Skip to main content
TrustRadius
NativeScript

NativeScript

Overview

What is NativeScript?

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​.

Read more
Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

NativeScript has proven to be an invaluable tool for developers across various industries. For a fitness startup, NativeScript enabled …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing
N/A
Unavailable

What is NativeScript?

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​.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.nativescript.org/nativescri…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

1 person also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

What is Quickbase?

Quickbase helps users tackle any project, no matter how complex. Quickbase helps customers see, connect and control complex projects. Whether it’s raising a skyscraper or coordinating vaccine rollouts, the no-code software platform allows business users to custom fit solutions to the way they work…

What is OutSystems?

The OutSystems Platform is a Platform-as-a-Service solution for rapid delivery of responsive web and mobile applications. It includes functionalities required to develop, deploy, manage and change web and mobile applications. It is targeted at the delivery of enterprise applications that require…

Return to navigation

Product Demos

NativeScript Realtime Development

YouTube

How to Build Apps with NativeScript

YouTube

7 - Optimizing the Startup time of NativeScript Angular Apps

YouTube

NativeScript & WordPress REST API Demo LiveSync

YouTube

How to Build Enterprise Apps with Kinvey & NativeScript Demo

YouTube

Optimizing startup time of NativeScript Angular apps

YouTube
Return to navigation

Product Details

What is NativeScript?

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​.

NativeScript Features

  • Supported: Reuse web skills (JavaScript, CSS) to create truly native mobile apps for iOS and Android
  • Supported: Deep integration with popular JavaScript frameworks like Angular or Vue to minimize learning curve
  • Supported: Extensive code sharing between mobile platforms (including UI) and web apps (when used with Angular)
  • Supported: Deliver high-quality mobile apps to multiple platforms faster, using web developers you already have

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

NativeScript Video

This spring and summer have been full of new NativeScript features, tooling options, and improvements. NativeScript is evolving into something more than just an open source framework. In this webinar, we'll talk about all the new goodies for you and show you how you can crush it in mobile app development

NativeScript Competitors

NativeScript Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(18)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

NativeScript has proven to be an invaluable tool for developers across various industries. For a fitness startup, NativeScript enabled them to launch their app in just six months, providing a fast and efficient solution for their mobile development needs. Another company in the e-learning education industry is testing NativeScript as a potential alternative to their current app built on Ionic v1, with the goal of achieving an offline-first experience and improved performance.

Customers in the customer service industry have found NativeScript to be particularly useful due to its compatibility with the Angular web framework. This has allowed them to implement mobile and web-based cross-platform applications seamlessly, leveraging their existing knowledge and skills. Additionally, NativeScript's access to system APIs and seamless integration with third-party libraries has empowered developers to have full control over platform-specific functionalities, enabling them to build robust and feature-rich applications.

Countless developers have also turned to NativeScript for its ability to reuse existing frameworks and achieve native performance. It has been successfully used by consulting companies looking for a mobile app development platform that offers native performance, native UI generation, and ease of cross-platform development. These companies have praised NativeScript for allowing them to leverage their existing skills in Angular, TypeScript, and CSS, resulting in faster development cycles and cost savings.

Notably, NativeScript's versatility has made it an excellent fit for organizations that need to develop mobile applications for different platforms. By avoiding the need for separate codebases, they can save significant time and effort while still achieving native performance on both iOS and Android. This has made NativeScript a go-to choice for many developers working on projects at various stages of development.

Overall, NativeScript has garnered positive feedback from its users who appreciate its compatibility with modern web frameworks like Angular, its access to system APIs, and its ability to achieve native performance while maintaining cross-platform capabilities. It is clear that NativeScript offers a powerful solution for mobile app development needs across diverse industries.

Extensive repository of plugins: Many users appreciate the extensive repository of plugins available in NativeScript, which allows them to enhance their development speed. This feature has been praised by numerous reviewers as it enables developers to quickly add functionality to their apps without having to build everything from scratch.

Flexibility of architectural choices: The flexibility of NativeScript's four architectural choices - JavaScript, TypeScript, Angular, and Vue - is highly valued by users. This flexibility has been mentioned by a significant number of reviewers who appreciate being able to choose the framework they are most comfortable with and easily transition from prototype to final product.

Native API access and performance: The fact that NativeScript offers 100-day zero Native API access is seen as a major advantage by many users. Multiple reviewers mention this feature as it allows them to leverage the full power of native UI and achieve better performance compared to other frameworks like Ionic or PhoneGap. This capability gives developers more flexibility and control over their app's performance.

Lack of ready-made UI collections: Several users have expressed frustration with the absence of ready-made UI collections in NativeScript. This means that users have to build their applications using default UI elements and then manually style them, which can be time-consuming and require additional effort. Users feel that this limitation hampers the ease and convenience of designing user interfaces for their applications.

