As mobile apps’ popularity is growing day by day, businesses are eager to conquer the App Store as well as Google Play. If you think investing countless hours & resources into developing native applications for both marketplaces is enough to get the efficient result, then you must check out the cross-platform framework. However, choosing the ideal technology stack from a long list of technologies is like finding a needle in a haystack. React Native & Flutter both have emerged as the frontrunners, but the question arises which one framework will lead your mobile application to glory as well as make sure your time, money, and effort are spent at the right place.
If you are also seeking answers to these questions then this blog is for you, where we have created a guide for Flutter vs. React Native 2023. So, why wait? Just take a deep dive into the peculiarities of these 2 popular frameworks, by scrolling down the blog. So, get comfy as well as ready to explore the advantages and disadvantages of React Native vs. Flutter & their aspects. Also, we will examine how they can impact the performance of your app, along with user experience, & ultimate success.
Though, both Flutter & React Native are cross-platform application frameworks with robust user communities, enormous functionality, & an enormous number of pre-programmed modules that can advance the speed of your development. But comprehending the differences b/w Flutter & React Native can be the key to creating your upcoming project on the right foundation. Whether you are willing to build a transportation application, develop a medical app, create an on-demand delivery app, or a music application – you might want to comprehend all the basic and crucial requirements of your project, to opt for the framework wisely.
Keep on reading this blog to get all the detailed as well as important information an industry will need to make a decision in the Flutter vs React Native debate.
Why is mobile app development so famous?
Building mobile apps is a continuously growing business niche. Virtually all individuals on the planet have smartphones, which implies that there are nearly millions to billions of potential users. Therefore, nowadays, there are mobile applications for almost everything.
You can opt for many ways to design as well as develop an application, or simply hire Flutter developer from a Flutter development company to get the best app. You or your development team can either utilize native methods, e.g. Swift & Objective-C for building iOS applications and Java for Android applications. These are the official Apple / Google, s/w programming languages, respectively, which provide both support & frequently updated features.
Alternatively, you may utilize cross-platform frameworks like Flutter or React Native.
Cross-platform app development
Before initiating the talk about the most famous cross-platforms named Flutter and React Native, let’s first define the term “cross-platform app development” & divide it into 2 categories: Hybrid Development & Native Development.
Cross-platform mobile apps are apps that can be built utilizing a single codebase & function virtually identically on iOS as well as Android OS. (In this blog, our main focus is on mobile app development; we talk more about web & desktop apps here.)
Hybrid Development
Hybrid apps are built with a blend of web technologies like JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS. This implies that hybrid applications share a few codes across platforms (e.g. the CSS/HTML/JS code) & this shared code runs in a web view on the target platform.
WebView applications are hybrid applications that use embedded web views to render their UI, within which you can utilize JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS for customization.
WebView applications will have a few limitations in accessing the device API out of the box, needing some additional effort so that they can achieve some of the same functionality as native applications.
Hybrid applications may look similar on both platforms but they will behave differently, depending on platform-specific APIs available to them. For instance, a weather application would check the API of the current location’s weather service on both platforms & return different data according to what is available on each platform.
Native Development
Native apps are built with the native Software Development Kits of their target platforms (e.g. Android or iOS). You can’t share any written code across platforms in native & this shared code is written merely for the targeted platform, whereas the User Interface is implemented utilizing platform-specific widgets & libraries.
Native apps give a better UX than Hybrid applications and also look more native on each platform, but they cost quite more to build & take longer to release new aspects due to the time required for mobile app developers of a flutter app development agency to learn the APIs of the particular target platforms.
Generally, it’s ideal to build your mobile app utilizing the native development tool of their target platforms (e.g. Android Studio or Xcode).
Flutter & React Native: Cross-Platform Frameworks
Both Flutter & React Native are among the best cross-platform frameworks available nowadays. Both Flutter and React Native utilize native widgets to deliver a responsive, visually appealing, highly customizable framework while sharing code across different platforms.
