Flutter vs. React Native: A Developer’s Showdown for Cross-Platform Apps
We are webbed into an ongoing debate and discussion on choosing between React Native and Flutter. Companies of all sizes and scales at some point will discuss among their technical experts headed by CTOs on which framework is the best for our requirements.
Having been a part of the development community, I have gained enough experience to finally address this debate and share my thoughts. I will decipher the difference between Flutter and React-Native in terms of performance, programming language, development community, support, learning curve, UI/UX development, and project suitability.
So, by the end of the article, you have a good understanding of the differences and similarities between these two frameworks.
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What is React Native and Flutter?
- React Native is a mobile app development framework introduced by Facebook in 2015 and is used to build applications for mobile, desktop, and web. React Native is built on top of React, which is a JavaScript library. React Native developers build native-looking applications for iOS and Android using a single codebase, which is the primary benefit of cross-platform applications.
- On the other hand, Flutter is an open-source UI Software Development Kit (SDK) released by Google in 2018. With Flutter, you can build cross-platform applications for different operating systems and platforms. Flutter has a rendering engine that is written in C++.
Both React Native and Flutter are leading cross-platform mobile app development frameworks. A primitive difference between them is that you’ll get code reusability across different platforms with Flutter. With React Native, you’ll get extensive library support.
Let’s Get to Know the Two Contenders in Some Detail
Starting with React Native, I’ll dive deep into its benefits and core functionalities to paint a clear picture. I have first-hand experience with the evolution of the mobile landscape. It has been 9 years since React Native hit the market and around 7 years since Flutter was introduced. So, here’s what I think about them;
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React Native
Similar to a set of legos, React Native uses JavaScript (building blocks) for code generation and renders it (give shape) to run on iOS or Android platforms. Given this structure, here are the core functionalities of this technology;
- Declarative UI: This means the developer will describe what the UI must look like instead of giving line-by-line coded instructions. As a result, the code you write is easier to maintain and understand.
- Reusable Components: The reusable code in React Native can encapsulate both the UI and app logic, facilitating code reusability and simplifying complex UIs.
- Hot Reloading: An excellent (one of my favorites) and time-saving feature that allows developers to see the code changes reflected in the application, almost instantly.
React Native has a vast developer community, which has become a learning resource for everyone working with the framework. Moreover, what I love is the huge database of third-party component libraries offering pre-built components for different functionalities.
While almost everything is great with React Native, I do find a few things that can make working with React Native, a hassle.
- JavaScript Bridges: Some functionalities in React Native UI components will need a JavaScript bridge to communicate with the native code. This can increase your workload and overhead costs.
- Still Need Native Developers: The core aspect of cross-platform development is that one developer can build solutions for iOS and Android. However, for highly customized and complex solutions, we might still require native developers to interact with Android and iOS APIs.
How Do I Feel About React Native?
Heading the best React Native app development company, I appreciate the ease of learning with React Native, especially for those who understand JavaScript. It has a large community, which is helpful when you are stuck. Still, I am wary of the fact you might need nature developer expertise for some parts of the development job.
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Flutter
Enter Flutter, a worthy contender to React Native, and at several points in time, it has overtaken React Native in terms of popularity and usage. Working on Dart, an object-oriented and strongly typed programming language, Flutter can build its own set of widgets. So, you can take Flutter as a big canvas and Dart is the paintbrush you can use to define the components and widgets you need to build applications.
- Stateful Hot Reloading: Flutter also has a hot reloading feature like React Native and it’s one step further. The changes made to the codebase are reflected instantly in the application, hence preserving the application state. Hence, it fast-tracks the development cycle while maintaining the speed with complex UI interactions.
- Rendering Engine Customization: Flutter has its rendering engine built on C++, called Skia. Developers can use Skia for granular control over all the pixels on the screen. For experienced developers, this ability to customize the rendering engine is a game-changer.
- Reactive Programming: With this, the UI automatically rebuilds the underlying changes, simplifying the development process. What it also offers is a predictable codebase, making it easier to understand and improving testability.
Flutter is an impressive development framework that helps build high-performance applications with the ease of creating UIs through a set of rich built-in widgets. You can create widgets from scratch but also access a comprehensive library of pre-built widgets for common user interface elements.
It’s a great technology, but not a perfect one. You see, Flutter works on Dart, which has a steep learning curve. You will need to invest some time and effort in learning the programming language, especially if you have a JavaScript background.
I appreciate Flutter’s performance and customizability along with its powerful rendering engine. However, it also has a learning curve. But once you learn to work with Dart, the results will be great, especially for visually demanding projects. So the choice is yours, whether you want to take raw control or work with potential (but addressable) limitations.
