Is React Native better than Flutter? Find out through this post.

Are you planning to venture in mobile app design and development but not sure what cross-platform technology is best for you and your app? If yes, then this post might be for you. In this article, we will compare two of the leading cross-platform development frameworks in the market – React Native and Flutter.

Initially released in January 2015, React Native is Facebook’s open-source mobile development framework that gave birth to famous apps like Facebook, Instagram, Bloomberg, Wix, Tesla, and Walmart. It utilizes JavaScript as its main programming language in creating applications with a single database for both iOS and Android. Aside from being a great tool for app development, React Native is popular among app developers because it has been established earlier compared to most frameworks and has already proven its quality in the apps produced through it.

Flutter is React Native’s younger counterpart released by Google in 2017. It is also an open-source UI programming framework that uses Dart as its main programming language. Google developed Flutter to create most of its major applications. It gave birth to apps like Google Ads, Cryptograph, Postmuse, Alibaba, and eBay. Despite being new to the industry, many app developers and businesses trust Flutter because of its additional features that other frameworks do not possess.

React Native is best used for mobile app development projects that are more complex, requires bigger budget, requires reusing code for mobile and desktop apps, as well as developers with less experience.
Pros:
• Extensive base packages due to using widely popular JavaScript language
• One codebase - developers can develop an app for multiple devices simultaneously rather than individually
• Developer freedom of choice as facilitates code reuse and cost-saving
• Relative maturity
• An active and vast community
• Easy to learn for React developers
Cons:
• Still needs native developers
• Poor performance compared to Flutter
• Debugging issues
• Fewer components out of box
• Lots of abandoned packages and libraries
• Fragile UI
• Apps are bigger than native ones

Flutter is best used for mobile app development projects that require a smaller budget, has short development timelines, and develops UI-centered apps.
Pros:
• Quick development using the same codebase
• “Hot Reload” makes experimentation and bug resolution simple
• Layered architecture maximizes customization abilities and control
• Great documentation
• Separate UI prevents errors
• User-friendly designs
Cons:
• Young framework, with some common issues that aren’t easily rectified
• Apps take longer to download and take up a lot of space
• Constantly updated programming language (Dart) and framework
• Libraries & support are impressive but not as productive as native development

We can look at these two frameworks side-by-side using various aspects. In terms of programming languages used, React Native utilizes JavaScript which is dominant in the industry because of familiarity among app developers and programmers. Flutter makes use of Dart which is also developed by Google. While it is not as popular as JavaScript, it is a language that is easy to learn even for beginners. 

In terms of systems architecture, Flutter’s framework provides a rich set of UI components made available by its own rendering engine called Skia. React Native, on the other hand, makes use of native iOS and Android UI controls made available by the React Native realm. Such open architecture is known and loved for its flexibility.

When it comes to developer experience, the hot-reload feature is available in both frameworks. This allows developers to alter their application’s code and see the result right away. Both also have extensive documentation that serves as guide for developers in the entire process. There is also similarity in these two in terms of testing since both allows unit testing. However, Flutter is more preferred in this aspect as it has fast widget tests and integration tests while React Native has none.

conclusion

In conclusion, React Native can be considered better compared to Flutter because it is more popular and established compared to the latter. However, the growing popularity of Flutter given its additional features can make us wonder how much it can still go further in the industry. Besides, it is best to always take into account the prerequisites of your mobile app development project first before choosing which framework suits it best.