Flutter Vs Xamarin- Comparison Guide for Developers

In this post, we are extensively comparing Flutter Vs Xamarin on 15 different criteria of app development to guide the developers and entrepreneurs. This comparison guide is for reference purposes only, as each project has separate requirements at the end of the day.

Flutter and Xamarin are both cross-platform mobile application development frameworks used to build apps using a single code base. Today we have the privilege of working with so many cross-platform frameworks like Intel XDK, Cordova, Xamarin, Flutter, React-native, etc. By making a comparison among their drawbacks, strengths, and features, it becomes easier for the developers and entrepreneurs to select the best fit for their projects.

Let’s start exploring their differences to understand better which one is a developer’s delight and which useful app development technology:

Flutter Vs Xamarin- Comparison Guide

1. Programming Language

The key benefit of using a cross-platform mobile app development technology is the ability to use a single programming language to develop apps for both iOS and Android.

Flutter

Flutter uses the Dart programming language introduced by Google in 2011. This language supports an easy-to-understand syntax for Java/ JavaScript developers because of its object-oriented concepts.

Xamarin

Xamarin uses C# language to build cross-platform apps. C# got popular because of the cool features like portability, meta programming, and functional programming.

C# is mainly used for web development, so cross-platform app development is a cakewalk for C# developers.

Result

Xamarin is a winner in this category because of the huge community support for C# developers ( as it is C# is backed by Microsoft). Dart has a great feature set too, but it’s lesser used and lacks community support.

2. Installation

The method which is easy to install without any complications is the one preferred by the developers and loved by all. The installation method must always be straightforward.

Flutter ( Binary Download from Source )

Flutter is installed by downloading the binary for a specific platform from GitHub. For macOS, we have to download the flutter.zip file and add it as a PATH variable.

Flutter can avoid extra installation steps by supporting package managers like Homebrew, Macports, APT, YUM, etc.

Xamarin ( Visual Studio -Xamarin SDK)

Xamarin uses Visual Studio IDE for installation and Xamarin SDK for iOS and macOS can be installed later into Visual Studio.

There is no documentation/ resources about installing Xamarin without Visual Studio.

Result

Xamarin installation is dependent on the Visual Studio IDE, whereas Flutter installation is performed via the command line. Flutter installation seems to require extra steps for adding the binary to PATH and downloading it from the source code. However, installing Flutter is much more easier and lightweight and Flutter can be installed without any dependency on IDE.

3. Architecture

A well-designed technical architecture greatly influences the performance of its apps. Hence, it is very essential for a great cross-platform app development framework to have a supportive technical architecture. By knowing the intricacies of the framework, we can select the best one for our apps.

Let's check out their architecture:

Flutter

Flutter has everything in the Flutter engine itself as it uses the Dart Framework. Dart has most of the components inbuilt(so, it is bigger in size also) and it does not require any bridge for communications with the native modules.

Dart has many frameworks, like Material Design and Cupertino, packed inside which provide the required technologies for development. Also, the Dart framework uses the Skia C++ engine which has all the protocols, compositions, and channels.

Xamarin

Xamarin uses a Mono execution environment for both iOS and Android platforms. For iOS, the Mono execution environment runs along with Objective-C runtime and Unix kernel, while for Android, it runs along with Android Runtime on Linux or another kernel.

Microsoft documentation provides a detailed explanation of the iOS and Android architecture used with Xamarin. Xamarin also has Swift runtime support, which resides in a separate repository.

Result

Flutter is the winner in this category because of its many native inbuilt components. Although Xamarin architecture looks promising, it doesn’t have great support for Kotlin or Swift runtime which are official runtimes for developing Android and iOS apps.

4. Developer Productivity

Developer productivity is the key to building apps faster, when a developer is satisfied with technology then it gives a better outcome in performance.

Let’s find theirs-

Flutter

Flutter has the hot reload feature and it’s very easy to get started with the demo app. However, as the complexity of apps grows, developers would need to learn and adopt new Flutter concepts.

In addition, Dart is not a common programming language and there is a lack of support for it in many IDEs and text editors.

Xamarin

There is no concept of hot reload in Xamarin, but it has loads of modules and a great development API and it heavily depends on the Visual Studio IDE. Developers from the non-Microsoft stack will struggle to learn all the concepts of VS Code or a similar IDE. Also, learning C# will require a long learning curve.

Xamarin uses AOT compilation for iOS for the build and JIT/AOT for Android, so getting the UI changes in the devices might take some time. Xamarin renders UI in terms of the native controllers. There are a lot of resources online for Xamarin developers to solve common issues.

