Flutter vs React Native: Which is better for your app in 2022
Flutter and React Native both are the two most popular and fastest-growing cross-platforms used for creating native mobile apps for Android and iOS devices. Both mobile app development frameworks offer various powerful features, capabilities, huge community support, and in-built modules that make the app development process easier and faster.
When it comes to choosing between Flutter and React Native, it becomes more challenging for businesses looking to create a custom mobile application for their business. Developed by Facebook, React Native is assumed to be the most popular cross-platform mobile app development framework, while Flutter is recently added to the platform developed by Google. Although there’s not more yet, it’s assumed to be the more popular cross-platform framework as suggested in early tests.
The debate between Flutter and React Native will be an ongoing discussion until you do not find which framework would actually work best for your app and address your business needs.
Well, in this article, we will make a detailed comparison between Flutter and React Native and guide you through examples to let you understand when to use Flutter and when to use React Native for your cross-platform mobile app development.
Introduced by Meta, React Native is the most popular and open-source UI software framework used for developing cross-platform applications such as Android, iOS, and web applications by utilizing the same codebase in no time.
React Native has a huge community of developers, constant support from users, high-quality implementation, easy integration, and much more. A few examples of tech giants using React Native are Facebook, Microsoft, Tesla, Uber, PayPal, etc.
To understand which one is better between Flutter and React Native, it is important to understand the features and functionality and use cases of both frameworks.
Flutter can be defined as an open-source user interface software development kit (SDK) used for building a wide range of native mobile applications. You can use Flutter to develop applications not just for iOS and Android, but also Windows, Mac, Linux, and Fuchsia - which is Google's new operating system.
It was developed by Google under the name of Sky in its first iteration. The aim of the project was to develop software that renders at 120 frames per second consistently.
Flutter is effectively a cross-platform framework since it can write all your code in Dart and run it on multiple platforms. A layered architecture for building user interfaces and fast development are among the advantages of Flutter.
What Are the Advantages of Flutter?
To help you make a perfect choice between Flutter & React Native, let’s understand some distinct advantages and use cases of Flutter;
Productive
Just like any other cross-platform framework, you can use a single codebase for both Android and iOS with Flutter. Therefore, it saves a lot of time and cost of development by making development faster, releasing the app on the platform with quicker time-to-market, and improving overall productivity.
Similar to Native App Performance
Unlike other UI frameworks, Flutter does not use any intermediate code representations or interpretations. It allows developers to build applications directly into the machine code, which minimizes bugs that cause low performance in the interpretation process.
Having said that high-performance applications are good for better user experiences. Flutter provides far better results in complex UI animation scenarios compared to other cross-platform frameworks.
More Efficient
Due to Dart's native code compilation, the application runs as natively as possible and provides native-like performance across all devices. You can use Flutter with either a JIT or AOT compiler to produce native machine code. Using Dart Web, you can compile code into JavaScript or Dart Native effectively.
Extremely Faster
Flutter offers an amazing Hot reload feature that allows developers to quickly view the changes being made to the code, streamlining development to a great extent and making it easier for developers. Its website also states that you don't need to have any programming experience in order to start to get started with Flutter.
All you need to be familiar with object-oriented programming principles and basic programming concepts.
Portable
Despite the fact that it is cross-platform by definition, Flutter is unique in that it encourages an understanding of portability that no other cross-platform framework has yet to offer.
To render UIs on a wide variety of platforms, Flutter relies on Skia, a popular graphic engine behind many of Google's tools. As a result, compatibility issues are fewer, testing is less, and a truly cross-platform experience is achieved.
Following are some cons of using Flutter for your app;
Platform-Specific Look and Feel
Flutter allows you to build high-performance apps on both iOS and Android using a single codebase, but it lacks when it comes to the perfect look and feel of the respective platforms, which could be a little disappointing for purists.
You may need to create two separate applications in case you want your app to strictly comply with Apple Design System on iOS and Material Design principles on Android for getting the perfect look and feel on both platforms.
Very Young Community
Having a young framework is a good thing, as it gives you an edge over your competitors. However, it's possible that it will go on to evolve in a way that doesn't always comport with what we like.
Due to its strong support from Google, Flutter is likely to be incorporated into their new operating system and therefore remain current and relevant.
Large Application size
Compared to React Native frameworks, apps built on Flutter are larger in size and heavy to initialize with. Therefore, they require more space and take much time to download, update, or upgrade them, which can be another biggest disadvantage of using Flutter for your app.
