Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Appium
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
N/AN/A
NativeScript
Score 4.8 out of 10
N/A
NativeScript is an open source framework that allows you to create native iOS and Android apps, with one codebase, using ​the web skills you already have (JavaScript and CSS) and ​the libraries you already love​.N/A
Xamarin
Score 6.0 out of 10
N/A
N/AN/A
Pricing
AppiumNativeScriptXamarin
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Xamarin
Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AppiumNativeScriptXamarin
Free Trial
NoYesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThe NativeScript framework and CLI are completely free and open source. NativeScript Sidekick is a free download to improve developer productivity with optional paid tiers for power users.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AppiumNativeScriptXamarin
Considered Multiple Products
Appium
Chose Appium
Appium is comparable with Calabash because it's the only cross-platform tool like appium. Espresso is only to automate Android tests and XCTest is only for iOS. We selected Appium because it solves a lot of automation situations and gestures of the mobile apps. We've used …
NativeScript
Chose NativeScript
We have previously evaluated Xamarin, and the time it took us to get started, install all of the software, license it, learn Xamarin, and create a app that runs and debugs on connected mobile devices was painful. With NativeScript and the Playground, we're able to get started …
Chose NativeScript
First and foremost, the codebase on which the project application was developed in NativeScript on 90% can be shared with React Native framework. Moreover, the documentation of the framework is extensive in a manner to allow developers the easy low-level entrance for the …
Chose NativeScript
Unlike its competitors, NativeScript offers its users 4 architectural choices. It shines in the area of offering 100% day zero Native API access. The development experience is great and feels like you are home, if you are a web developer coming from Angular or Vue background, …
Chose NativeScript
I was once a user of Ionic Framework which operates on Apache Cordova. At the time, Ionic was the obvious choice because it was lightyears ahead of the other cross platform frameworks. However, because Ionic Framework and Apache Cordova require a WebView component to function, …
Chose NativeScript
The direct native API access without having to write any Java or ObjC was the ultimate decision for us. We can drop in a native Android/Ios library and instantly code against that SDK without any special work. Whereas with Ionic or RN, you have to write some Java/ObjC (or …
Xamarin