Result

Being a mature framework, Xamarin has great developer support in terms of resources and tools. Flutter is fairly new at this point, but will catch up very soon as the community around Flutter grows.

5. Community Support

As soon as developers start to show interest in technology and adopt it in their development process, they form a community to share knowledge. A strong community helps developers to learn from each other and solve the problems they are facing.

Flutter

Flutter has been around for a while, yet there are not sufficient resources for developers to solve common issues. But it gained a lot of attention when Google promoted it at the Google I/O conference in 2017.

The Flutter community is growing rapidly with regular meetups and conferences being held online. The biggest event Flutter Live happened in December 2018.

Xamarin

Xamarin has a huge community spread all over the world. There are many conferences being held for Xamarin-related talks, like the Xamarin developer summit, etc.

Being the oldest cross-platform mobile app development framework, the Xamarin community has more community support from developers.

Result

The Xamarin community is way bigger than Flutter, especially because Xamarin is more popular. The community is growing even faster now that Xamarin has been acquired by Microsoft. Flutter is still fairly new although community support is growing rapidly.

6. Testing Support

Developers have been performing various types of tests and documenting the outcomes for better feedback on the code. Today, we have a variety of superior quality frameworks for different technologies as per their requirements to conduct unit, integration, and UI tests for their apps.

Flutter

Flutter offers a rich set of testing features to test the apps at the widget, unit, and integration levels. Flutter comes with a cool widget testing feature to test the UI and run them at the speed of unit tests.

Xamarin

Xamarin supports all different types of testing in Visual Studio itself like Unit tests and UI tests. Also, it supports third-party testing through frameworks like Appium independently or via native test frameworks like XCUITest or Expresso.

Xamarin unit testing can be set up for each individual platform project. On top of unit testing, Xamarin has dedicated support for UI testing, Xamarin.UITest API.

Additionally, it has its own cloud test environment to run tests.

Result

Both Xamarin and Flutter have great support for testing. However, Flutter wins as it has widget testing support and the ability to conduct tests at multiple levels.

7. DevOps & CI/CD Support

Releasing mobile apps to the App Store or Play Store is a painful process. It involves the complex task of code signing and correct project configuration. When it comes to cross-platform mobile app development, it gets even trickier.

Flutter

Flutter has a strong command line interface. We can create a binary of the app by using the command line tools and following the instructions in Flutter documentation for building and releasing Android and iOS apps.

Flutter now has an official CI/CD solution. However, there are other cloud-based services that can be used for CI/CD for Flutter apps.

Xamarin

Xamarin-built automation process heavily depends on Microsoft Visual Studio configuration, but there is also a CLI interface for App Center which is known as app center-CLI to configure the builds from the command line.

The App Center build service has solid documentation on how to build and distribute different platforms. Xamarin apps can be made on multiple CI/CD services, like App Center, Jenkins, or TeamCity.

Result

Flutter has a great build automation tooling and can be used to deploy apps from the command line. Xamarin also has strong support for the CI/CD, but it’s all in the Microsoft bubble.

8. UI Components & Development API

To develop a great native app, the support of native components is a must. It is very important that the framework has an API to access the native modules without any hassles.

Flutter

The Flutter framework is bundled with UI rendering components, device API access, navigation, testing, stateful management, and loads of libraries.

This rich set of components removes the need to use third-party libraries. If you get the Flutter framework, it means you will have everything needed for developing mobile apps.

Flutter also has widgets for Material Design and Cupertino that allow developers to easily render the UI on both iOS and Android platforms.

Xamarin

Being the oldest cross-platform SDK, Xamarin has solid documentation of its developer API. Xamarin supports multiple platforms, like iOS, Android, Forms, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, etc, which in turn have lots of UI components and modules in place for developers to build on.

Xamarin also has documentation for developing individual components, like layout, buttons, pop-ups, databases, etc.

Result

With its rich set of documentation and a development API, Xamarin has come out a winner over Flutter in this category. Also, Xamarin supports more platforms than Flutter.

Flutter still has a long way to go to allow the development of complex UIs, animations, and games.

9. App Size

App size is also considered while developing cross-platform apps. Let’s find out their app sizes to know better.

Flutter

Flutter app binaries are usually bigger and the apps are bigger in size in comparison with native iOS & Android apps.

Flutter core engine takes up 2.7 MB in addition to the framework and app code, which makes app binaries a bit heavy in size.

Xamarin

Xamarin supports lots of platforms, yet the size of the binary is relatively small. However, when Xamarin apps are bundled for release, then the app size gets a bit bigger.

