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Facebook developed React Native as a solution to this challenge, enabling developers to quickly develop natively rendered applications for mobile devices using the React library.
React Native became popular as it helped app development across platforms with just one line of code while providing near-native performance levels.
Google took an alternative approach when they released Flutter as an open-source framework: Flutter uses Dart-based codebases for apps across platforms like Android, iOS, etc.
Both technologies have found solutions for problems, yet even experts find it challenging to choose between Flutter and React Native. This blog seeks to make your decision about these frameworks by discussing them extensively. Here is our Flutter vs.React Native comparison guide; let us assist in selecting the framework best suited to your project, team, and vision.
What Is Hybrid App Development (HAD)?
Hybrid app development involves creating applications using one framework to target multiple platforms - Android, iOS, and Windows.
Hybrid software offers many advantages, including its ability to produce one code base that can be reused across platforms. Developers only need to write code once and can then reuse it when creating apps on other platforms.
Hybrid apps have quickly become popular because they're more cost-efficient than native apps and reach a wider audience across platforms.
Businesses often choose hybrid mobile app development because it enables them to enter all significant mobile markets quickly and cost-efficiently.
What Is the Difference between Native and Hybrid Apps?
Hybrid apps allow developers to save time by developing applications only once and then deploying them across various platforms - iOS, Android, or Windows, for example.
Developers working on multiple projects simultaneously targeting a different venue could save valuable development hours using hybrid development techniques.
Hybrid app development can simplify development as frameworks regularly upgrade with new features, enabling developers to take advantage of specific features on certain platforms while remaining within a familiar development environment.
As such, this can lead to an expansion in codebase size as developers must accommodate different device and operating system versions of their app targets.
Native app development can be more time-consuming and complex as they're tailored specifically for one platform.
However, the results often outshine those created using other means. But native apps tend to perform better thanks to being explicitly optimized for that platform's strengths.
Your needs and desired functionality for an app will determine which option best meets them. Native applications would likely be most suitable if developing for only one platform is essential or if performance is critical to its design.
Hybrid app development may be your ideal option if you desire an app that runs across various platforms without issue yet still wants some features not being as functional.
Best Hybrid App Frameworks
Today, there are numerous hybrid frameworks. When selecting one that best meets your project's requirements and has unique strengths and weaknesses, remember that every framework offers something unique.
React Native
React Native is a cross-platform app development framework built using React, released by Facebook in 2015. This open-source JavaScript Framework enables developers to quickly build multiplatform UI components using JSX that can then be converted to native Android and iOS views.
Views are native components that communicate with logic implemented in JavaScript via a bridge and execute in their respective thread.
Flutter
Flutter from Google is an open-source framework using Dart, their proprietary programming language. Flutter can deliver apps for mobiles, desktops, web, and embedded devices.
Though relatively new, Bootstrap has quickly gained adoption by developers due to its speed and capacity to implement widgets that adhere to Google's Material Design guidelines.
Apache Cordova
Apache Cordova is an open and cross-platform mobile development framework designed for building applications using web technologies.
Apache Cordova applications run inside WebView within their native wrapper for optimal performance.
Ionic
Ionic is an open-source framework designed for building hybrid mobile applications using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript Scripting language.
This approach makes developing hybrid mobile apps fast, straightforward, and accessible for newcomers.
Microsoft developed Xamarin for mobile application development using their.NET Framework and C# language. You can build apps using native APIs available across iOS, Android, and Windows to develop apps using this solution.
Undergoing an extensive overhaul, Multiplatform App UI will soon become part of the.NET Platform, as its name indicates.
Unity
Unity is an open-source framework primarily used for game and entertainment development (such as Virtual Reality (VR) experiences) using its programming language C#.
Build apps using React Native for mobile and web. However, its native feel won't compare well to other options on this list; however, it could make for an excellent entertainment app solution.
Unity is highly adaptable: It supports Windows (including Mac), Linux (including Mac), and iOS via WebGL for both iPhones and Android devices, as well as Extended Reality Kits such as Oculus Rift or Microsoft's HoloLens and consoles such as Xbox, PlayStation or Nintendo Switch.
Which hybrid app framework do you favor for hybrid app development services? Your skillset, experience, and project requirements should help determine the ideal platform.
React Native/Flutter, PhoneGap/Cordova/Ionic, as well as Xamarin, should all make great choices for most developers.
Realated article - Why Go for Native App Development in the Era of React Native?
