NativeScript vs. Unreal Engine

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
Unreal Engine
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Originally designed in 1998, Unreal Engine is a game engine designed to build games of all type, with sharp graphics and control, using the C++ language.N/A
Pricing
NativeScriptUnreal Engine
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
End User License Agreement for Publishing
Free
5% of royalties after gross product revenue exceeds 1M
End User License Agreement for Creators
Free & Royalty Free
Custom Licenses
Contact sales team
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
NativeScriptUnreal Engine
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level 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
NativeScriptUnreal Engine
Best Alternatives
NativeScriptUnreal Engine
Small Businesses
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 8.7 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 8.7 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Enterprises
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 8.7 out of 10

No answers on this topic

All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
NativeScriptUnreal Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
4.8
(13 ratings)
9.2
(2 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
1.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
NativeScriptUnreal Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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Epic Games
It's really well suited for experiential uses. Sure, games are made with it, but I'm guessing that more non-gaming assets are being made with it than anyone realizes. It's a fantastic post-production for 3d modeling tasks. It's fantastic for fast nearly photo real rendering. It's almost as good at rendering truly photo real assets now that Path Tracing is becoming mature. It's fantastic for creating background and matte plates for video and film production. There are few things that do that as well as it can. It's not well suited to modeling the initial 3d object so you really need to have something to build the 3d assets in. Hard asset modeling and creating is the one area that it's lacking. But, even if it never rises to the level to compete with 3ds Max or Maya, etc., that's ok, because it's just another tool and it does what it does so well, that modeling deficiencies can be overlooked
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Pros
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.
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Epic Games
  • Achieving proper depth effect of the background layer
  • Walkthrough videos of any given layout can be easily prepared and made more immersive
  • Creating the most detailed 3D models
  • Takes very little time to produce the required renders depending on the complexity of the input
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Cons
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
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Epic Games
  • The modeling tools are getting better but have a good way to go to really be intuitive
  • They are trying to bridge the gap between coders and artists and have done well but more needs to continue to happen to enable users who have little experience writing code to be able to use it effectively. It's not that this is a "room for improvement" thing per se, it's just that more of it needs to be done and I think they know that and are on it.
  • It's so powerful, it's difficult to find anything else that needs improvement. It's kind of mindblowing what it's capable of.
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Likelihood to Renew
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.
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Epic Games
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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.
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Epic Games
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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.
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Epic Games
Despite the fact that the Unreal Engine user interface took some getting used to, it was rather simple to navigate once we got the hang of it. Furthermore, Unreal Engine offers unrivalled flexibility and fine-tuning tools. Twinmotion has a slightly complicated UI as well, but the number of options for personalization and fine adjustment is limited
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Return on Investment
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.
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Epic Games
  • It's helped a tiny studio like mine to compete with larger and more financially sound studios.
  • It gives me another product from which I can derive a revenue stream.
  • Unless you are publishing a game for sale or a packaged product, UE is free to use and tinker with. You can use it to build something amazing to use in your portfolio which in turn can help you sell your skills.
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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