Flutter vs React Native: which is better for app development

Key takeaways

• Flutter and React Native are both cross-platform frameworks. They’re cheaper to work with than native development, because you only have to deal with a single codebase;
• Choose Flutter if your developers are familiar with the Dart programming language;
• If you want lower development costs, short time-to-market and native-like performance, we recommend sticking to React Native — it’s the most popular cross-platform framework in the world. 

Introduction to Flutter and React Native

⚠️Warning: this is going to be a long article. There’re so many aspects to compare when it comes to these frameworks — as we were writing, the details kept on piling up. We’ve added a navigation menu which you can use if you’re searching for something specific, like which of these cross platform development frameworks is better for a startup ➡️

When it comes to mobile app development, React Native and Flutter are both very popular tools. They’re used widely by major corporations, outsourcing companies, and ambitious startups. But why? And which one is better if you’re planning to release your own mobile app?

Cross-platform vs. native app development

Let’s take a step back. Mobile app development is a multi-faceted venture — you can approach it from different angles to create the product you want. It can go two ways: you may use either native or cross-platform tools. Flutter and React Native fall into the latter category — it’s easy to save money on development with them.

Cross-platform and native development are very different. It’s important to distinguish them — you can then decide which tools to use for your MVP. Read on to see what these methods entail and some of their main differences.

We’ve compiled a handy table with the pros and cons of each type of development — take a look:

Feature	Cross-platform app development	Native app development
Programming language	One language — no need to get teams proficient in several languages	At least two languages for both platforms — e.g. iOS and Android on mobile
Ease of maintenance	Easy to support and manage	Difficult to support — need to keep track of separate codebases
Performance and user experience	Consistent across both platforms	High, because the code of each app is tailor-made for a specific platform
Third-party integration support	Extensive feature libraries	Extensive feature libraries

Cross-platform app development

Cross-platform development is exemplified by this motto: “write once, use anywhere”. One of its most distinct features is a single codebase. Doesn’t matter if you’re talking about mobile app development or web and desktop app development. You don’t have to write separate code for two versions of the app — one will suffice.

Here’re some other features of cross platform mobile applications:

One programming language — cheap. You only need to know React Native or Flutter + standard markup languages, like HTML and CSS. That’s enough to create a solid app.

Consistent performance user experience. Because both Android and iOS apps share code in this instance, they work in almost exactly the same way. There’s no possibility of an Android app looking completely different — and working as if it’s made from a different blueprint.

Ease of maintenance. Every platform releases updates: adding features and fixing bugs. A new OS version can affect the performance of your application – you can’t prevent it, you can only fix the bugs that pop-up.

Cross-platform development makes this a bit simpler because of a shared codebase. Developers can spend less time ensuring the Flutter or React Native app works properly by fixing bugs in a single place — instead of searching through code on both Android and iOS versions.

Third-party integration support. Your developers can save resources by creating less features from scratch. Both React Native and Flutter have extensive feature libraries that work on both platforms. 

If you were to develop an app natively, you’d have to search for different integrations that can function on both iOS and Android. That’d take at least twice as much time. The same thing applies to web development for MacOS and Windows.

Native app development

If you develop an app natively, you write it exclusively in a language a platform understands. You’d have to use Swift for iOS and Java for native Android apps.

Here’re some features of native app development:

Two programming languages — expensive. You’d have to create two separate apps with different codebases. This takes more time, naturally. At the same time, you’d have to hire twice as many developers proficient in both Swift and Java. These two teams would require their own salaries.

Higher performance and user experience. Because of the nature of its code, native apps work fast, are more responsive, and take less time to download. But it’s a blessing and a curse, as it comes at a cost.

Harder maintenance. If you want to integrate new features, you’ll have to update two separate apps. Same goes if there’re some bugs found — your overall QA will take more time and resources.

Third-party integration support. Each programming language (e.g. Swift and Java) have their own programming libraries. They can be adapted to suit the needs of any app.

Overall, cross-platform frameworks are cheaper than native ones, and suit the needs of startups and small businesses even better than the rest. This is why we won’t be covering native frameworks in any more detail. Instead, let’s take a look at pros and cons of cross-platform apps.