What Is Flutter
Google recently developed and released Flutter as an open-source UI software development framework. With it, you can develop natively compliant applications across mobile, desktop, and web using just one codebase.
Flutter's innovative features support rapid development while offering a rich user experience. Eliminate separate codebases while shortening development times by choosing Flutter.
Prime Features of Flutter
Flutter offers many features designed to set outstanding applications apart and innovate, some of the highlights being:
One Codebase For Multiple Platforms
Flutter provides developers with an efficient means of creating apps for multiple platforms using a single codebase, including iOS, Android, web, and desktop operating systems.
Flutter's "Write Once, Run Anywhere" method dramatically shortens development times and saves developers valuable time working across devices and operating systems.
Hot Reload
Flutter's unique Hot Reload capability gives developers real-time results on the user interface while making code modifications in real-time, which promotes experimentation while hastening the development process.
This feature encourages experimentation while speeding the development process.
Extensive Library of Widgets
Flutter offers an impressive library of widgets - customizable UI components used by developers to build engaging user experiences - making Flutter an excellent platform for building iOS-style UIs.
Cupertino Widgets and Material Design widgets can both help developers achieve this effect.
Native Features
Flutter apps are native ARM-coded apps designed to maximize performance and load times with minimal frame drops, providing faster load times without frame drops.
Furthermore, Flutter serves as an intermediary between native code and ARM codes, giving programmers access to specific platform features and APIs whenever required.
Dart Programming Language
Flutter employs Dart as its programming language for development purposes, making it user-friendly and cost-effective for production use.
Dart offers Strong Typing options along with JIT compilation to enable an even smoother development experience.
Pros and Cons of Flutter
Flutter can add many advantages to make your app more interactive and feature-packed. Yet, the cross-platform framework has challenges that should be carefully considered before choosing Flutter as your solution for a project.
The Pros of Flutter
- Flutter allows you to build custom widgets or modify existing ones based on your app's design and functional needs, providing endless design customization possibilities.
- Flutter offers a versatile system for brand apps while upholding their identity across platforms.
- Compatibility with native ARM code provides excellent performance and faster execution; additionally, this framework reduces overhead using bridges found elsewhere.
- Developers can utilize customizable widgets to develop interactive user interfaces.
- Flutter is an open and free software framework easily accessible to companies and developers, with its extensive community offering guidance.
Cons of Flutter
- Flutter does not support APIs that are specific to particular devices or platforms; writing platform-specific code increases development complexity significantly.
- Flutter provides adequate support for integrated Development Environments like Visual Studio Code or Android Studio; unfortunately, native platforms do not benefit from equivalent support.
- Dart is the language most developers utilize; however, many still need to learn it. Learning an unfamiliar programming language often slows development processes significantly.
- Flutter apps tend to be larger than native apps and may prove challenging for those with limited bandwidth or storage space to install and download them.
Who Uses Flutter?
Flutter has been successfully employed by numerous notable companies and organizations, such as Google, Groupon, Alibaba Group, Dream 11, Sonos Nubank Emaar, etc, to develop cross-platform apps.
Although only examples were given above, its usage across industries still needs to be improved. Flutter can deliver native creative experiences across platforms through one codebase - an appealing proposition in many cases.
What Is React Native?
Facebook created React Native as an open-source framework that can create natively rendered applications on Android and iOS using React and JavaScript libraries.
React Native also facilitates cross-platform app development utilizing one codebase across platforms for app creation.
React Native: Features
React Native provides advanced features, an expansive ecosystem, and native-like performance for cross-platform apps - which makes it a fantastic option.
Here are some of its stand-out features.
Native-Like Performance
React Native is an innovative hybrid framework, not dependent on web views but using native components. Capable of near-native performance and with its user-centric experience, it enables Native-like interactions.
Hot Reloading
This feature enables developers to see changes immediately without recompiling an app, speeding up the development process while improving performance; additionally, Hot Reloading reduces editing times as it provides insight into analyzing their impact more rapidly than traditional means.
Reusable Components
React Native provides developers with reusable UI elements to build libraries of custom components reusing across applications or projects; these components help reduce bugs while keeping designs fluid and consistent across projects while speeding up development processes.
Reusing elements also contributes to streamlining development processes while helping you stay within your development budget and timelines.
