Mobile app development continues to expand rapidly and so is the demand for frameworks that enable the creation of robust, portable, and easy-to-use applications. Currently, Flutter and React Native are some of the leading frameworks that can be adopted to develop cross-platform applications. They both allow developers to build apps across several platforms (iOS, Android, etc.) and so incur less development time and cost. The key question though remains, what is the difference between the two, and which one is best suited for your upcoming project?
What is Flutter?
Developed by Google, Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit (SDK) that enables developers to write applications that are compiled natively for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. It is based on Dart as a programming language and contains numerous pre-made widgets for effective and efficient user interface design.
What is React Native?
Created by Facebook, React Native is a mobile framework that allows developers to create cross-platform apps using React along with native components. Using JavaScript and React’s component-based architecture, React Native was designed for building user interfaces which enables developers to create native applications supporting both iOS and Android.
A Comparative Study of Flutter and React Native
- Performance
๐ ๐ฅ๐ฎ๐ญ๐ญ๐๐ซ:Flutter is a high-performance framework due to the fact that it compiles to native ARM code. This enables a boost in speed and performance efficiency. Thanks to the Skia graphics engine, Flutter can draw UI elements and components which gives it smooth animation and improved load times.
๐๐๐๐๐ญ ๐๐๐ญ๐ข๐ฏ๐: Although React Native does offer almost the same performance as native performance. There are some limitations since there is a bridge usage between native and its javascript, which could limit the performance when comparing it to Flutter. However, when looking into most of the standard applications, React Native performance is appropriate for most scenarios.
- ๐๐๐ฏ๐๐ฅ๐จ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐๐ง๐ญ ๐๐ฉ๐๐๐ ๐๐ง๐ ๐๐ซ๐จ๐ฎ๐๐ฅ๐๐ฌ๐ก๐จ๐จ๐ญ๐ข๐ง๐
Flutter: Applications can be developed faster because developers can see the accuracy of the app as they make code because of hot reload. But this might be a problem because it is not widely known as JavaScript, so for developers who are not familiar with the language, there could be quite a learning curve to overcome.
React Native: Since it is also capable of fast refresh (similar to hot reload), changes can also be made in real-time and these changes can be viewed by developers as well. Because it utilizes a very popular language, React Native is more appealing to many developers so the learning curve is decreased.
- ๐๐ฌ๐๐ซ ๐๐ง๐ญ๐๐ซ๐๐๐๐ (๐๐) ๐๐๐ฌ๐ข๐ ๐ง ๐๐ง๐ ๐๐จ๐๐ข๐๐ข๐๐๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง
Flutter: Whatโs usually interesting with Flutter is that it has implemented a widget-based UI mechanism for its application. Every component in Flutter is a widget, which provides developers with a wide range of possibilities regarding the look and feel of the app. This is why Flutter is perfect when building aesthetically pleasing and even highly customized applications.
React Native: React Native has the benefit of using native components. This means it uses the UI of the native platform. This means this results to an app that has a native feel on iOS and Android both but may be somewhat constricted on customization options when compared to the flexibility offered by Flutter.
- ๐๐จ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ง๐ข๐ญ๐ฒ ๐๐ง๐ ๐๐๐จ๐ฌ๐ฒ๐ฌ๐ญ๐๐ฆ
Flutter: Even though Flutter is quite new, it has recently become quite popular and has a rapidly growing user base. Google remains overly committed into seeing its development, providing reasonable support and resources such as documentation and tutorials.
React Native: On the other hand, React Native has existed for a long time and this is the reason it has a higher user base copyright and a better-established ecosystem. Further, it has thousands of third-party libraries and modules that can fit easily into the projects thus cutting short the time of development.
- ๐๐ฅ๐๐ญ๐๐จ๐ซ๐ฆ ๐๐๐ญ๐ฎ๐ซ๐ข๐ญ๐ฒ ๐๐ง๐ ๐๐ญ๐๐๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐ญ๐ฒ
Flutter: When it comes to the stability and performance of the UI elements offered by Flutter, quite some progress has been achieved. However, because it is quite a young platform, it may not be as mature and may not have the capability to meet some of the edge cases that are met by React Native.
React Native: It is noteworthy that React Native has already been tried out by immense firms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Airbnb validating its use in the development of large-scale applications for production.
Conclusion
If you are considering developing cross-platform applications, it would be worth your while to look at โFlutterโ and โReact Nativeโ because they are both excellent frameworks. The appropriate framework, however, will depend on the particular requirements of your project. If app performance and unique design elements are your highest objective, including excellent UX, then Flutter could be an ideal framework for your needs. React Native, on the other hand, would suit those who prefer a more mature platform with more available frameworks ready to use and who are not concerned with speeds of development as much.