React Native vs Flutter: Which One To Choose For Cross-Platform App Development?

Flutter and React Native are considered as future of cross-platform app development. But both technologies are having their own advantages and disadvantages. So choosing between them is always a hectic task for developers as well as entrepreneurs. In this blog, I will break down the features and assess which is the best.

Programming language

One of the common benefits of choosing React Native and Flutter is that it utilizes a single programming language for building up Android and iOS apps. React Native uses JavaScript as its programming language. It is an added advantage because developers are already familiar with JavaScript. Therefore developers can without much of a stretch adapt to the framework. Flutter utilizes Dart programming language and it is new to the developers. Those who have a good grasp of JavaScript can easily learn dart. Furthermore, the Dart language is easy to understand and has good documentation. To put it in a nutshell, React Native has an advantage since it has much familiar framework language.

Communication with native components

React Native framework uses flux architecture. It requires a JavaScript bridge to communicate with native components which can result in poor performance. Flutter uses skia architecture. Flutter contains all native components inbuilt in the framework so that bridge for communication isn't needed.

Installation of frameworks

Both Flutter and React Native installation are not an easy or a one-liner. To install React Native there is a node package manager. For Java developers, this may appear to be easy, but other developers ought to learn node package manager for installation. Compared to React Native, Flutter app development requires an additional step for adding the binary to the path and downloading it from source code.

Setup and configuration

To help the setup and configuration of the framework to the developer machine we must require a decent guide. But React Native documentation is extremely restricted and it only mentions how to create a new project. Flutter is known for its documentations and thus setup and configuration are totally supported by getting started guide for Flutter. Hence Flutter offers good documentation and CLI support for setup and configuration.

UI and API

When creating cross-platform mobile applications, support for the native component is key. Without the support of the native component, the application won't feel like a native app. It's significant that the framework has an API to access the native modules without any hassle. Flutter is rich in development APIs and UI components while React Native is too dependent on third-party libraries. So Flutter has an advantage in this.

Development time and productivity

Developer productivity is the key to developing apps quicker. In such a manner, it's essential to be able to focus on app development without any sort of wait or interruption. React Native has great developer support in terms of IDEs. Flutter is new at this point but will catch up very soon as the community around Flutter grows.

Community support

As soon as developers begin to show interest in technology and adopt it in their development process, they always form a community to share knowledge. A strong community assists developers to learn from each other and solve the issues they are confronting. The React Native community has grown in size since the framework was launched. Even though Flutter is still new, although community support is growing quickly.

Release operations

Release operation is one of the most significant but hectic processes where you deploy mobile apps to the app store. When it comes to cross-platform applications it is a more painful process. The release process of Flutter is more easily compared to React Native app development because flutter has build-in automation tools which make it easy.

Wrapping up

From the above discussion, it is clear that both React Native and Flutter have their advantages and disadvantages. If you want to develop a budget-friendly feature-rich app, then React Native has been the best technology for cross-platform app development, but at the same time, Flutter is quickly growing in popularity and looks more impressive in developing mobile apps. Notwithstanding, if you are still uncertain of which framework to go for, you can likewise reach out to a reliable and trusted mobile app development company as they are the best developers, who can assist you in choosing the framework, which is a perfect fit for your project.