Flutter and React Native are two of the fastest growing cross-platform development languages to build native mobile apps for iOS and Android devices. In this article, we will compare both development frameworks that may help you decide which framework will serve you the best for your next mobile app development project.
Mobile app development is growing and almost every company needs a mobile app. Android and iOS are two popular mobile operating systems. There are three different platforms categories to build mobile apps: native, hybrid, and cross-platform. Native platforms are provided by the mobile OS developers, Apple and Google. Swift is the programming language that is recommended by Apple to build native iOS apps. Java and Kotlin are the two popular programming languages to build native Android apps.
Table 1 summarizes the main differences between Flutter and React Native.
| Flutter | React Native | |
| Definition | Flutter is Google’s UI toolkit for building beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. | React Native combines the best parts of native development with React, a best-in-class JavaScript library for building user interfaces. |
| Created by | ||
| Maintained by | Google and community | Facebook and community |
| Initial Release | May 2017 | March 2015 |
| Stable Release | Sept 2020 | July 2020 |
| Current Version | Preview 1.20 | 0.63.1 |
| Written in | C, C++, Dart | C++, Java, JavaScript, Objective-C, Python |
| Programming Language | Dart | JavaScript, Java, Objective-C, Swift |
| Licensing | New BSD License | MIT License |
| Open Source | Yes | Yes |
| Platforms supported | Android, iOS, Linux, Mac, Windows, Google Fuchsia | Android, Android TV, iOS, macOS, tvOS, Windows |
| Learning Curve | Understanding of a modern objective-oriented programming language | Understanding of JavaScript and React |
| Developer Productivity | High | High |
| Available Talent | Low | Low |
| Average Salary | $92,933 per year | $96,016 per year |
| Popular Apps | Realtor.com, The New York Times, Square, Google Assistant, Ebay and Capital One. | Facebook, Instagram, Coinbase, Shopify, Tableau, Oculus, Skype, Discord, Bloomberg, Pinterest, Tesla, Uber Eats, Walmart, and Salesforce. |
| Key factor | Choose if you’re not a big fan of JavaScript, like object-oriented programming and want to target wider platforms. If you like Google. | Choose if you like JavaScript and React. If you like Facebook. |
Flutter vs React Native - Basic introduction
Flutter
Flutter is Google’s UI toolkit for building beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase.
Flutter originally developed by a Google team, is an open-source project. Currently, both Google and the Flutter open source community contribute to its development. Flutter is written in C, C++, and Dart.
React Native
React Native is a cross-platform mobile application framework to build native mobile apps. React Native, developed by Jordan Walke of Facebook in March 2015, is an open-source mobile application framework that is used to build native Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows apps. React Native is licensed under MIT license. React Native falls in the category of cross-platform frameworks. That means, you write code in one programming language that targets multiple platforms.
React Native is developed in C++, Java, JavaScript, Objective-C, and Python and allows developers to write apps in JavaScript, Java, Objective-C, and Swift.
Unlike React, React Native does not use Virtual DOM but runs a background process that interprets the JavaScript to the mobile OS UI elements on the device.
Flutter vs React Native - Maturity
Both Flutter and React Native are still quite young when you compare to other programming languages. React Native was started in March 2015 and Flutter was initially released in 2017. Today, the current version of React Native is 0.63.1 and the current version of Flutter is 1.20. As you can imagine, both are still in their early stages.
Based on the development cycle, and feature releases, Flutter seems to be moving at a faster pace than React Native.
Both Flutter and React Native are still new products and slowly getting adoption and new features. React Native seems to be more mature due to the fact that React and JavaScript are the languages behind it.
Flutter vs React Native - Popularity
Both Flutter and React Native are not far from each other when it comes to popularity. On Github, Flutterhas 102k stars compare to React Native that has 90.5k stars.
According to Statista, React Native is preferred by 42% developers in compare to 39% developers prefer Flutter.
As you can see from the above chart, React Native is more popular but Flutter is not far behind.
Flutter vs React Native - Dart vs JavaScript
Flutter uses Dart programming language that was developed and released by Google in 2011. As Google described it, Dart is a client-optimized language for fast apps on any platform. The current version of Dart language us 2.1.
While Dart may be easier to use and adopt for Java developers, it has not gained much momentum among developers and there are rarely any large corporations that are heavily invested in Dart development.