Flutter is launched by Google while React Native is developed by Facebook, so both of these framework’s tech giants have quite a good enough team dealing with everything from the platform’s Software Development Kits to its documentation, and support, etc.
While Flutter & React Native apps are both native, they are advantageous over traditional native application development as they can easily share a significant proportion of their codebase across platforms.
Flutter vs. React Native
Language
- React Native: React Native is completely written in JavaScript utilizing React. This is a benefit for React Native since JavaScript is one of the most utilized languages in the world today.
- Flutter: Flutter is written utilizing a language called Dart. The Dart programming language was introduced by Google in 2011 & is rarely used by mobile app developers of the Flutter development company.
User Interface
- React Native: React Native is maximally based on native components for Android as well as iOS devices. It provides an extensive collection of external User Interface kits that assists in creating beautiful UIs for your mobile apps.
- Flutter: Flutter utilizes proprietary structural, platform, visual, & interactive widgets. These widgets are built-in User Interface components that replace native platform components.
Performance
- React Native: This leverages JavaScript to connect to native components via a bridge. Recently, the speed of mobile app development & running time is slower than Flutter.
- Flutter: There is not any interconnecting bridge for starting interactions with the native components of the device. Hence, interactions with native components are quite faster, enhancing the overall performance of the app.
Documentation
- React Native: React Native provides general documentation. The React Native framework completely depends on external dev kits extensively. The documentation isn’t as straightforward as that of Flutters.
- Flutter: It offers documentation that is easy to read, thanks to its format & detailed content. The documentation is also more streamlined & straightforward.
Popularity
- React Native: React Native is widely adopted & is a more famous mobile app development than the Flutter framework. React app developers can quickly create React native mobile applications, which encourages more application developers to utilize this framework.
- Flutter: Flutter is relatively new, & though it has gained a little attention lately, it is still way behind in application developer count. Since Dart is the latest programming language, the adoption rate among mobile app developers of a reliable flutter development company is slightly lower.
Community Support
- React Native: It was released as open-source on GitHub in 2015, is the most famous framework on Stack Overflow & is backed by a vast community with over 310,507 tagged queries.
- Flutter: Flutter is a relatively latest framework that has a smaller community. However, more and more mobile application developers are adopting it slowly. It has up to 89,638 questions on Stack Overflow.
Industry Trends
- React Native: As per the recent StackOverflow survey of 2019, 62.5 percent of mobile app developers loved React Native. Since it has been around for a while now & utilizes React & JavaScript, it leads to better job opportunities.
- Flutter: Flutter ranked quite higher with 65.4 percent. The Flutter framework is comparatively new & is utilized less by organizations.
Flutter vs. React Native in 2023
In 2015, React Native came out and since then it has been utilized by many organizations. The world of JavaScript changes very quickly so React Native has also evolved over time to include the latest aspects thanks to the contributions of the open-source community.
Though, Flutter is a much newer technology from other frameworks that can feel quite alien if you’re coming from the world of Android or iOS. Google has put lots of effort into making it extremely easy to understand and learn, so most individuals that are familiar with Android or iOS app development should be able to pick it up in nearly no time.
Flutter released version 3.7, in early 2023, which simply added a broad set of latest aspects & improvements. A Few of the most notable updates included a new rendering engine on iOS, increased support for Material 3 & iOS-style widgets, revamped support for internationalization, & background processing improvements.
In addition, there were updates to mobile app developer tooling that made it even easier to develop rich-quality cross-platform applications with the Flutter framework. These latest aspects and improvements further solidified the position of Flutter as a leading framework for cross-platform app development.
Conclusion
Both Flutter & React Native are incredible choices for cross-platform app development. While they share a few similarities, there are also a few key differences that you must be aware of before deciding which one to choose and use.
Opting for the right cross-platform framework for your business mobile app or startup application idea depends largely on your app development experience, app development team, & which native elements your project requires access to.
We hope this blog will assist you to make an informed decision about which framework is right for your upcoming project.
