Flutter Vs. React Native: Which One to Choose for the App?

COVID-19 pandemic increased the importance of mobile applications and facilitated both the business owners and end users. The whooping mobile industry has opened the doors for businessmen. To leverage its benefits, you might be thinking of investing in it. Still, to cater to the user’s needs, you must develop applications for iOS and Android users, and developers need more time and effort to build separate applications. But no need to worry, as cross-platform applications are in demand nowadays.

However, you might have a heated discussion while choosing the winner of Flutter Vs. React Native. The two most powerful and popular frameworks for developing cutting-edge multifaceted mobile applications. But keep in mind that you can’t use the two for developing a single application. Read on to determine whether Flutter by Google or React by Facebook is the best fit for your next big application.

What Does the Developer’s Community Vote for?

The StackOverflow survey 2022 shows that developers love flutter more than React. 68.03% of developers loved working with flutter, while 55.98% of the respondents showed love for React. Flutter wins over the latter, with 17.63% of people who want to learn how to build applications using this framework.

It is believed that training a React Native team might be an easy task as it is a Javascript library and 65.36% of the developers love working with it. Whereas others think that Dart, the core of the Flutter framework, supports the concepts of OOP and C++. So it would be easy to work with if you have good concepts.

According to Statista, React Native was the most used cross-platform mobile framework with a 42% popularity value in 2019 & 2020. But then Flutter matured, surpassed the former, and became the developers’ first choice for cross-platform application development.

The discussion may continue, and you could not decide which technology should be used for developing the next market erupting application. Head down to clear your mind about what flutter and react native is. Pros and cons of choosing React or flutter. We will also discuss the major contrasts between the flutter framework and React Native. So you can make the right choice for your next great project.

What is Flutter?

Launched by Google in 2017, Flutter serves as an intuitive user-interface-building tool. Based on Dart language, the front-end framework allows targeting multiple platforms with the same code foundation.

Flutter has made mobile application development a cost-effective process due to its sterling feature of code reusability. Furthermore, the latest release of Flutter 3 allows developers to create an application for more than six platforms using the same code. These include iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, and Web. Managed by Google, it allows you to create cutting-edge, hardware-optimized solutions with native-like performance.

If you plan to develop games through Flutter, the casual game kit is included for you in the latest release, along with firebase support. Here are some significant benefits and drawbacks of using Flutter for developing an application.

Pros of Flutter

Fast compilation of the code is what every developer dreams of, and thanks to Flutter, it’s a reality now. The hot reload feature quickly compiles the code and provides a preview of the app.

A platform agnostic framework, helping developers to use the same code foundation and build apps compatible with multiple platforms.

Flutter apps are almost the same for Android and iOS, meaning your testing team has to work less. QA testers will write 50% fewer testing scenarios and cases for these apps due to the same code foundation.

Thanks to the Skia Graphic Library used by the Flutter framework, all the UI components are redrawn whenever a view changes. The library allows Flutter to provide 60 frames per second, ensuring smooth operation for the end user.

Flutter owns a huge widget population that can be customized according to the app requirements instead of solely relying upon Native components. Intuitive UI and perfect visual detail is the most considerable privilege Flutter have over React Native.

Developing applications with Flutter means no worries about iOS and Android version compatibility. Your application will look the same on both newer and older versions without affecting the working process.

Need a rapid application or an MVP to impress your investors? If you are running short of time, Flutter is here for you, and you can build a top-notch MVP to showcase your skills or ideas.

Cons of Flutter

Flutter is just a five years old baby backed by Google, which is relatively young compared to React Native. Also, it uses Dart as the foundation, which is not a commonly used programming language. Therefore the Flutter community is growing slowly and steadily but giving a tough time to React Native through its high-end performance.

Backed by Google, Flutter has incredible support and library collection, but it cannot match the native development support. You might have to build custom functionalities sometimes due to the unavailability of the concerned library.

Compared to Native Android or iOS apps, applications developed in Flutter have larger sizes. It ultimately takes a lot of time to download your mobile space.

What is React Native?

Launched by Facebook in 2015, React Native is a Javascript-based framework. It allows web developers to create mobile applications compatible with multiple platforms using their javascript knowledge. React Native is also known as a no-brainer tool in the industry as it requires minimal training for the developers to start working with it.

Here are the fundamental advantages and disadvantages you will encounter when developing your dream application with React Native.

Pros of React Native

Apart from being a cross-platform framework that utilizes the same code foundation, React Native also provides minimal testing and hot-reloading advantages. In addition, below are the significant advantages offered by the Javascript-based framework.

JavaScript is the most commonly used programming language worldwide. Therefore, programmers with command can quickly develop mobile applications requiring little training.

React Native gives its developers an open hand to choose the best solution according to the project and client requirements. It helps in code reusability and cost saving as well.

Being a mature cross-platform development framework, React Native has a huge developer community. It has to offer so much to new learners, from libraries to UI frameworks to video tutorials to articles, so they can quickly learn the latest technology.

Cons of React Native

React Native highly supports native components for iOS and Android. However, it doesn’t offer much support for out-of-the-box features, and developers might face issues implementing features needing third-party support.

Compared to the ones created with Flutter, applications developed with React Native are a little bit slower and show poor performance matrices. It is due to the JavaScript bridge used to communicate and interact with the Native components.

React Native mainly uses Native components to create the app UI. However, you might have to use a third-party or custom UI widget to create a fully functional app. This mix-up leads to the breakage of the application.

Unfortunately, React Native lacks documentation support, especially if you want help with third-party integration. However, the development team is trying its best to resolve this issue. On the other hand, Flutter provides excellent documentation support for its learning community and developers.

Key Contrasts – Flutter Vs React Native

Flutter and React Native both are emerging and best cross-platform frameworks used by the developers. We cannot stamp one as the best development framework because both have their advantages and disadvantages. You might feel comfortable working with Flutter in one project, and the other might need React Native. Here is a short and quick comparison based on some key contrasts both frameworks have. This will help you to have a better understanding of both these platform-agnostic frameworks.

From fast prototyping to hot reloading to designing simple mobile apps, Flutter and React Native stay on the same path. However, both frameworks show different performance levels regarding documentation support, meeting performance matrices, and many others.

Flutter Vs. React Native: Which One to Choose for the App?

You might have a great idea but don’t know which platform would work wonders for you. Worry not, we are here to help you clear your mind if you ask us to answer whether Flutter is best or React Native? The fact is that there is no perfect answer to this question, but your project requirements can justify the single framework’s usage.

When to Choose Flutter

Flutter will be a perfect fit if:

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When to Choose React Native

React Native will be a perfect fit if:

Summary: Predicting the future of Flutter Vs React Native

It’s not easy to say which framework will flourish the most, but facts, statistics, and trends have helped us predict which framework will dominate. No matter how young the framework or technology is, it makes its path and becomes popular. Flutter is doing the same; with every passing day, its community is increasing. Here are the statistics showcasing its growth as compared to React Native.

IT companies are showing interest in Flutter development due to tremendous improvements in its SDK. With Flutter 3.0, it now offers the same codebase for six+ platforms. Companies like Alibaba are already utilizing the flutter framework and doing wonders. We at CodesOrbit also offer full fledged flutter development services from idea curation to deployment to its maintenance for smooth operations.

On the other hand, React Native focuses on improving its documentation support to make it easier for the developers and the community. Designing intuitive UI and handling third-party integrations when working with React Native is challenging, thus making it less popular among the developers when compared to Flutter.