Flutter by Google vs. Xamarin

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Flutter
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Flutter is an open-source mobile application development framework created by Google. It is used to develop applications for Android and iOS, as well as being the primary method of creating applications for Google Fuchsia.
$0
Xamarin
Score 6.3 out of 10
N/A
N/AN/A
Pricing
Flutter by GoogleXamarin
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Xamarin
Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FlutterXamarin
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Flutter by GoogleXamarin
Considered Both Products
Flutter
Chose Flutter by Google
I think that Flutter is now much better than Microsoft's Xamarin and the old Apache Cordova. I was able to go from a concept design to a working application in almost no time and with almost no experience with Dart at all. It helps (but it is not a requirement) to have some …
Chose Flutter by Google
- Like it better than other solutions, or building native on both platforms.
- React Native has a good advantage with language and amazing web support.
- React Native is easier to jump in for web engineers.
Chose Flutter by Google
Flutter is a bit different from Android Studio, the latter one being an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) while Flutter itself is a Cross-Platform Mobile Development SDK (Software Development Kit). Flutter provides the access to the native features and built-in plugins …
Chose Flutter by Google
Way less tweaking to have a cross-platform experience, better performance, and feels more like a native app.
But the community, while growing, is still smaller than React Native. This can cause issues with specific use cases as it's harder to find help online.
Xamarin

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Flutter by GoogleXamarin
Small Businesses
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Swiftify
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Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Flutter by GoogleXamarin
Likelihood to Recommend
7.9
(17 ratings)
7.0
(12 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Flutter by GoogleXamarin
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
Flutter is well known for native app development, if you have android studio installed on your system, you can quickly start using it. This might not be the best choice for you if you do not wish to learn a new language, i.e. Dart and you do not know it already.
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
Google
  • User interface design works great across all platforms, including native styling for iOS/macOS.
  • Native compilation for mobile platforms and a decent rendering engine results in slick apps that can make the most of your device.
  • Dart is a well thought out language and easy to pick up.
  • Makes cross-platform development of good looking GUI apps a doddle.
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.
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Cons
Google
  • Occasionally updates to the Flutter SDK result in wide-sweeping changes that seem to not be thoroughly tested and considered. Flutter sometimes evolves too fast for its own good.
  • While the 3rd-party Flutter package ecosystem is vast and rich, 1st-party support for basic things (audio/video playback, battery information, Bluetooth services, etc.) are lacking. You are occasionally forced to rely on an open-source package for use-cases that other platforms have native support for.
  • Documentation, particularly around testing, is lacking. While there are some great docs, like the Dart Style Guide, many Flutter-focused support documents are lacking in quality and real-world usability.
  • Flutter allows you to architect an app however you want. While this is a great feature, it also adds complexity and leads to the current state of Flutter's state management, where there are 50+ options on how to organize your app, with very little official guidance or recommendations from the Flutter team. For a beginner, this can create decision paralysis.
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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.
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Likelihood to Renew
Google
No answers on this topic
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.
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Usability
Google
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
Google
No answers on this topic
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
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Implementation Rating
Google
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.
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Alternatives Considered
Google
I have experience with react and React Native. I would say that the idea behind all those frameworks are quite similar. However, I found the javascript-based frameworks a bit more accessible as you could utilise your javascript knowledge. Here, Flutter works with its own language. This has advantages and disadvantages sometimes. I found the community around javascript frameworks bigger and therefore sometimes more helpful. However, Flutter does a good job here as well. I think the main argument for Flutter is its usability for less experienced developers. If you do not have knowledge in javascript or other programming languages then I think it is much easier to start with Flutter than with another framework like react. I think the package that you get form scratch is better than in the other frameworks were you have to set up and learn a lot more before you can start.
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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.
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Return on Investment
Google
  • The rapid development capabilities of Flutter allow us to build apps we could not have previously considered commercially viable, opening new revenue streams.
  • Free and open licensing made adoption very easy (ie. free/low cost!).
  • In comparison to Qt, our time spent arguing with build tools and perfecting development environments has decreased substantially.
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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
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