No answer on this topic

Best Alternatives
AppiumNativeScriptXamarin
Small Businesses
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 8.8 out of 10
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 8.8 out of 10
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 8.8 out of 10
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AppiumNativeScriptXamarin
Likelihood to Recommend
9.8
(10 ratings)
4.8
(13 ratings)
7.0
(12 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
AppiumNativeScriptXamarin
Likelihood to Recommend
JS Foundation
1. It's open source which supports range of languages, operating systems and languages. Well suited for Android and IOS mobile automation. Supports all kinds of apps, which makes it flexible and robust mobile testing tool 2. It is less appropriate where we need intercept network call to verify the API calls. Extensive coding experience is required to work Appium
Read full review
Progress Software Corporation
I gotta be honest, after a PoC period, we choose to rewrite the whole application in a different cross-platform app. Our developers had to invest a lot of time and effort to debug a lot of plugin-related issues, which we needed to utilize the android mobile phone capabilities. QR reader, special visualizations, and fine-tuning were really hard and often resulted in writing native Android code instead of using the shared Angular code. In the end, we think that writing a standalone Android app and an Angular app would have been a better alternative, as the shared code base was so unreliable that it did not save us any time.
Read full review
Microsoft
If you are required to develop applications that are cross-platformed, Xamarin is a great tool to use. It will help save time and effort from your development team to be able to build applications seamlessly for android, IOS, Windows, and web on a single platform instead of requiring multiple tools to get the job done.
Read full review
Pros
JS Foundation
  • It uses WebDriver API so it makes it easy to use for former web test automation engineers.
  • It can be managed via the command line via an extensive set of parameters.
  • It handles implicit waits at the server side that is especially valuable in distributed infrastructure.
Read full review
Progress Software Corporation
  • True native app. The app uses native components and that is quite noticeable in the overall performance of the app. NativeScript is also awesome in the way we can access the native APIs, so we are never really constrained by the framework. If we need, we can just dive into the native APIs without leaving our environment and language (JS).
  • Cross-platform. Builds for Android and iOS. It deals with the platforms differences very well.
  • Support for Vue.js. Even though it is just a community effort, the NativeScript-Vue plugin is the best alternative to build native Apps with Vue.js. That was a major factor to go with NativeScript.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Xamarin allows you to write cross platform code. This allows companies to build apps more quickly by writing less code. Having code abstracted and reused across multiple platforms allows for more testing and less issues overall.
  • The ability to use Visual Studio is a huge plus. Visual Studio is one of the best IDE's available and being able to write cross platforms apps while in a great IDE makes everything less painful.
  • Xamarin is now free with a large company backing. This means that bugs on the platform get fixed more quickly and there is a large community of developers.
Read full review
Cons
JS Foundation
  • Element browser sometimes is unreliable and has sporadic fails.
  • Appium running is a bit slow, compared to tests written with Appium and with Espresso or XCTest.
Read full review
Progress Software Corporation
  • The need to know the native Android and iOS APIs to access device hardware and other platform-specific functionality
  • Not all user interface components are available for free
  • NativeScript has no HTML and DOM, which requires some deep knowledge of different UI tools to be implemented instead
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Forms - not 100% there. Still needs work but is production ready.
  • iOS - sometimes errors can be hard to understand, if they even show up.
  • Insights - Xamarin offers their own crash analytics software. However, it's not perfect and sometimes doesn't pick up crashes.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
JS Foundation
I am rating 10/10 because Appium can use with multiple programming languages with multiple Test engines. Also, it works for both Android and iOS.
Read full review
Progress Software Corporation
The hybrid is ok but native is better for performance and the right use case I want to go for is the performance without dealing with too many development tools.
Read full review
Microsoft
Xamarin has been great for developing different projects efficiently and effectively. It's nice to reuse the core business logic across different platforms so that there are less to maintain and little replications are needed. The biggest benefit is that C# programmers do not have to learn a different language to do mobile development.
Read full review
Usability
JS Foundation
I would like to give 9/10 rating to Appium because of it can easily integrate with popular frameworks and CI/CD tools, as well as it is reliable, flexible and easy to use. The setup can bit complex in initial step, but once on configured it's very easy to use and enables stable and scalable mobile automation for real and cloud devices.
Read full review
Progress Software Corporation
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
If you are required to develop applications that are cross-platformed, Xamarin is a great tool to use. It will help save time and efforts from your development team to be able to build applications seamlessly for android, IOS, windows, and web on a single platform instead of requiring multiple tools to get the job done
Read full review
Support Rating
JS Foundation
No answers on this topic
Progress Software Corporation
The community support is excellent.
They have a slack community as well as a discourse forum
forum.nativescript.org
Both of these offer community driven support.
The forum is more for a threaded discussion. The slack community is more for a quick talk.
Read full review
Microsoft
I never had to contact support for any help. Most of the problems we ran into, we were able to identify and use peer support through blogs and other internet sources to resolve the problems. There are plenty of sources online which provide tutorials, discuss problems, etc. Example: StackOverflow
Read full review
Implementation Rating
JS Foundation
No answers on this topic
Progress Software Corporation
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Just with any programming tasks, have a plan first. Design out the system, spend time to build it correctly the first time and have plenty of testing and user acceptance opportunities. Xamarin was easy to implement for a C# programmer. However, you need to do tutorials to realize the platform's capabilities.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
JS Foundation
If you're an Apple developer, you use Xcode. It's practically a forced necessity. For system testing though, it doesn't have to be. You can have your development team focus on unit and integration tests in their platform and another team automate acceptance tests with a language they are more familiar with.
Read full review
Progress Software Corporation
Ionic Ionic is an excellent Angular-based framework for mobile, and it does give a lot of access to the native device api's. However, the technology is based on Cordova, which means the apps being built are just webviews, with html, css and JS all running on the UI thread, and potentially creating very slow experiences for users. NativeScript is a truly native solution, and so provides a faster user experience. ReactNative We evaluate ReactNative, and found it much the same as NativeScript. The main difference is that your JS is all written with React, while NativeScript lets you choose between normal JS, Angular, and Vue. For our team, Angular was the most appropriate choice.
Read full review
Microsoft
Xamarin runs natively on MacOS, and the debugger and other integration and auto-complete tools are far better than Eclipse for C# .NET. It also carries much of the plugin/add-on capabilities that are so desirable on Atom. Eclipse is a better for generalized software development, provided a developer is comfortable switching between the IDE the command line for certain parts of their workflow, like building, package management, or debugging. But for C# .NET development on MacOS specifically, Xamarin is the best product I've used for the job.
Read full review
Return on Investment
JS Foundation
  • Appium is open source, so it's free. That's budget friendly right there.
  • The ability to write mobile automation tests has saved considerable time for our manual test team, but that is true with most automation tests.
  • We use Sauce Labs with our other automation, but Appium works great with Sauce Labs, as well, if I needed to run on emulators and simulators.
Read full review
Progress Software Corporation
  • The poor quality of NativeScript documentation has the potential to weigh heavily on development timelines, budgets, and QA resources in a NEGATIVE manner.
  • The poor interoperability of NativeScript plugins can significantly increase development time.
  • The need to seek out professional instruction to learn how to use NativeScript effectively may become a burden on your budget.
  • The number of breaking changes between versions of NativeScript, may cause your development efforts to lag further behind the most recent releases of NativeScript and your other chosen environments than you are accustomed to.
  • NativeScript still does not support the latest major version of Angular. Any significant changes to the other environment components of your systems may hold you back even further while NativeScript plays catch-up.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Saves development time and deliver fast.
  • Allows inhouse developers build both Android and iOS application without switching languages.
  • Allows use coding in C# in Visual studio IDE from which we can code in different languages. We don't need multiple IDEs installed
Read full review
ScreenShots

NativeScript Screenshots

Screenshot of Example of a styled NativeScript list viewScreenshot of Charts and graphs available as part of NativeScript UIScreenshot of Groceries – the app you build as part of the getting started tutorialScreenshot of Leverage native mapping systems with NativeScript