Mobile apps are growing in popularity in this ever-increasing digital world. From banking to coffee, many industries have integrated mobile apps for better service and efficiency. But which is better? React Native vs Flutter?
React Native is a JavaScript framework that allows software engineers to create cross-platform mobile applications using only JavaScript. This means that the same codebase can be used on both iOS and Android development with little effort.
Flutter, on the other hand, is an open-source SDK (software development kit) for building high-quality native interfaces on Android and IOS from a single codebase (one code base can generate multiple apps). It’s more complicated than React Native but it’s not any harder to learn.
React Native and Flutter are both very popular among developers who want to create high-quality apps for both iOS and Android without spending double the time and effort. If you’re one of those, these two frameworks are a gift. However, React Native or Flutter? This is a persistent question that developers spend a lot of time trying to answer.
What is React Native?
React Native (commonly referred to as “React” in discussions on the web) is a JavaScript framework that was initially released in 2014. Instead of a mobile-native build, it acts as a bridge between native code and a JavaScript-based approach to building cross-platform mobile apps.
It uses virtual DOM to develop UI (user interface) for the given platform. React gives you the tools to modify and customize the UI on the fly. It also has a view layer for developers to reuse that code in other React Native apps and add their own. It is more complex than React Native, but it’s not any harder to learn.
There are many reasons why it’s better to develop for React Native. But let’s look at the main reasons why you should consider building apps using React Native.
Quick, Compatible, and Time to Market. React Native makes it easy to create cross-platform apps without the need to learn all the tools.
Pros
React Native is a major stepping stone towards mobile application development. Because the underlying technology is JavaScript, developers are now able to build native apps using JavaScript.
Using JavaScript allows you to leverage frameworks such as Angular 2, Vue.js, Redux, and TypeScript. These are not only fully-featured frameworks but they’re frameworks that are made for React Native. They’re also the same frameworks you’ll find at other apps and websites.
Cons
React Native is currently popular in the developer community due to the simplicity it brings to mobile development. The ease of integrating JavaScript and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) gives users a more complete UX than if the developers had written the entire app from scratch. But it’s still relatively new and lacks the support of larger companies and developers.
Flutter is still gaining steam and is still young, but it’s much more mature and has more support from Google (the original creators) and major app companies. However, due to its young age, it’s very new and in a development stage with many issues in the field. Flutter is less of a language and more of a technology.
Flutter
Flutter is an open-source SDK (software development kit) for building high-quality native interfaces on Android and IOS from a single codebase (one code base can generate multiple apps). It’s more complicated than React Native but it’s not any harder to learn.
The reason why Flutter is better is because of its cross-platform architecture that allows Android and iOS developers to use one codebase.
COMPARISON: React Native vs Flutter
Reusable Code
React Native and Flutter are cross-platform frameworks that allow developers to reuse code, which means they can write the code once and use it on any platform. However, not all code can simply be taken from one platform to another. Parts of the code can be reused and other parts either need to be overwritten or customized to suit the platform.
Flutter makes code reuse more effective and efficient by allowing developers to easily overwrite sections of code that need to be tweaked to fit the platform. As a result, Flutter encourages code reuse, making it a faster and more efficient framework.
React Native, too, allows for code reuse, but only to a certain extent. Only a few fundamental components may be shared between platforms, while the rest must be created independently for each one. The elements must be styled and many other minor details must be modified manually, making the process a little slower and more arduous.
As a result, Flutter comes out on top.
It’s time to go to the market.
The most essential element in mobile app development is time-to-market. Both Flutter and React Native, because of their cross-platform origins, allow code reuse rather than developing distinct standalone apps, which generally necessitates hiring additional programmers with various expertise and expanding the project’s scope. They let programmers reuse up to 80% of code across iOS, Android, web, and desktop platforms. In addition, each framework addresses all aspects of application development, including UX/UI, business logic, and app connections. Let’s compare and contrast to see who is the best of the best in terms of time to market:
Because React Native is older, it has a larger community that has created a significant number of ready-to-use packages and libraries. Some of them, on the other hand, hasn’t been maintained or updated in a long time and hence can’t be utilized as-is. Furthermore, selecting one of several comparable solutions that best fits a given circumstance becomes difficult.
Flutter was introduced in 2017, two years after React Native, although it had full backing from Google developers from the start. It includes considerably better documentation and a smaller number of pre-set widgets that are updated on a regular basis. Flutter comes with more capabilities than merely working out of the box, whereas React Native necessitates searching for and linking third-party libraries.