Default UI elements not intuitive or user-friendly: Some users have found NativeScript's default UI elements to be less intuitive or user-friendly than they would prefer. This has made it more challenging for them to quickly and efficiently create applications. They believe that a more intuitive interface would greatly enhance the development process.

Lack of built-in support for customizing UI elements: Another concern raised by users is the lack of built-in support or guidance for customizing UI elements in NativeScript. Users feel that they could benefit from more assistance or resources in this area, as it would make customization easier and faster. They believe that having readily available options for customizing UI elements would greatly improve their experience with the software.

Users have provided several recommendations for Native Script based on their experiences. Based on the feedback, the following are the three most common recommendations:

  1. It is advisable to do a few tutorials and check if the desired functionality is supported through plugins or if the user is willing to create them. This implies that there may be cases where certain features are missing in the software, and users should be prepared to address this by exploring plugins or creating their own.

  2. Users recommend trying Native Script to learn something new and explore interesting features. This suggests that Native Script offers a unique learning experience for those interested in expanding their skills and discovering new capabilities.

  3. However, users do not recommend using Native Script for production-ready applications. While the software has its merits, it may not be suitable for developing applications intended for deployment in a live production environment.

These recommendations highlight the importance of familiarizing oneself with Native Script's capabilities through tutorials, being open to exploring plugins or creating custom functionality, and considering the software's limitations when deciding whether it is appropriate for specific use cases.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-2 of 2)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Balázs Kiss | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used NativeScript as per customer requests to implement mobile and web-based cross-platform applications used in the customer service industry. The customer wanted to implement the application in the Angular web framework and then port it to Android. We chose NativeScript as one of its main selling points was the cross-compatibility with writing the code in an Angular web app.
  • Teach the basics of the framework
  • Integrate to existing Angular project
  • Lots of bugs in the android build, visual and interface wise as well.
  • Android functions were missing which was crucial
  • Poor plugin support, buggy plugins
  • Low response time to new android features
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.
  • Opportunity to write cross-platform applications in Angular
  • Reaching a bigger customer base with our knowledge of the framework
  • Although we succeeded in shipping the app, it did not save us any significant amount of time.
  • We still needed an Android developer to fully implement the application and enhance the capabilities of the Angular app
NativeScript was indeed a better experience at first than Ionic. But the real game-changer in 2022 for cross-platform applications is Flutter now. We changed to it shorty after NativeScript, as it is much more stable, more widely supported, has a ton of extra features, and does not rely on JavaScript and Android knowledge as much as NativeScript.
Flutter, by Google, Docker, Atlassian Jira Align (formerly AgileCraft)
No
  • Product Features
We wanted to utilize our Front-end developers, to build a cross-platform app, so we don't need deep Android knowledge or write a second app. NativeScript sadly failed to deliver this.
Although I am happy that I got the chance to use and learn this framework, it gave me a better perspective to avoid javascript-based cross-platform frameworks, especially if they are backed by a small company and only a tiny community. We found Flutter, and we have used that ever since.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
NativeScript (NS) is JavaScript that runs on a system-specific JSVM (V8 for Android, WebKit iOS). And everything would be sad if not for one thing - NS provides access to all system APIs. Moreover, NS has full support for the Angular framework. Mobile apps that we built with NS have full access to the platform APIs as if they were developed in XCode or Android Studio. Also with the help of NS we can also include third-party libraries from resources such as Cocoapods, Android Arsenal, Maven, and npm.js into applications without creating additional layers.
  • Access to the entire native API
  • Support for native iOS and Android libraries
  • Cross-platform declarative UI and source code
  • Powerful data visualization with native UI tools provided
  • 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
NativeScript allows to easily integrate with native APIs by threading models. Moreover, the framework itself can be integrated with Angular, VueJS and JavaScript due to the fact that it was built on based on these frameworks. It allows you to easily maintain if you projects are based on these frameworks. Therefore, for the development of cross-platform applications it can be very handy!
  • Development of native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms
  • Usage of the native platform rendering engine, which provides a truly native user experience (UX)
  • Accessing the native platform API through JavaScript code
  • Easy build, deploy, and management of NativeScript applications through the Telerik platform
  • It has increased the productivity of the developer's team, which has direct impact on the tasks performed throughout sprints (in terms of Scrum)
  • It decreased the time-to-market of applications by allowing the cross-platform development of the apps
  • Taking into account that it is open-source platform, with great variety of functionalities it directly decreased the operational costs of projects in run
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 project development. Also, NativeScript allows to implement it's own QA testing workflow, which significantly impacts on the final quality of the product to be delivered.
Return to navigation