Head to Head | Comparing React Native and Flutter on 6 Parameters
React Native and Flutter can develop cross-platform applications, enabling the creation of applications that run on iOS and Android with a single codebase.
Let’s compare them on 6 key parameters:
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Programming Language
| Dart (Flutter) | JavaScript (React Native) |
| Dart is a class-based and object-oriented programming language with a C-style syntax.
With Dart, you’ll get a structured syntax, and here you’ll work with interfaces, mixins, abstract classes, and static typing while creating a type-safe coding environment. App performance with Dart is further improved with Just-in-Time (JIT) and Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compilation methods making it faster than JavaScript. |
JavaScript is also an object-oriented and functional programming language, which does not require client-side compilation.
Learning JavaScript is not easy, but it has a plethora of learning resources, which makes it accessible. JavaScript offers fast execution and easy interpretation, but its performance is slower than Dart. While JavaScript has coding flexibility, it may lead to error-prone code due to the same flexibility feature. |
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Learning Curve
| Flutter | React Native |
| Flutter represents a new frontier, because of Dart. However, as a top Flutter app development company, I found Dart’s design to be exceptionally helpful in easing the learning curve.
Dart borrows its syntax from Java and C++ while including functional programming concepts. So, anyone with experience in these areas can learn Dart, easily. Moreover, Dart has a widget-centric approach, But understanding the widget hierarchy and state management will demand a shift in your coding perspective. |
With React Native, familiarity with JavaScript is the key component to its success. Anyone comfortable with JavaScript will pick up React Native like a breeze. Your existing understanding of JSX will help you work smoothly with React Native’s component structure.
Moreover, if you are familiar with component-based architecture and state management, it will help enhance your understanding of React Native further. |
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UI/UX Development
| Flutter | React Native |
| Flutter follows a widget-based approach and it employs StatelessWidget and StatefulWidget to build UI components.
The difference lies in the widget’s function and how it manages the stage and encapsulates a build function. In addition to this, the widgets are highly customizable and have extensive style properties enabling developers to fine-tune the UI appearance and behavior. This format is often used in Flutter to build sophisticated UI compositions. |
React Native poses a heavy reliance on UI components, extracted from a pre-built library or you can make your components.
These components provide a native aesthetic appearance and functionality. However, this framework needs third-party libraries to maintain UI consistency across different platforms, which is often a drawback. Developers that work with React Native counter this drawback by saying that here we can reuse the code across different platforms without or without edits, accelerating the development speed. |
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Performance
| Flutter | React Native |
| Flutter works with a C++-based rendering engine and compiles the Dart code into native code. This provides native-like graphics and animation to the application along with significant performance advantages.
Flutter has better CPU usage and is outperforming React Native, but the latter is better in terms of memory usage. Due to these, you will find that applications built on Flutter have faster app loading times. |
I think that above all the factors and parameters, performance matters the most. With the new features like Turbo Native Module and Fabric Native Components, which enhance performance and stability.
React Native is giving tough competition to Flutter, yet when it comes to high-performance applications, games, and real-time streaming. |
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Developer Community & Resources
| Flutter | React Native |
| Flutter has a small community and limited learning resources which complicates the learning and training.
As it’s with all programming languages, the development ecosystem and community backing play a significant role in its popularity and approach. |
React Native is one step ahead here, owing to the developer community and extensive resources.
Even better, React Native has a large pool of developers who are working together, making it a popular choice in the market. |
Project Suitability
With all the information I could muster up for this article, I hope you can decide on whether to use Flutter or React Native when you hire a cross-platform app development company. Still, if you are confused, the following table will make it easier;
| Type of Work | Flutter | React Native |
| A small application or app prototype | ✅ | ✅ |
| App MVP | ✅ | ✅ |
| A complex app with multiple screens and complex business logic | ✅ | ✅ |
| Desktop App | ✅ | ❌ |
| Web App | ✅ | ✅ |
| Game | ✅ | ❌ |
| AR-VR Enabled App | ❌ | ❌ |
I hope this helps you understand Flutter and React Native differences and make an informed decision.
To Sum it Up
React Native and Flutter are powerful cross-platform app development frameworks used for building high-performance solutions for iOS and Android platforms. When you are out there to hire nearshore mobile app developers, consider talking to Mobmaxime.
We are a team of highly experienced and expert cross-platform app developers possessing an in-depth understanding of Flutter and React Native. Our work portfolio is nothing short of an impressive gallery of achievements.
Get in touch with us to know more and make a better choice between Flutter and React Native.
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