Large Ecosystem
React Native is equipped with an extensive ecosystem that includes libraries, tools, and plugins from Node Package Manager that facilitate the integration of different functionalities ranging from maps, authentication, and animations to state management and state administration.
Third-Party Integration
React Native supports third-party integration of native modules and plugins from third parties. This allows access to hardware like GPS, sensors, and cameras without leaving the environment.
The framework offers plugins for navigation, maps, and authentication, as well as state management, network services, payment processing, and networking capabilities.
Simple Testing
React Native offers robust testing capabilities that enable developers to use advanced testing tools like Jest for component tests, as well as libraries explicitly designed to do just this task.
It integrates well into continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), providing automated tests on various platforms and devices.
Pros and Cons of React Native
React Native is an efficient cross-platform framework that may suit specific projects well; its suitability depends upon your project needs; below are its potential pros and cons to assist you with making an informed decision.
The Pros of React Native
- Being built upon JavaScript, React Native simplifies programming by eliminating the need to learn another language.
- Allows for the creation of complex and advanced mobile applications not supported by other frameworks, with its component-based user interface making the development of innovative apps effortless and straightforward.
- Agile development is enabled by technology, providing companies with an adaptable app solution suited for ever-evolving market conditions.
- These modules contain code sections that may be reused across applications with similar features, giving flexibility when used within similar apps. They may also serve as building blocks of code for more complex apps requiring similar functionalities.
- React Native allows developers to easily access each other's code and continue working where they left off, which makes this feature ideal for team collaboration.
Cons of React Native
- While React Native provides access to native APIs and modules, its functionality does not cover every platform-specific feature; developers would need to create platform-specific native modules if additional platform functionality is desired.
- React Native, hybrid apps may not deliver as effectively when dealing with complex animations or intensive tasks due to JavaScript-to-native code translation overhead costs being an additional consideration.
- Debugging and profiling React Native apps is more challenging than its counterparts, especially when trying to trace performance issues or identify bottlenecks involving Native and JavaScript code.
- React Native apps typically have larger file sizes than native apps due to including both JavaScript runtime and platform-specific code in their development process - this may result in longer download times and more significant storage usage.
Which Organizations use React Native?
Hybrid app development company has been adopted by numerous prestigious organizations around the globe, such as Facebook, Instagram, Bloomberg Pinterest, Skype, Tesla, Uber, Walmart, Wlx.com, Artsy, Discord, Tencent, QQ, Adidas, Glitch, Baidu, CBS Sports, etc.
React Native is utilized by various industries due to its flexibility, efficiency, and capabilities - these organizations only represent some examples that have taken up React Native as a cross-platform development tool.
Read more - What Are The Benefits Of Using React Native Services?
Flutter Vs React Native: Which Should You Pick?
There may be many factors behind any transition; we will compare Flutter and React Native to ascertain which framework offers superior support.
Performance Analysis
Flutter is written directly in Dart and compliant with native ARM code; there is no "bridge" that allows native components to communicate with it - this dramatically speeds up development time while increasing speed.
React Native connects native components with JavaScript through an intermediary bridge, impacting React Native's performance and development time.
Flutter's native compilation gives it an advantage in performance over React Native.
User Interface Design
Flutter's widgets offer developers the power to craft complex UI designs easily and at scale with its rendering engine creating elements with consistent looks across platforms.
These widgets boast their ability to achieve pixel-perfect plans.
React Native leverages native components specific to each platform's UI elements, such as iOS' UIViews or Android's Views, to deliver an authentic look and feel, including customization options specific to each platform, third-party libraries or component packs, and third-party UI components for improved UI development.
Flutter stands out in this comparison by being highly customizable and consistent across platforms while remaining highly adaptable design-wise without depending on platform-specific elements for its interfaces.
Choose it if you aim to craft highly tailored user experiences without depending on platform-specific components for theming purposes.
React Native should be your go-to framework if your project requires native-like looks and feels or requires robust integration between platform-specific user interface features and device features.
Development Speed
Flutter's hot reload, single codebase, and highly configurable widgets make development faster than ever. When developing apps with complex user interface elements such as animations or media player functions, separate code files must be written for iOS or Android, taking time and slowing the development process significantly.
Flutter's speed lags behind React Native's, offering greater access to third-party libraries and native modules and faster testing and updating with its quick refresh feature.
React Native is ideal when speed is critical; Flutter may be better suited if your app contains few or no complications.