Performance on the Internet
The king of website development is React. It is used to create the majority of instant web pages. Along with HTML and CSS, JavaScript is a basic front-end language. As a result, React Native’s web performance is outstanding.
Dart is a programming language that isn’t widely used in website creation. In comparison to JS, PHP, Java, or Ruby, it has no significant advantages on the web, ready-made infrastructure, or solutions.
You can surely develop a website quickly using Flutter mobile app code, and it will probably function even faster than a mobile app. If the site’s performance is critical, though, you should consider developing it with separate web-specific technology.
As a result, the ability to develop a website using Flutter is more of a nice-to-have capability that greatly reduces time to market if you already have a working prototype of a mobile app.
User-Interface Design
In terms of the user interface, both React Native and Flutter have their own advantages. React Native makes use of native UI components, which let you create a user interface out of separate components or libraries. These libraries are many, with new ones being added on a regular basis. They are adaptable and make the UI simple and quick. Components enable a highly dynamic development environment. Consider these components to be software Legos that can be used to create a new structure each time.
Flutter makes use of what it refers to as proprietary widgets. They’re comparable to components and simple to pick up if you’ve worked with React or Angular components before. The main differentiator here is the sheer amount of available widgets, which is significantly bigger than React Native’s 40, with 156 basic widgets.
As a result, Flutter gives you a larger UI toolkit, which may be why you prefer it to React Native. React Native, despite its 40 components, is more dynamic and has been proved in hundreds of successful applications.
Performance
React Native has proved time and time again that it can deliver reliable performance on either platform while also shortening the development period. It assembles rapidly and delivers native-quality performance thanks to code reusability and component design. The apps are designed to look and feel like they belong on your smartphone, and they run smoothly and produce rich characteristics like 60 frames per second without a hiccup. While memory and CPU consumption for React Native apps are greater than for completely native apps, they are still very low, resulting in a smooth user experience.
In testing like this and this, it was discovered that there isn’t much of a difference between Flutter and React Native in terms of speed and CPU/Memory consumption. As a result, they both deliver excellent results.
Popularity, Ecosystem, and Documentation are three factors that influence the popularity of a product
Because React Native has been around for far longer than Flutter, it has a larger user base, more documentation, and more packages, as well as a better degree of maturity overall. It’s been around for a long time and is regarded as more stable than Flutter. Almost all editors support it, and it also allows for hot reloading. Everything a new user needs to know is in the official documentation, which includes guidelines, tutorials, how-tos, and more.
Flutter, despite its youth, does an excellent job with the documentation. It employs cutting-edge designs such as BLoC (Business Logic Component), Redux/Flux, and RxMarbles. Flutter has taken the best of React Native and other previous frameworks and blended them together to create a genuinely contemporary framework.
React Native vs. Flutter Apps Design and Graphics Capabilities
Although they use fundamentally different ways to draw user interfaces, both React Native and Flutter have superb graphical features. Each of these technologies might be used to create pixel-perfect images and complete animations.
Buttons, navigation, menus, and other native visual elements are inherited by React Native. These aspects appear to be organic to the user and give a personalized experience that is seamless. When the operating system is upgraded, the app parts will be updated as well, preserving the native feel and likeness to other native apps. Keep in mind, however, that the app will seem slightly different on iOS and Android devices, as well as in different firmware versions.
Regardless of the OS version or device model, the app will look the same using Flutter. Unless the software engineer upgrades the navigation and elements on purpose, the navigation and elements will remain unaltered. When apps are created in a hurry or without care, Android users may see odd-looking iOS-styled menus, while Apple users may struggle with Android-style components.
The app’s overall look and feel are more akin to hybrid frameworks (Xamarin, Ionic, Cordova) than native. You can obtain a personalized native feel and look for both platforms with a little more effort, which is accessible off-the-shelf using React Native. However, implementing a standard neutral style for all devices and reducing project scope is significantly easier.
Conclusion
Mobile apps are a crucial part of many businesses. They make the user experience seamless and they can be used to create functionalities that help your business grow. However, there are a lot of different tools out there that you can use to develop mobile apps. So, how do you choose? React Native is a JavaScript library for building native cross-platform apps using a shared codebase. Flutter is Google’s open-source framework for building cross-platform UI in either iOS or Android. This blog post will go over both options and determine which one might be better for your project.