Most of us are aware of Mobile applications UI/UX methodologies, where new entrepreneurs may think of putting their feet in developing mobile apps more quickly while reducing cost with cross-platform development in place. 

Well, this is where curiosity or in other words confusion kills thoughts as if for which technology to rely on? 

This article drives you with a comparison of pioneer market players; Flutter vs React Native- indulging the application owners’ perspective to aid up with identifying whether react native framework or flutter is the best fit for an individual’s application idealization. 

Table of Context: 

1. Flutter vs React Native – Brief up

2. Initiation to Flutter and React Native

•  What is Flutter to use for? 
• Popular applications developed with Flutter?
• What is React Native to use for?
• Popular applications developed with React Native?

3. Benefits and Hindrance of Flutter

4. Benefits and Hindrance of React Native

5. How Future look-alike for Flutter and React Native

6. Conclusion

1. Flutter vs React Native – Brief Up / Difference between React Native and Flutter 

Flutter is a portable UI toolkit for building natively compiled applications across mobile, desktop, and web from a single code-doom; And React Native is a framework for building native mobile applications utilizing React.

This is high time to get them in defined shape to ease up the understanding task: 

Quick glance at Flutter:

Official Release: Official release is on December 2018, Google I/O

Created & Built By: Google

Free + open source: Yes available in Free and open-source model  

Programming language:  Dart

Popularity:  More than 120,000 stars on Github (till May 2021)

Native Performance stack: Performance is undeniably great 

UI Type: All such apps developed in Flutter look good on the up-to-date operating systems as they follow a version update mode.  

On top of it,  Flutter has a one-codebase where the app looks and behaves similarly irrespective of iOS and Android perhaps hats-off to Material design and Cupertino widgets who can imitate the platform design itself. 

Sharing code mode: One can use the same codebase to ship the native apps to more than four operating systems be it iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and Linux. 

Apps Made with Flutter: Alibaba by Xianyu, Hamilton application for Hamilton Musical, Philips Hue, Google Ads app, My BMW

Prior advantages:  Flutter offers great looks and features rich widgets. It has a rapidly growing community with remarkable popularity whereas, Documentation is one of the best things to rely on, and quite difficult to beat time to market length

Time not to use Flutter:  When the application requires 3D touch when the design is platform-specific when it requires multiple interactions with the OS, and when it’s time to get a minimalistic UI. 

Quick glance at React Native: 

Official Release: The official release is on March 2015, F8 conference

Created & Built by: Facebook

Free/open-source: Yes React Native is free and open-source to use

Programming language: JavaScript

Popularity: 95,400 stars on Github (till May 2021)

Native Performance stack: Performance is literally great 

UI Type: React Native’s application components look just like Native ones, and it uses native components under the hood. 

For instance, one should always think or be willing to get an app to provide near-identical across the platforms compared with older versions of an operating system rather than considering using third-party libraries will enable a route to make it happen. 

Sharing code mode: One can extract shared code in mobile, web apps, and desktop to separate repositories while treating it as a separate project and injecting it in the same way as another dependency. 

Apps Made with React Native: Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Ads, Tesla, and Skype

Prior advantages:  Stability up to 5 years, has successful & prominent market players using React Native,  Mature & Vast community, Easy to understand and implement, and code can be reused for both web apps, desktop app management. 

Time not to use Flutter: When the apps need to handle less common or ultra-specific tasks be it calculations in the background when requiring custom communications via Bluetooth when one wants to create an app for android only

2. Initiation to Flutter and React Native

Now, it’s time to get to know the basics yet essential details with accord for Flutter and React Native. 

What is Flutter to use for? 

Flutter is a portable UserInterface toolkit, its comprehensive application software kit (SDK) which comes with widgets and tools that enable cross-platform app development. 

Flutter provides developers an easy path to build and deploy visually alluring, natively compiled applications for mobiles be it Android, iOS, web, or desktop; utilizing a single codebase. 

Most of us aren’t aware of how Flutter supports desktop, as when it comes to developing desktop applications; one can compile Flutter source code with a native Windows, Linux, or macOS desktop app. 

Its web support is undeniably best, as flutter’s web support simply delivers the same sense of experience on the web as a mobile; one can create PWA (PRogressive web app), Single page application (SPA), and existing mobile applications. 

On top of everything, Flutter is free and Open source, based on Dart which is a fast, object-oriented programming language and relatively new yet easy to learn for those professionals who have experience or are familiar with JAVA and C#. Flutter’s architecture depends on the very well-known reactive programming and provides its own set of widgets.

Popular applications developed with Flutter?