React Native uses JavaScript to build cross-platform apps. JavaScript is one of the commonly used web programming languages and most font-end web developers are familiar with JavaScript. Familiarity with React language can also speed up React Native development.
If you are a web developer who is familiar with React and JavaScript, you may find building React Native apps pretty straightforward. There is a slight learning curve. If you’re not a big JavaScript fan and like to code in object oriented programming, you may enjoy Dart and Flutter.
Flutter vs React Native - Key Features
Let us compare key features of Flutter and React Native from their official pages.
Flutter Key Features
Fast Development
Paint your app to life in milliseconds with Stateful Hot Reload. Use a rich set of fully-customizable widgets to build native interfaces in minutes.
Expressive and Flexible UI
Quickly ship features with a focus on native end-user experiences. Layered architecture allows for full customization, which results in incredibly fast rendering and expressive and flexible designs.
Native Performance
Flutter’s widgets incorporate all critical platform differences such as scrolling, navigation, icons and fonts, and your Flutter code is compiled to native ARM machine code using Dart's native compilers.
React Native Key Features
Create native apps using React
React Native uses the power and flexibility of React to build native apps for iOS and Android. React Native can be used in your existing mobile apps or you can create native mobile apps from scratch for iOS and Android.
Written in JavaScript – rendered with native code
React Native code is JavaScript. Most of the web developers are familiar with JavaScript and writing mobile apps using React Native does not require mobile developers to learn a new language. We developers become mobile developers. React Native renders to native platform UI that means same UI elements are used to create user interfaces as any native app. React Native apps look exactly like the native apps.
Many platforms, one React. Create platform-specific versions of components so a single codebase can share code across platforms. With React Native, one team can maintain two platforms and share a common technology—React.
Native Development For Everyone
React Native lets you create truly native apps and doesn't compromise your users' experiences. It provides a core set of platform agnostic native components like View, Text, and Image that map directly to the platform’s native UI building blocks.
Seamless Cross-Platform
React components wrap existing native code and interact with native APIs via React’s declarative UI paradigm and JavaScript. This enables native app development for whole new teams of developers, and can let existing native teams work much faster.
Fast Refresh
See your changes as soon as you save. With the power of JavaScript, React Native lets you iterate at lightning speed. No more waiting for native builds to finish. Save, see, repeat.
Flutter vs React Native - Project support
Flutter released by Google in 2017 has been maintained by Google team and open source community. Open source project repo is available here:
https://github.com/flutter/flutter
Facebook released React Native in 2015 and has been maintaining by Facebook and open source community. Open source project repo is available here:
https://github.com/facebook/react-native
Flutter vs React Native - Who is using them
Some of the popular companies that are using Flutter include Realtor.com, The New York Times, Square, Google Assistant, Ebay and Capital One.
The list of companies that are using React Native includes Facebook, Instagram, Coinbase, Shopify, Tableau, Oculus, Skype, Discord, Bloomberg, Pinterest, Tesla, Uber Eats, Walmart, and Salesforce.
Clearly, React Native is more popular and being used by more popular companies.
Flutter vs React Native - Salary
Average salary of a React Native developer is $92,933 per year according to Indeed.
Average salary of a React Native developer is $96,016 per year according to Glassdoor.
Salaries of developers depend on several factors including location, number of years of experience, company, and project and may vary on various other factors.
Flutter vs React Native - Where to learn
Here is a complete free learn series on Flutter. In this learn series, you'll learn the following,
- Introduction to Flutter
- Set Up Flutter On Windows
- Install Flutter on Windows with Visual Studio Code
- Create A First Flutter App In Visual Studio Code
- What Are Stateless And Stateful Widget In Flutter
- Google Firebase Email/Password and Google Login In Flutter
- SharedPreferences In Flutter
- Fingerprint Authentication In Flutter
- Flutter Push Notification Using Firebase
- Firebase Firestore CRUD Operation In Flutter
- How To Set App Icon In Flutter
- Bottom Navigation Tab Bar In Flutter
- Form Validation In Flutter
- State Management Using Provider In Flutter
- Pagination In Flutter Using Firebase Cloud Firestore
- Chat App Data Structure In Firebase Firestore
- Release APK In Flutter
- Flutter REST API
- Implement Charts In Flutter
- Chat App In Flutter Using Google Firebase
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