Flutter vs. React Native: Which will do better in 2023?
Starting the analysis of the topic, which is better to select Flutter or React Native for work, it is necessary to recognize where it all started. According to DataReportal’s Digital 2022 Global Statshot statistics and report, nearly 70% of people on earth use a mobile phone every day.
In other words, the lifestyle of modern people has given the mobile app industry an extreme advantage. Therefore, accordingly, the case of developing the latter is still very relevant. After all, Flutter and React Native, which was created by today’s technological leaders Facebook and Google, come into play.
We will discuss which is better to choose in this research, considering the following questions:
- What is Flutter?
- What is React?
- What to choose in 2023: Flutter or React Native?
- Final thoughts.
We have to emphasize that at a period when a lot of information about Flutter and React application development appears on the Internet every day, we dig deeper. In this article, we will take a look at the major diversity between Flutter and React Native, and what makes them so particular.
So, without further ado, let’s start our investigation!
What is Flutter?
When starting to talk about Flutter, it is necessary to say precisely that it is a cross-platform platform for developing mobile applications or a portable user interface toolkit. It provides developers with a comprehensive software development kit (SDK) of widgets and tools.
When developing desktop applications with Flutter, you can compile Flutter source code into a native Windows, macOS, or Linux desktop application. And, for example, Flutter’s web support ensures the same operation on the Internet and mobile devices. This means you can now build apps for Android, iOS, and a web browser from the same codebase.
Flutter was created by the Google team, which is based on Dart. Flutter is free, relatively new, and easy to learn. It provides custom widgets built on its high-performance rendering engine. It should be underlined that Google and the Flutter community contribute to the development of Flutter. Thus, Flutter can be safely called a new technology.
What is React?
React Native, on the other hand, is an open-source framework for mobile applications that uses JavaScript and was created by Facebook.
It should be emphasized that apps built with React Native are not mobile web apps. React Native uses the same fundamental UI building blocks as regular iOS and Android apps.
React Native uses components similar to widgets in Flutter. For developing web and desktop applications using React Native, it is best to use external libraries. It should also be highlighted that React Native is older than Flutter and boasts a larger community. Let’s keep reading!
The distinction between Flutter vs. React Native
Below, we’re going to tell you about the pros and cons of both frameworks:
Productivity
It was already mentioned above that Flutter and React Native are open-source projects. Both frameworks facilitate hot rebooting, which results in increased production efficiency by reducing the need to suspend and restart applications to view updates.
Flutter does not require a bridge to interact between native modules due to the presence of native elements by default. However, React Native requires a bridge, so it has poor performance compared to Flutter.
Conclusion: Flutter performs better than React Native.
Programming language
React Native uses the classic JavaScript programming language, which was the first language to enable dynamic web development.
In turn, Flutter uses Dart, which is a much newer language, since it was introduced in 2011. However, this is its advantage, because this language is almost twice as fast as JavaScript thanks to the anticipatory (AOT) and just-in-time (JIT) compilers.
Conclusion: Both Flutter vs React Native programming languages have integrity, but Flutter wins.
Reliability
Flutter is relatively simple and resistant to changes caused by operating system updates. On the other hand, React Native relies heavily on its components for additional adaptation efforts in system updates.
Conclusion: Flutter offers more reliability and security than React.
Creating a user interface
High cross-platform portability of the framework is provided by Skia for Flutter. React Native has a special software called Flux to create React components and uses JavaScript to interface with native modules.
The bridge affects performance, albeit slightly, while Flutter can do without the bridge.
Conclusion: Flutter is the best choice for creating a user interface.
Documentation
There is almost no information about configuration and command line tools for React Native. And the documentation is launched directly to start your project.
Flutter, on the other hand, has detailed platform setup and IDE information for both iOS and Android. Even the command line interface (CLI) comes with Flutter doctor, a tool to help developers get set up.
Conclusion: Flutter has more detailed documentation.
Ease of installation
React Native can be installed using the Node package manager (npm). Flutter can be obtained from a small ZIP file, but then it must be added as a PATH variable from the command line. This makes things unnecessarily complicated.
Conclusion: React Native is much easier to install than Flutter
Community
Thriving communities with conferences, hackathons, and events that take place every year are all about the two frameworks Flutter and React Native. Here, developers can easily communicate with experts and get help in solving their development issues. It’s also worth noting that the Flutter community has become larger than the React Native community, which means that more problems are actively being solved by developers working in Flutter.
Conclusion: Flutter now has more community support compared to React Native.
Debugging
In React Native, debugging can be problematic, especially when a certain exception or error occurs somewhere in the native part of the application.
In response, Flutter makes debugging easier with tools that support development in Android Studio and Visual Studio.
Conclusion: Flutter wins this comparison.
Popularity
Over time, React Native and Flutter have swapped roles. Back in 2019, React Native was much more popular compared to Flutter. However, already at the beginning of 2021, React Native had 92,800 stars on Github, and Flutter had 111,000. Even a simple Google Trends comparison shows a lot more searches for Flutter than for React Native.
Conclusion: Flutter wins by popularity.
Let’s summarize the above in a table:
Let’s go on!
What to choose in 2023: Flutter or React Native
When wondering what is better to choose Flutter or React Native, we can only say that there is no clear and unambiguous answer. Each of them can be selected.
As far as we can tell, Flutter and React Native has a lot in common and not a lot. The first and most important fact is that both of them are open-source frameworks that anyone can use.
Flutter is easier to use because it is more resistant to system updates, which means that when iOS or Android update the OS, the app will remain unchanged. React Native, on the other hand, depends on native elements, so some problems and nuances in the launcher may appear after the release of an update. Flutter currently supports Android 4.1+ or iOS 8+, while React Native supports Android 4.1+ and iOS 10+.
One of the biggest differences between React Native and Flutter is that Flutter has plugins developed by the Google team, such as mapping and geolocation. Unfortunately, React Native works better with single-location apps and doesn’t require tracking.
Flutter is known to use Dart, which has a very fast compilation and therefore provides high performance by default. In contrast, one of the reasons React Native is slower than Flutter is that the React Native architecture uses JavaScript switching.
If you want to test a React Native application, you use a third-party testing framework such as Detox. However, Flutter is enriched with built-in testing features.
This guide explains the reasons why two new frameworks, Flutter and React Native, are so popular for building cross-platform applications. Flutter and Native solve the problem of creating separate code for native platforms like Android and iOS. Now you can create an app for all platforms using exactly the same code. Сhoosing the best framework for you аlso depends on your experience, requirements, and the business needs of your project. If you’re aiming for highly stable and fast performance, Flutter has several advantages over React Native.
If you still have questions and are not convinced that the Flutter framework is the best option for work in 2023, we suggest you read one of the studies on this topic.
Final Thoughts
We really hope that this Flutter vs React Native article has given you some clarity and understanding about these two frameworks. Overall, after all the above research, we can conclude that Flutter is a great choice to save time and money on mobile app development. If you’re considering mobile (or even web) app development for multiple platforms at the same time, we can help.
The developers at Stfalcon are hard at work and very familiar with Flutter frameworks. All you need to do is to let us know if you are interested in such a partnership, fill out the form and we will contact you to discuss all the details. We are looking forward to our cooperation!
Originally published at https://stfalcon.com.