Let’s see the applications made with Flutter: 

• Alibaba app by Xianyu( on App Store, on Google Play) and is one of the largest eCommerce companies in the globe.
• Official application for Broadway Musical, Hamilton app (on App Store, on Google Play)
• Google Ads Application (on App Store, on Google Play)
• eBay Motors App (on App Store, on Google Play) is one of the powerful software for browsing, buying, and selling the range of vehicles directly from customer’s phone
• Groupon  (on App Store, on Google Play) utilizes Flutter to aid hundreds of thousands of merchants track campaign performance, efficient support, and managing customer satisfaction. 
• Stadia (on App Store, on Google Play)  is Google’s gaming platform, where users can play games across laptops, mobile devices, and desktops. 
• Flutter simply brought up intuitive controls to the Philip Hue application(on App Store, on Google Play) via allowing users to set up the mood and sync their smart lighting to their range of media.
• Baidu Tieba  (on App Store) known as the largest Chinese communication platform primarily hosted by Chinese search engine company Baidu 
• Reflect  (on App Store, on Google Play)
• Abbey Road Studios (on App Store, on Google Play) is Topline App

What is React Native to use for?

React Native is a renowned open-source mobile application framework that uses JavaScript. This is a cross-platform development, that builds mobile applications utilizing JavaScript language for both the platforms be it Android, or iOS using a single codebase. 

Despite all, Apps built using React Native are not mobile web applications, as React Native uses the same fundamental UI building blocks as regular iOS and Android apps; meaning instead of building in Java, Kotlin or Swift one has to put the same building blocks together using JavaScript and React. In order to develop web and desktop applications with React Native ideal way is to use external libraries. 

Popular applications developed with React Native?

Let’s see the applications made with React Native: 

• Facebook (on App Store, on Google Play)
• Facebook Ads Manager (on App Store, on Google Play)
• Pinterest (on App Store, on Google Play)
• Instagram (on App Store, on Google Play)
• Skype (on App Store, on Google Play)
• Bloomberg (on App Store, on Google Play)
• Tesla (on App Store, on Google Play)
• Wix.com(on App Store, on Google Play)

3. Benefits and Hindrance of Flutter

Benefits: 

Fast coding: Flutter offers more dynamic, faster application development from the developer’s standpoint, and this is why top mobile app development agencies find flutter vs react native better. 

 It’s quite easy for the developers to make changes on the fly and notice the immediate reflection on the application. This one is known as the Hot Reload feature which will eventually aid in bug fixing, experimenting with new ideas in an instant. 

Single codebase, 2 Mobile platforms: FLutter allows developers to write a single codebase for two applications consisting of iOS and Android. Also, Flutter is platform-agnostic. That states one can have the exact same app on two platforms and this is why oftentimes it is hard to find Flutter alternatives. 

Less Testing required: Given the core benefit of Flutter which is a single codebase on both the platforms, the ‘Quality Assurance process’ will be much faster as one has to test less. 

Moreover, one can write roughly 50% fewer automated tests and can create the same tests to run on both platforms, whereas manual testing still has to run at a similar level as with native programming.  

Fastening Applications: Most of us are aware of the Flutter app’s performance which is smooth and fast. As flutter uses the SKIA graphics library this UI redraws each time when a view changes and delivers 60 fps(frames per second). 

Designing at its best: Rather than relying on native system components, Flutter has its own set of custom widgets, managed and rendered by the framework’s graphics engine. So users will see different UI components from typical native. 

The same segment of UI, even on older devices: With the use of Flutter even new apps look the exact replica on older devices best iOS and Android systems, hence one should never have to worry about supporting older devices. 

Perfecto MVPs: Are you planning to build MVP (minimum viable product) for your application, potential report says Flutter is the ideal or perfect option especially when you have time concerns. 

Hindrance:

Less Developers Community: Prominent set of professionals say the key advantage of React Native vs Flutter is it’s well-established. Experienced developers community. In terms of programming languages, Dart is not as widely used as compared with JavaScript.  

The entire community may require time to educate the larger audience and to gain more experience; this is quite typical for young tools. The difference between reacting native and flutter is significant however can be manageable based on an individual’s necessities to be accomplished. 

Inadequate Libraries & support: No Rich development support: Google supports Flutter which is fascinating, however, Flutter is still quite new; in another way, one can’t always find the functionality in need in existing libraries so developers need to build custom functionality to resolve it, indeed a time consuming one. 

Integration-related continuous support: While writing the code, Flutter lacks support for CI platforms compared with Travis or Jenkins. Hence, in order to achieve automatic building, deployment, and test developers need to use and maintain custom scripts. 

Platform-related Rik and App size: Well, Flutter is fully supported by Google, where if Google decided to pull off support for the project then it would be a big-fat disaster. Also, the application written in Flutter are bigger than native ones;  Due to which Flutte’s is working on size reduction of apps made with flutter.

