Flutter Vs. Xamarin: What’s Better And Why?

In this post, we shall be comparing two popular cross-platform development frameworks: Flutter and Xamarin. Cross-platform mobile app development has been gaining momentum within the app industry.

Although both Android and iOS provide specialized tools for developing native apps for their platforms, most companies just cannot afford to develop and maintain two separate apps for their business.

Cross-platform development frameworks address this very issue and allow developers to build apps for multiple platforms with a single codebase.

While these apps do come with some serious challenges compared to native apps, the overall advantages and convenience of only having to build a single app have started to outweigh them.

Moreover, development frameworks have got much more capable in the past few years, allowing developers to create fast, secure, and reliable apps using them.

Two such popular app development frameworks are under scrutiny today. We shall be comparing Flutter and Xamarin in terms of the functionality they offer and try discovering if either of them is better at what it promises compared to the other.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of features and differences the platform provides, but it should give you a rough idea about what each framework is capable of and when you should be picking one over the other.

Flutter vs. Xamarin

Language and architecture:

Xamarin is based on C# and uses the mono execution environment for building apps for multiple platforms. C# is a reliable and popular language, meaning most experienced developers would find themselves very comfortable with using Xamarin.

For Android, mono runs Android runtime on Linux, and for iOS, it runs with Objective-C runtime on Unix. The mono environment automatically handles tasks like memory allocation and garbage collection; on top of that, more than 80% of the app’s code is reusable with Xamarin.

Xamarin lets you write your business logic using C#, which is later translated into the app’s code.

On the other hand, Flutter is based on Dart and uses the Skia C++ engine. It contains all the necessary components to build the app within itself. This eliminates the need for a Javascript bridge but also increases the size.

Flutter supports a layered approach to building, and apps are primarily built with highly customizable and functional widgets.

Dart is an incredibly clear language with a robust syntax; it lets you write much more structured code allowing developers of any skill level to create complex but beautiful apps.

Although not very popular among developers, Dart is incredibly straightforward and easy to learn. Experienced developers shouldn’t be having any trouble switching from traditional languages to Dart.

UI Development

Xamarin is a much more mature framework and supports a wider array of platforms than Flutter; it boasts a ton of UI components and modules and great documentation of its development API.

Using Xamarin.Forums, UI components are converted into platform-specific elements at runtime. This can slow down the performance of apps with custom UIs and heavy animations.

However, it is still possible to implement these features using a number of libraries and frameworks, e.g., OpenGL ES, SkiaSharp, etc., available to Xamarin users.

Flutter comes loaded with a large and diverse set of UI components and libraries such that it need not rely on third-party libraries to achieve a good UI.

As mentioned, Flutter’s UI is entirely built by widgets; each of Flutter’s widgets renders for both Android and iOS with the same code; thus, developers can build UI for both platforms in one go.

Because Flutter is developed by Google, most widgets by default are in line with Material Design. To achieve the same native look on iOS, available libraries let you select Cupertino widgets if you prefer.

Despite being an excellent UI framework, Flutter is still a growing platform and fails to surpass Zamarin. Zamarin is the preferred choice of companies involved in mobile app development USA and worldwide when it comes to delivering good UI.

Ease of testing

Testing your app is an important part of mobile development, and so a good development system should provide reliable testing solutions to its users. Both Flutter and Xamarin are excellent in terms of app testing.

Xamarin, on top of all the standard tests, features its own cloud test environment for automated testing. Xamarin offers dedicated unit testing and also offers its Xamarin.UITest API for through UI testing.

Apps built with Xamarin can also be tested via third-party native or independent frameworks.

Another key area where Flutter shines is when it comes to testing. It offers robust multi-layered testing at lightning-fast speeds. There are three main levels of testing within Flutter:

• Unit testing: where individual components are tested.
• Widget testing: where widgets or UI elements are tested.
• Integration testing: where the entire app or a considerable portion of it is tested.

This allows you to identify better and pinpoint the core issues that could plague your app in the long run.

Flutter easily wins the testing comparison given how detailed and practical its tests are over Xamarin’s.

Ease of Development

A good development framework should make development easier and accessible for the developers. Both Xamarin and Flutter try to achieve this goal in unique ways.

Again, Xamarin takes advantage of its maturity. Its development API has been polished over the years and offers great usability. However, since Xamarin is heavily dependent on the Visual Studio IDE, it becomes difficult for developers inexperienced with C# to work with it.

However, the difficulty and challenge are perhaps offset by the abundance of resources available online owing to Xamarin’s popularity.

Coming to Flutter, we see some groundbreaking features and implementations that make working within its environment extremely simple and pleasurable.

The most prominent of these being hot reload, which allows developers to fix bugs easily, build better UI, etc. it injects pieces of source code into the running Dart Virtual Machine to achieve this.

Conclusion

Both Flutter and Xamarin are incredibly popular and capable development tools, and the choice of which one to pick over the other mainly depends on the developer’s needs and experience.

If you are experienced with Microsoft’s ecosystem and would like to develop an app with an extensive custom UI for mobile and many other platforms, then Xamarin should be your go-to choice.

If you want to quickly build a reliable app that delivers great performance, employ extensive testing, and achieve this via a simple and straightforward development process, Flutter should be your priority.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what framework you opt for as long as you build an app that serves your user’s needs.

If you want to build an app for your business but aren’t sure how to go about it, then maybe consider outsourcing your app development. Goodfirms has curated a list of top mobile app development companies that can build your app for you.

What app development framework will you choose for your next project and why? Do let us know at Goodfirms.co

Author Bio

Darren Mathew is passionate about Tech, Business, and the evolving relationship between the two. He is a blogger at GoodFirms – a leading review and rating platform that lets consumers compare and choose the right service provider for their needs.

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