You don’t have to look beyond the Flutter vs React Native debate to realize that competition can be healthy in mobile app development — driving creativity, productivity, and innovation. Both Flutter and React Native are powerful and exciting advanced frameworks that can play critical roles in the creation of scalable and robust web or mobile applications. While React Native is the creation of Facebook, Flutter is an open-source framework by Google.
Flutter vs React Native Popularity Contest
Despite the similarities, Flutter is pulling ahead of React Native quite rapidly in the Flutter vs React Native popularity contest. In 2019, Flutter was less than half as popular as React Native, according to Stack Overflow. But in 2021, Flutter was sniffing at its competitor’s heels. According to Google Trends, Flutter has pulled ahead in the popularity trend in 2022 in terms of worldwide searches.
So, what is React Native anyway?
As a top React Native app development team, we feel it’s prudent to explain what React Native is before we dive deeper into the React Native vs Flutter equation.
In a nutshell, React Native is a mobile JavaScript framework that offers interesting solutions to common app development challenges. Developers can use React Native to create apps for iOS and Android.
Since its launch by Facebook in 2013 after a hackathon, React Native has gained steadily in popularity. In fact, popular apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Uber Eats were all made with React Native.
Benefits of React Native
Development Speed
One of the biggest benefits of using React Native is the development speed. React Native offers many features that make development smooth and fast. For one, developers can instantly see the results of the changes they implement. The faster iterations due to the Hot Reload feature minimize the feedback loop, allowing developers to serve over-the-air code updates with instant rendering.
Developers can also write codes in React Native that are flexible and easy to read, which can certainly impact development speed positively. Moreover, over 80% of your React Native code can be reusable, cutting down development time.
Familiar Language
React Native uses JavaScript, which is one of the core programming languages of the World Wide Web. The scripting language is popular, fast, and versatile, with rich interfaces. Programmers who are familiar with JavaScript are at home with React Native.
Smooth Performance
React Native is known to consume less memory, translating to a smoother experience. It has better quality in its performance in benchmarks when compared to some other cross-platform solutions.
Strong Community
React Native has been around for several years and is popular. That’s why its user base and community are large and strong. It’s easy for React Native developers to get support or bounce ideas from their peers in the vibrant community on social media.
The Guarana React Native Advantage
We are renowned for our React Native app development in Montreal and other parts of Canada. Our strong and knowledgeable team of developers has been helping teams in Montreal with this technology. And we’re certainly equipped to help your team utilize this framework to its full potential.
OK, now let’s explain Flutter
Flutter is an exciting component of the mobile app development universe. The advanced framework helps developers create functional and flexible apps that resonate with audiences. Many coders also claim it’s more fun and intuitive to use. It’s no wonder that the multi-platform UI framework has quickly gained adoption, despite being released by Google just a few years ago in 2017. Besides Google, companies such as BMW, eBay, CapitalOne, and the Alibaba Group also utilize Flutter to create compelling software.
Benefits of Flutter
Single Codebase
Flutter gives developers the exciting opportunity to develop cross-platform applications with one codebase. In other words, instead of developing different apps for different platforms, developers can utilize one system, improving time and resource efficiency.
When utilizing Flutter’s single codebase, organizations don’t necessarily need a large team of developers. Instead of hiring multiple developers with different skill sets, they may just need one developer to create apps across platforms. The most obvious advantage of a single codebase system is that you can streamline costs. Thankfully, Flutter doesn’t sacrifice quality.
Faster Language
The difference in programming languages is a key factor in the Flutter vs React Native comparison. While React Native requires JavaScript, Flutter requires Dart.
Many coders feel that Dart is a better language than JavaScript. It’s easier to comprehend, understand, and faster to compile with.
Flutter apps also have higher performance due to Dart. In addition, Dart has more in common with native mobile app development coding languages in terms of usage and programming paradigms.
Debugging
Flutter offers some good debugging tools that improve stability. For example, OEM Debugger is an excellent way to understand Flutter errors. Likewise, the Flutter widget inspector helps coders visualize and diagnose layout issues,
Documentation
It’s essential for documentation to be well-written and organized in the mobile software programming world. Fortunately, Flutter features highly detailed and well-structured documentation that’s easy to navigate and consume.
UI Benefits
Unlike its competitors, Flutter employs a widget style for constructing user interfaces. These widgets are pre-made, reducing the likelihood of compatibility issues. Unless developers wish to make custom widgets, they can develop faster with Flutter widgets.
Flutter also offers enhanced UI consistency across multiple platforms because it only requires a canvas to draw onto to ensure fast and effective renderings.
The Guarana Flutter Advantage
Our expertise in Flutter app development helps us understand the nuances and essential details within this cutting-edge framework. We utilize our knowledge to create functional and versatile apps that connect with your market.
Top developers must understand Flutter’s portability and performance. Utilizing our sophisticated frameworks, we can develop fast and efficient apps while solving complex programming challenges without increasing costs or reducing productivity. At Guaraná, we know how to utilize the strengths of Flutter to develop a highly functional and visually engaging app.
Flutter vs React Native in a Nutshell: What Makes Flutter Better?
Regardless of the angle you look at the React Native vs Flutter discussion from, they’re both stellar tools. Yet, React Native vs Flutter market share trends show that Flutter is eventually going to take over. Let’s look at a few reasons for this trend:
- Flutter is friendlier for developers than React Native. JavaScript may be popular, but it’s more challenging to master than Dart. Inexperienced JavaScript coders can take a long time to resolve issues while configuring the developer environment.
- Flutter’s documentation feels more mature and seamless than React Native, despite being much younger.
- Flutter doesn’t rely on a bridge for component communication. On the other hand, React Native requires this extra step for developers to communicate between native modules, increasing time.
- Flutter provides excellent cross-platform capacity, allowing developers to create apps for Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, macOS, the web, and even embedded systems with a single codebase.
- Flutter’s feature-rich widgets allow for a more effective app development process.
- Flutter provides better embedding potential because it is portable and platform-agnostic.
- Developers sometimes have to wait for Facebook to fix React Native bugs as it assembles HTML to native code in a black box process.
- It’s harder to innovate with React Native or customize components.
Flutter can be more stable to use than React Native as it remains unaffected by operating system upgrades. Compare this to React Native, which can suffer from bugs after an iOS or Android update because it’s dependent on native elements.
React Native vs Flutter: What’s the Right Choice?
Although the market is gravitating towards Flutter, React Native offers a few advantages too. For one, it has a more mature ecosystem because it has been around longer. Teams that already have a React Native app or website may prefer to stick with React Native to reuse components and existing assets.
It’s sometimes easier to find React Native developers than Flutter programmers, as JavaScript is a more common language. Of course, this isn’t a problem when you’re working with Guaraná Technologies.
However, these benefits aren’t enough to stop a market shift towards Flutter. Overall, Flutter provides better performance, improved stability, and a more unified environment.
Ultimately, you must choose the right mobile app development agency for your project’s needs and goals. As mentioned earlier, we have expertise in React Native and Flutter. We also work in partnership with you. We help you identify the right model for your app by leveraging our in-depth understanding of the most popular frameworks in software development. We also support your design and growth with key strategic insights.
Please get in touch with us if you wish to take your organization’s virtual presence to the next level. Trust our experienced app development company to guide you, choose the best tools and framework, and help your brand realize its full potential.