Development Tools
Flutter offers several development tools for rapid iteration, including performance profilers, network inspectors, and widget testers that integrate closely with its framework, as well as robust profiling and debugging features for quick issue identification and resolution.
Flutter's Hot Reload function facilitates rapid iterations. At the same time, its official integrated development environments (IDEs) offer additional assistance with code completion, widget inspection, and debugging aid, as well as improving user experiences for increased development speed.
React Native provides Expo support for rapid prototyping. This helps streamline the development process while offering an all-inclusive development environment with a server for development, push notifications, and more.
React Native Debugger, a third-party tool, is another prominent debugging solution for React Native apps. We are offering advanced technical debugging using features such as Reduc DevTools Integration.
React Native works seamlessly with various integrated development environments (IDEs) like Visual Studio Code while offering extensions and plug-ins designed to accelerate development processes and streamline processes further.
At this comparison stage, too, decisions must be subjectively made according to requirements and expertise. Both technologies possess their own set of restrictions; choose your framework based on project complexity, features of interest, and team expertise.
Documentation Process
Flutter's official documentation is organized, detailed, and up-to-date. This includes detailed guides, API references, tutorials, and an in-depth "Cookbook" with practical solutions and examples for everyday challenges.
Though React Native documentation is generally organized, it lacks critical aspects that need to be adequately covered and is outdated and disorganized.
As a result, an essential element has gone uncovered without proper consideration being provided to React Native developers and users.
Architecture
Flutter is a shell for Dart that utilizes both its virtual machine and graphics library, Skia. Flutter generates native code directly from Dart code; therefore, it integrates flawlessly into both Android and iOS systems.
React Native is built around Facebook's Flux architecture and requires the integration of JS Bridge. Flutter may provide better architectural solutions.
Learning Curve
Flutter is built upon Dart, an unfamiliar programming language to many developers. But for developers familiar with JavaScript or Java, Dart should be easy enough to grasp.
However, more experienced programmers may require extra guidance when learning this system's user interface construction techniques using widgets - these customizable building blocks make Flutter unique from traditional mobile app development and require familiarity among its development community compared with React Native's education community.
React Native is a hybrid app built using JavaScript as its programming language and React for creating its user experience.
These technologies are well known by most developers, making React Native easier for developers who don't wish to learn another programming language; furthermore, it boasts a large community of experts and numerous resources, libraries, and tutorials for learning or solving problems quickly and efficiently.
React Native is the clear winner when it comes to the learning curve. Its interface makes learning it quicker and more straightforward.
At the same time, Flutter requires more effort due to its programming language and user interface (UI).
Ecosystem and Community
Google released Flutter as a relatively new framework in 2018. The Flutter package repository (also called pub. dev) houses many widgets and plugins; additionally, its community offers resources like tutorials, open-source projects, and documentation that make Flutter accessible and helpful for development teams.
React Native was released by Facebook in 2015 as a stable ecosystem that features numerous libraries, packages, and third-party integrations accessible via Node Package Manager (npm).
Furthermore, React Native boasts a vibrant community of developers offering resources like blogs, forums, and Stack Overflow discussions as learning sources; its community also helps keep React up-to-date with technical advances and trends.
React Native's early release gave rise to an established community and ecosystem; Flutter did not achieve as excellent of results here.
Therefore, React Native would be your better bet here.
When Should You Consider Flutter
Flutter may meet these criteria:
- Flutter's widget approach offers highly configurable user interfaces across platforms that meet this need.
- Flutter allows developers to build high-end games quickly and apps requiring smooth animations and transitions with its architecture that supports native ARM codes, providing enhanced performance.
- Your time and funds may be stretched thin as you work towards finishing your project.
- Are You Needing 60FPS-120FPS Application Software
- Maintain a single codebase that targets both Android and iOS platforms.
When Should You Use React Native?
Choose React Native if your needs meet these specifications:
- Your development team should have experience working with JavaScript and React; this knowledge can assist with an easy transition process.
- Your project may necessitate using multiple third-party modules from various suppliers.
- React Native ecosystem can provide your project with many functional third-party modules and components.
- Need to develop shared APIs quickly.
- If your application requires platform-specific features or deep integration with native modules and libraries.
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Final Words
Both Flutter and React native have their advantages and disadvantages; your final decision should depend on factors like project requirements, team skills, budget, technology stack, features needed, and any specific project requirements that must be satisfied to select an apt framework from these two choices for your project.
Either will work just fine - choose carefully