4. Benefits and Hindrance of React Native

Benefits: 

Fast Refresh, and great coding: Fast coding is potentially the same as Flutter, its hot reload speeds up the development process by allowing a developer to inject the latest or new code directly into a running app. So developers can see changes instantly without rebuilding the app. 

One Codebase alongside 2 mobile platforms: This one is exactly as Flutter, one needs to write a single codebase to power up 2 apps consisting of both Android and iOS. Top of it, JavaScript permits you a leg up when writing cross-platform applications by sharing code with web apps. 

Utilized widely popular Language JavaScript: React Native’s core dependency is on JavaScript; a programming language that is used by many developers and known well to an extent Dart is still not so widely used. This can be one of the reasons react native vs flutter is essential to go with. Also, if you prefer statically-typed programming languages, then TypeScript- a JavaScript subset of best examples. 

Freedom of Choice: React Native permits the developer to decide or make up the mind precisely what solutions they plan to use, both according to the project’s requirements as much as the developer’s core preferences.  

For instance, if a developer decides how to handle the global state, choose a router library or can select between JavaScript or TypeScript as well as can choose to use a custom UI library or can write their own code up. 

Relatively Mature Language: Well so the official release of React Native was more than 5 years ago, that’s where the Facebook team has had plenty of time to stabilize the API part and keep focusing on fixing issues while solving problems. 

Vast and Active developers community: Were you asking about the massive development community support? 

Yes, you leaned on the right foot, React Native has a gigantic developers community having countless tutorials, libraries, and UI frameworks to make easy to learn technology having quick and easy to develop with it. 

Easy to learn for React developers: This particular advantage is primarily targeted at reacting developers, where if you have a background in web development, using popular react solutions; then you can go easily with React Native without having to learn new libraries so you can use the same libraries and patterns. 

Hindrance: 

Very few components out of Box: React Native generally supports the basic components out of the box because many of them are adaptive to a platform out of the box, like loading indicator, button, or slider. A developer can use them but requires an additional set of efforts to make them work. 

Wherein, Flutter is primarily designed to support material design out of the box, therefore the framework supports much more widgets to save time. Flutter is a react native alternative as it can create most of the views with pre-made widgets that are easily customizable and cross-platform consistent. 

Tons of Abandon Packages: React Native has enormous numbers of libraries well unfortunately too many of them are either of bad quality or have been abandoned altogether. 

Fragile set of UI: Most of us aware of the fact that React Native uses native components under the hood should give confidence that after every OS UI update, app components will be instantly upgraded. Hence, this can break the application’s UI but this happens quite often. 

Bigger Application compared with Native ones: Apps written in React Native must have to be able to run JavaScript code (JVM), whereas Android doesn’t have this functionality inbuilt; meaning the application requires to include a library that supports JavaScript code resulting apps are bigger than their native Android Counterparts.

5. How Future look-alike for Flutter and React Native

Looking at Flutter’s month on month basis enhancement, more and more companies are enchanting towards Flutter only additionally the community is always helpful, energetic, and enthusiastic. Counting altogether, giants like Alibaba have already started relying on Flutter as the flutter’s future looks promising. 

React Native future looks nearly bright, as Facebook is primarily focusing on a large-scale re-architecture of the technology. Their team is performing at their best to improve support for both React native users and their larger community. 

Well, many of us thought that React Native is a good platform to reply when continuous development? 

To state this, creating an open environment for discussing React native is definitely a significant step, for both the sign of ongoing improvement and sign of the technology’s bright future. 

6. Conclusion

In nutshell, deploying and delivering projects on time is one of the most critical aspects of the web app and mobile app development life cycle. 

React Native and Flutter’s cross-platform functionality reduces the time-to-market and having their third-party libraries, ready-to-use components make it more reliable yet efficient to use them to build such applications. 

Although, we often get confused as to which platform to choose from while building the blueprint of the application, or which fits the application’s best-suited idealization? 

Selecting the platform or languages always stands on specifics of your projects, having the balance of your team’s skill set. 

• Is your team aware of Dart? If so, then programming with Flutter will be a simple walk in the park.
• Do your developers are fluent in JavaScript? If so, then React Native looks like a logical choice to fit in.
• Are you planning to build your App’s UI utilizing UI components? If so, go with React Native. 
• Are you having an idea of brand-first design as a priority? Must go with Flutter. 

One has to always keep in mind that each application is different so one must consider each of the merits. It’s worthy to discuss the project with a proficient aka experienced team of developers, professionals who are capable of indulging the different approaches in real-time with varied skill-set while counting on cross-platform development. 

Both React Native and Flutter are good technological stacks, they simply benefit from huge popularity having enduring trust in place. We hope this Flutter vs React Native’s concluded points assist you in the best possible way with your next steps!