Pros and cons of cross-platform apps

Let’s check out exactly why cross-platform apps in both mobile and web development are a popular choice — especially among startups and businesses looking to make an MVP. Here’s a table with the summary of its pros and cons:

Cross-platform apps
Pros	Cons
✅ Faster development — you can work on two app versions concurrently	❌ Not native-free — you’ll have to adapt some parts of the codebase for each platform
✅ Lower costs — maintaining one codebase is cheaper than two	❌ Lower performance — a bit poorer than native apps, but it’s virtually indistinguishable for an average consumer
✅ Wider reach — no need to choose a platform for a launch, just release your app on every device

We’ll begin with the pros: faster development, lower costs, and wider reach.

✅Faster development

Both iOS and Android versions of your product will share a single codebase. Your developers will be able to work on them simultaneously — no need to jump between different versions to fix errors. This significantly reduces the time-to-market.

✅Lower costs

You don’t have to hire two separate teams responsible for iOS and Android versions of the app. Nor do you need to wait twice the time for a single team to create apps for both platforms. This makes development cheaper and faster by up to 30%.

✅Wider reach

Most of the time when startups want to spend less on native mobile app development, they go with only one platform. For example, if most of their users are using iPhones, they’ll hire a Swift development team — foregoing an Android app entirely. Cross-platform app development lets you make a mobile app for both Android and iOS users while cutting costs, so you can expand your reach and get new clients. 

There’re also some disadvantages of cross-platform mobile and web development, but they’re small:

❌Not native-free

Some parts of the code will have to be tailored to two different versions of the mobile app. Even then, it still takes less time than creating Android and iOS apps from scratch.

❌Lower performance

While the cross-platform app may feel like a native one, the latter version will still perform better. But for most users this difference is unnoticeable — it’s virtually impossible to distinguish which one’s native and which one’s not.

The history of Flutter and React Native

Let’s talk about React Native and Flutter. But first, we’ll briefly touch on the origins of these popular frameworks. This way, you can find out what company is responsible for it and how long it’s been the market for, so it’s easier to determine which one is better.

Flutter

Flutter was introduced in 2015 by Google. They wanted to create a framework that can easily render apps on any mobile platform. So the company had developers utilize its own programming language — Dart — to build apps. In 2017, they announced a preview version of Flutter in Shanghai. The first stable version of the framework was unveiled in 2018.

Since then, Google has made plenty of improvements to both Dart and Flutter. For example, they’ve added support for several new APIs. API is a tech that acts as a negotiator of sorts — it helps iOS and Android understand what your app wants from them to work properly. As of now, Google is still maintaining and updating their framework.

React Native

In 2012, Facebook engineers grew weary of using HTML5 for their projects — it didn’t render apps fast enough, and there were major lagging issues. In search of solutions, they’ve discovered that some of their JavaScript tools could be used to create interfaces for mobile apps. A multi-year development journey of a framework with a great rendering engine began then and there. 

In 2015, Meta finally unveiled React Native to the world. Its first stable version came about in 2017. Startups and development teams all over the world swear by it — many SaaS businesses have been created with React Native. And even now, this framework is updated regularly.

Let’s take a deep dive into each of these frameworks and what they entail. We’ll begin with Flutter.

What is Flutter?

Flutter is an open-source cross-platform framework. With it, developers can create mobile apps that work seamlessly. Meanwhile, business owners can save money — they don’t have to hire separate developer teams to roll out a functioning product.

What capabilities does Flutter have?

Let’s take a closer look at the framework in the context of development time, performance, documentation, UI-creation, and community support. We’ve prepared a table summarizing each capability — you’ll get to check out the features of this framework in depth.

Development time	4-5 months
Performance	Close to native performance, has problems rendering animations
Documentation	Decently structured
UI-creation	Has widgets — “building blocks” which you can use to create an interface
Community support	138 000 stars on GitHub — a bit community

Now we’ll take a closer look at these capabilities, starting from development time.

Development time

Apps on Flutter may take 4-5 months to create. That’s because you’d have to take extra time organizing files with code for both iOS and Android. They wouldn’t work properly otherwise. 

In many aspects, Flutter can help save time substantially in contrast to native development. UI libraries with readymade components are one of its reasons. Developers don’t need to code certain integrations, like payments, from scratch.

Performance

Overall, Flutter-based apps perform relatively well in comparison to native apps. 

There is a problem with animations in the app. They may look a bit off — Flutter tends to cap them at 60 fps. This makes animation seem a bit more choppy and jarring than originally intended.

Animations aside, Flutter has many methods which help developers optimize app performance. For example, using special UI-related widgets, or writing code in a different way can all make the app run faster. It’s a bit of a hassle and it slows development time, but it’s effective overall.