Dart is New & Immature
The reason why it can't compete with Swift or Kotlin is that it either has fewer features, or those that it does have are not as mature as Swift or Kotlin. And it is rapidly changing over time which might be hard for developers to maintain the code in the long run.
When Is the Use of Flutter Recommended?
Mobile apps developed on Flutter should perform like native or near-native apps on any platform. In addition, you can build software for Macs, Windows, and Linux computers with Flutter.
As a result of Flutter's layered architecture and unique collaboration with Skia, it stands out compared to other frameworks. Flutter is an ideal choice for developers who would appreciate having such features.
What Companies Use Flutter?
Big companies like Google, Adobe, Alibaba, etc., cannot win this battle between Flutter and React Native. It’s also important to understand how Flutter can help with your business and application needs.
What are the benefits of React Native?
Below are some advantages of React Native for your app;
Performance
React Native offers state-of-the-art architecture which is highly optimized for mobile devices. Apart from using the Central Processing Unit (CPU), it also utilizes the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), which makes it more efficient and different from hybrid technologies. React Native is widely famous for building high-performance applications compared to other cross-platform applications.
More Stable
React Native streamlines the data binding process to make the data flow to and from, or between them seamlessly. Many developers find it is easy to understand the code and promote stability. In contrast to two-way data binding, this is called the one-way data binding process, reducing the time of developers.
Modular
Developers can separate the program functions into interchangeable blocks also called modules with the help of modular programming, which gives more flexibility and intuition for developers to quickly update apps.
Simplicity
React Native offers various similar features to Flutter when it comes to mobile app development. Furthermore, it extends the functionality of Fast Refresh, which gives you instant feedback.
React Native allows developers to use the same code for both Android and iOS platforms, which reduces the time and cost of development. It lets developers reuse 90% of the code between Android and iOS, but further, it takes some time for modifications.
Live reload
React Native can be proved the next-gen solutions for building top-rated mobile applications after react as it utilizes React ideas and allows app developers to create the best-suited application based on specific business needs.
React Native offers an amazing feature called the Live Reload that allows you to see the frequent changes being made to the code. It also allows the developer to preview the changes made to the code in another live window at the same time.
Let’s take a look at the other side of the coin;
Hard to Learning Code
Freshers find React Native hard to learn especially when they are new in the app development. It contains JSX in the JavaScript syntax extension to combine HTML elements with JavaScript. For new beginners, it’s challenging to learn, understand and work on React native platform compared to other cross-platform apps.
Lack of High-Security
React Native is an open-source JavaScript library framework, which lacks in creating high-security solutions for mobile apps. You need high-secure and even more robust security solutions that add extra security when you’re planning to build Fintech apps where data is highly confidential. In such cases, using React Native won’t make a perfect choice for your banking and finance apps.
Time-Taking
Even for the hi-tech gadgets and devices, initializing the React Native runtime can take considerably longer than expected before it can be rendered right away. This happens due to the JavaScript threads causing more time to initialize the process.
Memory Management
React Native is not suitable to use for the computation of intensive apps and this is again because of JavaScript. A result of inefficient handling of floats makes management of memory and usage difficult.
When Is the Use of React Native Recommended?
When building apps across platforms, React Native uses real native UI components assembled with JavaScript. Due to the fact that the building blocks of React Native are native, the application will look and feel identical to iOS or Android apps written in Swift, Java, or Objective-C.
It allows developers to write and embed custom native code to mix with native and React functions without affecting their Native appearance.
What Companies Use React Native?
React Native is widely used for building robust and scalable web applications by some leading brands such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipkart, Uber, and Major League Soccer.
Apart from that, it is important to identify what React Native can give to your application and how it can help achieve your business goals for the app that you want to bring to the market.
Conclusion
Therefore, Flutter and React Native offer almost similar features, functionalities, and business benefits to your business application. Both frameworks come with special features such as live refreshing or building graphic UIs with adaptable software, which makes it even more difficult to identify which one is better- Flutter or React Native.
However, comparing the features between Flutter and React Native, Flutter stands out on top for almost all features it has to offer. Seeing the perks of React Native UI framework, your choice would also be going well for your app. JavaScript is in tradition and it covers a dedicated community to support and help you with everything you need right from.
Last but not least it mainly depends on what kind of applications you are aiming to build, including the size of applications, complexity, and most importantly needs of your business. Both platforms have more secure and robust for mobile and web applications and offer competitive advantages to take your business applications to the new height of success.
