Nowadays every business, irrespective of its domain, is in some kind of a hurry to release an application on all the prominent app platforms as it plays a key role in the growth of it.
Well, there are a plethora of frameworks to choose from to develop apps. But talking in terms of today’s most prominent frameworks, Flutter and React Native are the two foremost ones. Both are cross-platform and have their own attributes and limitations. But when it comes to choose Flutter and React Native cross-platform, it has always been a tough choice.
So to help you to make the optimal choice, we have covered all the aspects including What Flutter and React Native are all about? Their individual attributes and shortcomings? Who will rule the future market? And how you can shortlist one over the other as per your app model, target market, and target audiences.
Flutter vs React Native – Basic Introduction
Flutter
Flutter is Google’s UI toolkit to develop apps with multiple beauty components and natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase.
Flutter app development is originally backed by the tech giant Google on open source. Currently, the open-source community of Google and Flutter contribute to its development. Flutter is written in C, C++, and Dart.
React Native
Best known as a cross-platform, react native mobile app development framework developed by Facebook in March 2015. It is based on their React JavaScript library. It is developed in C++, Java, JavaScript, Objective-C, and Python and allows developers to write apps in JavaScript, Java, Objective-C, and Swift.
Different from React, React Native cross-platform app doesn’t use Virtual DOM that interprets the JavaScript to the mobile OS UI elements on the device.
Compare Flutter and React Native – Maturity
When compared with other programming languages, both Flutter App Development and React-Native App Development are quite new in the domain. React Native was introduced in March 2015; on the other hand, Flutter was released in 2017.
Currently, React Native is running on the 0.60 version and the current version of Flutter is 1.17 (stable). Talking from the perspective of the development cycle, Flutter is more active than React Native. But both the frameworks are getting new adoptions and new features as per the market demand. When it comes to the maturity cycle, React Native is more mature because of the React and JavaScript languages.
Compare Flutter vs React Native – Popularity
Both the frameworks, Flutter and React-Native are equally popular among developers, as they find both of them equally popular as per their specific usage. As per the stats on Github, Flutter has 102K stars, and React Native has 90.5 K stars.
According to a Statista survey, 42% of developers prefer to work on React Native in comparison to 39% of developers preferring Flutter for the same.
Flutter vs React Native – Dart vs JavaScript
Flutter App Development uses Dart programming language based on the release by Google traced in 2011. If you don’t know about dart, it is an optimized language for fast apps on any platform. Currently, it is running on the 2.1 version. Dart has been considered as easy to use and adoption for Java Developers. But since none of the large corporations have invested in Dart Development, it has not gained expected momentum among the developers.
On the other hand, React Native App Development uses JavaScript to build cross-platform apps. Most of the front end developers consider JavaScript easy to use as a web programming language. If a developer has a familiarity with React Language, it can pave the way for the speedy React Native Development.
So if a developer finds ease in using React and JavaScript, then the development of React Native Apps is also easy. On the other hand, if you are a big-time fan of JavaScript and find more ease in using object-oriented programming, you may prefer Dart and Flutter in that case.
But according to the 2020 Developer Survey, JavaScript has been awarded as the most commonly used programming language for eight years in a row. This shows the popularity of JavaScript.
Flutter is more popular in regions like Kenya, China, Bangladesh, Japan, Jordan, and more, whereas React Native is aggressively used in Ireland, Argentina, Canada, Belarus, and more.
Flutter vs React Native – Key Features
Now it is time to compare the features of Flutter and React Native as per their key features:
Flutter Key Features
Fast Development: With the Stateful hot reload feature, one can paint the app to life in a matter of seconds. The available rich set of customizable widgets can build native interfaces in minutes.
Expressive and Flexible UI: Full customization can be done through layered architecture, which results in fast rendering and multiple flexible designs.
Native Performance: Multiple widgets take care of elements: Scrolling, Navigation, Icons, and Fonts.
React Native Key Features
Create native apps using React: React harnesses the power and flexibility of React to develop apps for both the platforms, iOS, and Android. React Native can be used in your existing mobile apps or they can be created from nothing.
Written in JavaScript – rendered with native code: React Native code is JavaScript. As already mentioned that React Native renders to native platform UI. It implies the same UI elements are used to create user interfaces. React Native allows developers to maintain two platforms with a commonly shared technology-react
Native Development For Everyone: It doesn’t negotiate on the front of the user’s experiences. It has native components like View, Text, Image that map directly to the platform’s native UI building blocks.
Seamless Cross-Platform: Existing wrap code can be wrapped with the React components and interact with native APIs via React’s declarative UI paradigm and JavaScript. It allows the existing native team to work faster.
Fast Refresh: As based On JavaScript, it empowers developers to implement changes fast. Developers don’t have to wait for native builds to finish, save, see, and repeat.
Flutter vs React Native: Organizational Dependency
Companies like Google Assistant, eBay, Capital One, The New York Times, Realtor.com, and more are using Flutter.
Companies including Facebook, Instagram, Coinbase, Skype, Pinterest, Tesla, Wallmart, and more names are using React Native. Clearly, React Native is more popular and being used by more popular companies.
The Road to Conclusion: Flutter vs React Native
The selection of the best platform entirely depends on various platforms. One has to specify all the requirements for any particular app or project and make the final decision between these cross-platform app frameworks. As an expert app development company, we have mentioned the specific attributes of both the platforms, so now the choice is yours.
