Apple ARKit vs. Unity

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apple ARKit
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
ARKit from Apple is an augmented reality software development kit (SDK).N/A
Unity
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Unity Technologies headquartered in San Francisco offers the Unity real-time 3D and 2D development platform.
$200
per person/per month
Pricing
Apple ARKitUnity
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Enterprise
$200
per person/per month
Plus
$399
per person/per year
Pro
1,800
per person/per year
Personal
Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apple ARKitUnity
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apple ARKitUnity
Top Pros
Top Cons

No answers on this topic

User Ratings
Apple ARKitUnity
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.4
(10 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apple ARKitUnity
Likelihood to Recommend
Apple
Apple ARKit is best where AR experience will enhance user understanding of the product. For instance, for a furniture app, AR via Apple ARKit can help users get an understanding of how the furniture will look. It also works well for use cases where we want to give human movement as an input for AR, so for instance for clothing apps that want users to see how they will look in a particular clothing style, etc.
Read full review
Unity Technologies
Unity is excellent for 2D and 3D games and educational experiences. It is well-suited for VR and AR development. It is also a great platform for mobile games. It is less-suited for non-game purposes (although it can certainly be used for those as well), or educational experiences. It is also less-suited for AR experiences that are highly complex, where you will probably want to write the native code in Android Studio or Xcode, as the case may be. It is theoretically less-suited for cases where performance is a huge concern as well, although, in my experience, performance has never been a problem.
Read full review
Pros
Apple
  • Great sync between hardware and software
  • Visual-inertial odometry with ARKit2 is the best.
Read full review
Unity Technologies
  • Unity is a multiplatform game engine. It has more than 20 options for exporting your game, ranging from desktop, mobile, console, web and, lately, VR and AR. Unity was one of the first game engines able to export games playable on internet browsers and it helped to cement the World Wide Web as a place fit for gaming.
  • Unity has a very smooth learning curve for beginners. It is easy to start and soon you are seeing some tangible results of your efforts. The game engine has all sorts of helpers and shortcuts to facilitate some frequent tasks in game development.
  • Another of Unity's advantage is the access to Assets Store from within the game engine, allowing the user to import instantly objects, scripts and textures from the store into their projects. Such easy access to these elements from inside a project greatly enhances speed production and is particularly helpful to beginners.
Read full review
Cons
Apple
  • At times it can be laggy, taking time to recognize things
  • Limited to iOS
Read full review
Unity Technologies
  • To create an app, you'll need to integrate a variety of technology.
  • Compatibility Issues arises sometimes after update
  • Continue to develop ML learning models for AI.
Read full review
Usability
Apple
No answers on this topic
Unity Technologies
It's actually incredibly easy to use given the complex tasks you have. Once you learn the various windows it becomes second nature. Compared to something like Blender (which I would probably rate as a 2 on usability), the learning curve of Unity is a breeze! The only improvements I can think of would be to streamline some common workflows so you don't have to dig through menus to find them.
Read full review
Support Rating
Apple
They are always proactive, instead of us getting to them about a problem or a new feature. Always quick to respond any time of the day. Hence, 10/10.
Read full review
Unity Technologies
I have not had to use Unity's support extensively. This is likely because there is so much documentation and so many classes available for free online. Due to this, there is little need for support. They were very responsive when I requested educational licensing. Setting it up and providing it all quickly.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Apple
Apple ARKit is way finer and is the best option for iOS.
Read full review
Unity Technologies
We love utilizing unreal engines but we seem to have a better use case for the architectural visualization side of things. This has given us the ability to find better more photo-realistic assets from not only the marketplace but 3rd party sites that have a unity bases file to work off of.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Apple
  • It improved user retention.
  • It increased the app size, which is a drawback.
Read full review
Unity Technologies
  • Unity has a positive impact because, as of now, we don't have to pay for our license because we do not go beyond the revenue roof.
  • We cannot say more than that because the games that we are producing in Unity are not yet launched.
Read full review
ScreenShots