Result

As cross-platform technologies, Flutter and Xamarin both produce big-sized apps, but the Xamarin binaries are smaller than Flutter binaries, so Xamarin is the winner.

10. Onboarding & Learning Curve

The process of setting up the developer machine to use the new framework takes time. It requires lots of configuration of software installations. The technology should have proper documentation to get users up and running.

Flutter

The getting started guide for Flutter has detailed information on IDE setup and platform setup for both iOS and Android.

Flutter has a CLI tool called flutter doctor which guides developers through the setup and inspects all the tools to be installed and configured on the local machine. When the flutter doctor command satisfies its pre-requisites, one can carry on with creating a new Flutter app.

There is a separate page on how to configure the editors to get going with Flutter. Once all the setup is done, we can create and run a new Flutter app from CLI easily.

Xamarin

As Xamarin configuration is heavily dependent on Visual Studio and the Xamarin SDK, the developers who are familiar with VS Code can pick up quickly.

The Xamarin getting started guide for iOS and Android explains the onboarding process for new developers. Xamarin requires separate configurations for iOS and Android- i.e Xamarin.iOS & Xamarin.Android.

When the developer is outside the Microsoft ecosystem, the learning curve is longer to get acquainted with Visual Studio and understand the Xamarin SDK.

Xamarin has Xamarin university with loads of guides for the smooth onboarding of new developers.

Result

The Flutter getting started guide is much simpler than Xamarin’s as the software required for onboarding is lightweight and easy to install. Also, the software is not dependent on any proprietary software.

11. Open-Source

Open-source frameworks are the preferred choice for cross-platform app development.

Flutter

Flutter is open source and developed openly. Flutter provides a big advantage to developers by giving greater control over the code for building apps.

Xamarin

Xamarin is also open-source. Although Xamarin has some cool features, it is available for free with limitations. Xamarin is developed behind the doors, so you won’t get some native features, like 3D-touch, Force touch, etc.

Result:

Flutter wins this category because of providing greater control to the developers.

12. Time to Market/ Code sharing

Time to Market/ Code-sharing is also an important aspect of judgment for cross-platform app development.

Let’s see their take on these-

Flutter

Flutter enables lots of code sharing as Flutter uses its own UI components. Sometimes, the Flutter developers need to write native code too to support a few more things, which can’t be done with Flutter.

Xamarin

Xamarin uses Xamarin. Forms to share code between multiple platforms. Approximately 96% of Xamarin code can be shared across platforms.

This code sharing includes business logic, Data logic, and the network layer.

Result:

Xamarin wins in code sharing because the time to market for Xamarin might be shorter due to this feature.

13. Performance

Ultimately, cross-platform app development is all about a better-performing mobile app. So, the performance of the technology is of utmost importance when considering which to choose.

Let’s find out-

Flutter

Flutter is claimed to have a much better performance than Xamarin apps because of Flutter’s Dart engine and hot reload feature.

Xamarin

Xamarin has a profiler that can report performance issues earlier. And it does not have a hot reload feature.

Result:

Flutter gives better performance than Xamarin because of its hot reload feature.

14. Native User Experience

Xamarin and Flutter apps are very Native when compared to other cross-platform technologies. Flutter and Xamarin both produce apps with a look and feel close to native apps.

Flutter

Flutter produces native apps

Xamarin

Xamarin too produces native-looking apps.

Result:

N/A-Tie

15. Portability

Portability across various platforms is another major concern while developing a good-performing mobile app.

Flutter

Flutter is aimed at iOS and Android development. Flutter apps are not portable to the Windows Platform as approximately 98.5 % of Smartphones run either on Android or iOS.

Flutter is not compatible with 32-bit OS devices.

Xamarin

Xamarin’s bigger ecosystem gives it an advantage over Flutter, it is a one size fits all framework when you want to develop apps for Windows Mobile. Xamarin is aimed at Android, iOS, and Windows platforms as well as macOS apps.

Result:

Flutter is not compatible with 32-bit OS devices, so if you’re planning to develop apps for older phones such as the iPhone 5, Xamarin is a better choice.

Conclusion:

Traditional mobile app development methods are slow and expensive because we had to develop a separate app for each platform with different development teams. Cross-platform app development is a smart way of developing mobile applications, where the applications are suitable to run on more than one platform. Flutter and Xamarin are two such cross-platform technologies that are helping developers build less expensive, less time-consuming apps with greater ease while using them.

Many developers use to believe that Xamarin is the king of the cross-platform industry, but Flutter is expected to change the whole scenario with its smart flexibility, widget availability, and IDE features.

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