Flutter vs React Native is one of the hottest debates in the mobile app development industry. While choosing the best cross-platform app development framework, React Native and Flutter confuse businesses and startups to choose the suitable one.
Choosing the right framework can help businesses deliver a seamless user experience and achieve success. As user demands increase, businesses need to build unique solutions that save time and effort.
Businesses try to choose a framework that meets current needs and provides scalability. Among the two prominent frameworks, React Native or Flutter, you need to choose the right one, but it’s not an easy task.
To help you choose the right one, we will comprehensively compare Flutter vs React Native. The guide focuses on various important factors to help you gain in-depth knowledge and make an informed decision. So, let’s dive deep:
Overview of Flutter & And React Native
Flutter is a popular open-source UI framework developed by Google in 2017. The framework was specially designed to build cross-platform applications. Popular companies such as Alibaba, Hamilton, Philips, etc. have already used Flutter app development and contributed to Flutter’s popularity. Google updates the framework timely manner to enhance its performance.
React Native framework is also popular for building high-performing applications. It was created by Facebook (now Meta) in 2015. This framework is based on JavaScript and provides similar features. React Native uses a single codebase to build mobile apps, eliminating the need to leverage other technologies to make mobile apps. They are one of the top 10 technologies used to develop mobile apps.
Flutter vs React Native: Head-To-Head Comparison
Flutter is one of the React Native competitors because both of these frameworks have tremendous qualities and several modules. To choose between Flutter vs React Native, we need to take a look at the head-to-head comparison. This involves some crucial factors which are important for you to understand our best choice.
1. Performance
Performance is a critical factor to include essential features every successful mobile app needs. Businesses engage users and achieve success with high performance. In the performance category, Flutter has an advantage over its competitors. Flutter is used for performance because it has the benefit of a Dart & JavaScript bridge.
Performance is an issue for React Native while building cross-platform apps, but using this framework for native apps can eliminate performance issues. Talking about Flutter vs React Native performance, Flutter has a code reusability feature which enables high-performance, but that’s not the case with React Native.
2. Development Time
Mobile app development companies have made their name in the industry by delivering high-quality products before the timeline. Speed is important for every business, and they focus on this component to achieve success in their industry. In Flutter vs React Native, development time is an important factor that can’t be ignored.
Frameworks reduce the development timeframe and add more to the user interface, resulting in less time to complete projects. Flutter is new in the market, and it requires a considerable amount of time to develop apps. Fast development is one of the main advantages of React Native. That’s why it helps to build applications faster than Flutter.
3. Formation of UI Blocks
UI blocks are the basic building units of any application’s user interface. They are like buttons, cards, images, navigation bars, etc, that come together to make an interactive experience. When it comes to formulating UI blocks. There is a huge gap between React Native and Flutter. React Native is based on components, but Flutter works with proprietary widget sets. These widgets help in building a fully customized UI with additional native support, but there are some loopholes. Thus, React Native provides a better user experience than Flutter vs React Native.
4. Documenting & Tooling
Let’s compare Flutter vs React Native based on the documentation and tooling. In Flutter, you can get regimented and efficient documentation. It simplifies the work for developers and helps them save time. On the other hand, React Native fails to provide the best results and lags behind Flutter. Talking about tooling, Flutter is better than React Native due to a wide range of IDEs and tools.
5. Stability
Stability is an important factor while building a cross-platform app. But the Flutter vs React Native still gets hot here because the competition is neck-to-neck. In this comparison, Flutter is not meeting the expectations because it has only an alpha version, which is not suitable for longer projects.
However, Google announced a new version of Flutter Beta 2 some time ago, and it helped developers with tools and other systems. But, it couldn’t meet the expectations, and React Native is providing stability from the start with a large community of contributors.
Flutter vs React Native: Table Comparison
| Feature | React Native | Flutter |
| Performance | Near-native, but depends on the bridge for communication | High performance due to direct compilation to native code |
| UI Components | Uses native components | Has its own rich set of widgets |
| Community Support | Larger and more mature community | Growing fast, strong support from Google |
| Hot Reload | Yes | Yes |
| Learning Curve | Easier (JavaScript is widely known) | Moderate (Dart needs to be learned) |
| App Size | Smaller | Slightly larger due to built-in widgets |
| Third-party Libraries | A wide range of plugins is available | Increasing, but still catching up |
| Web/Desktop Support | Limited (via Expo or extra setup) | Strong support (Flutter Web, Desktop stable) |
| UI Consistency Across Platforms | Relies on platform components (less consistent) | Highly consistent (same widgets used everywhere) |
| Development Time | Fast due to the reusability of code | Fast with an extensive widget library |
Popular Apps Built Using Flutter And React Native
After understanding the detailed comparison of Flutter vs React Native, let’s take a look at the devices built using these frameworks. They have helped several companies achieve success in their industry. Here are companies that use React Native and Flutter:
- Flutter: Used by Google Ads, Alibaba, BMW, Reflectly, etc. Some startups also leveraged this framework to save money and time while building their application.
- React Native: Popular applications Instagram, Facebook, Walmart, and Airbnb, were made using this cross-platform app development framework. Small businesses also prefer to use React Native, saving development time in building a cutting-edge product.
Wrapping Up
Choosing between Flutter and React Native is quite difficult because they both have unique advantages and disadvantages. Making an informed decision largely depends on your project needs. That’s why you need to choose a reliable and expert mobile app development company. React Native provides a mature ecosystem, but Flutter offers UI consistency with performance. So, you need to cross-check your project requirements to build a mobile app using one of these frameworks. Understood the difference between Flutter and React Native? Boost your business journey with more blogs at AppFirmsReview.