart, which is quite a young language as compared to JavaScript and hence, does not have that much support of IDEs and text editors. This can be a time-consuming process.
2. Development Cost
React Native development cost can be comparatively lower than the cost of creating an application using Flutter. Although both React Native and Flutter are cross-platform app development frameworks, still there are many factors that can affect the app development cost. One of the factors is the development time since the time is taken to create an app using Flutter is more than React Native, this affects the cost of app development too.
3. Performance
This is one of the most noticeable features, which is taken into consideration while choosing the right development framework. Although it is quite difficult to choose a clear winner between Flutter and React Native in this department, as both of these frameworks deliver outstanding performance.
But if we have to choose any one of them, React Native has a slight advantage here, as it is based on JavaScript whereas, Flutter based on Dart uses a streamlined process to interact with the native components. React Native can be preferred over Flutter based on cost-efficiency, faster development time, and early time-to-market.
4. User Interface
This is an important aspect of app development as users connect with your app seeing its user interface. A good user interface, easy navigation, attractive graphics play an important role in attracting and retaining users. When we talk about the user interface of an app, we can easily see the difference between these two frameworks.
React Native facilitates creating different interfaces for separate platforms by tapping into native components. Flutter follows a totally distinctive approach while developing UI elements, which is using customizable proprietary widgets. Also, React relies a lot on third-party libraries to access native modules, whereas Flutter does not have any such dependencies.
5. Documentation Support
React Native lacks good documentation support. Although it has user-friendly documentation, it lacks detailed and instant support for each issue just like Flutter. The documentation support in React Native has all the essential topics related to development like how to install and use native modules etc. but when it comes to Flutter, it has good harmony with visual studio and is fully connected with Environment (IDEs) and tools, hence it is far comprehensive. In simpler terms, React’s documentation is a bit generalized as compared to the Flutter’s one.
Flutter vs. React Native: Which One to Use when
To be honest, both React Native development services and Flutter development services are high in demand. You can choose any of them based on your project’s requirements.
Still, here are a few points which you must keep in mind while making your choice. Go for React Native if you are looking for: cost-effective mobile app solution, agile development process, effortless integration, and reuse the native components. While on the other hand, go for Flutter development if you are looking for: high-performance cross-platform apps, customizable user interface, and have enough time-to-market entry. For this, you must hire Flutter app developers having both experience and expertise to create such outstanding cross-platform mobile apps for your business.
However, if you are still unsure of which framework to go for, you can also reach out to a proficient mobile app development company as they are the best persons, who can help you in choosing the framework, which is just the right fit for your project.