Documentation

When it comes to cutting development time, documentation is essential. No development process goes by without at least one problem which is difficult to solve — it’s almost always the case. Documentation alleviates this. If it’s organized correctly, your developers will only have to search for the related issue in the documentation. They won’t have to spend hours or days thinking of ways to integrate a certain API, for example.

Flutter documentation is structured decently enough. It has several things essential for app development: e.g. physics, which shows how an in-app banner or ad will move if the user stops scrolling. Or Cupertino, which lets the app make use of iOS-style notifications and banners. Developers can quickly find the tech they need to integrate without making it up themselves. That saves you money.

UI-creation 

Using Flutter, developers create the app with readymade widgets. Think of them as building blocks of your future mobile app. You can have blocks that are responsible for scrolling, animations, and image integrations. These blocks are gathered as app templates and specific code snippets, and they’re all available in the Flutter UI-kit. It’s really simple to use.

These widgets are also really easy to customize. This can save your resources. If you’ve thought of a feature for your MVP, a developer can simply alter an existing widget to accommodate your vision. They don’t have to make anything from scratch. You’ll get your idea up and running before any deadlines you may have.

Community support

Not only is this important for developers, but it also saves time and money for businesses. If you’re working with professional teams, chances are they’ll face some questions about MVP development or some integrations during the process. If there’s no community behind a mobile development framework, finding answers is impossible. Development stalls, and the product releases later than scheduled.

Flutter has a big community. Flutter has 138 thousand stars on GitHub, a popular repository where developers store their apps’ code. It’s a good rating, making it one of the most popular cross-platform frameworks in the world.

This leads to two things. The first is that Flutter is convenient — it doesn’t have as many roadblocks when it comes to developing apps, so more specialists are inclined to use it. The second is that it’s easy to find answers if your team staggers at a certain point in development. In turn, your app rolls out on time, and you and your investors are pleased.

What Is React Native?

React Native is a cross-platform open-source framework based on React, which is a JavaScript-based library of code snippets. This allows developers to create apps with JavaScript only — a.k.a. the 6th most popular programming language in the world. The framework itself is also gaining popularity among businesses and developers alike, even after 10 years since its inception.

What capabilities does React Native have?

Let’s check out some of the features of React Native — through the lens of development time, performance, documentation, UI-creation, and community support.

Development time	3-4 months
Performance	Virtually indistinguishable from native performance
Documentation	User-friendly, but not too extensive
UI-creation	Has built-in native design components that work without lag
Community support	700 000 developers — the largest cross-platform framework in the world

Development time

With React Native, fully functional MVPs can take 3-4 months to make. One of the reasons is third-party integrations. Many developers from the React community keep adding features that simplify development. You can add these components to your app with minimal adjustments. For example, camera APIs, video players, and payment integrations. Your developers can focus their attention on other things and significantly shorten development time.

An example of such an integration is “hot reload”. Most of the time when developers are writing code for an app they see two things — a workspace where they’re writing code and a version of an app that reflects this code. After putting changes into code, developers had to refresh the app to see how it looked. It wasn’t convenient and it took some time — it could accumulate and make development longer. 

Performance

React Native apps may lag behind native apps by a small margin, but they work nicely overall. Most developers and companies, including us, swear by it — we’ve been using it for 9 years, and its issues are virtually undetectable by our customers and their users. It’s easy to achieve native-like look, feel, and loading speed with it. 

React Native has many nifty features which help optimize performance. One of these is called lazy loading. It’s when an app shows a screen or a feature only when it’s needed. So if you don’t tap an item card in an e-commerce app, it won’t load its full contents. This makes an app load and run faster.

Another feature is code splitting. It’s similar to lazy loading. In this case, the app’s native code is bundled into smaller chunks. When a user wants to access a certain feature, like paying for a product in an e-commerce app, the app will run the bundle responsible for payments. It will only do that in the moment the user needs something from the app — after they buy the item, that particular native code bundle won’t be loading anymore. This also ensures that your clients enjoy using your app with little to no lag.

Documentation

The documentation of React Native isn’t too extensive. At the same time, they have everything a professional development team may need to create a functioning product. For example, ways to integrate gesture controls into your app, or methods to add Android notifications to make your product more seamless to use.

Developers applaud React Native’s documentation for its simplicity and user-friendliness. It covers the main topics associated with development. 

UI-creation 

React Native already has built-in native design components. They can make your app feel and look like it’s been specifically designed for iOS and Android. For example, notifications and video players fall into this category — they’re made to fit in with design standards of each platform. In turn, users find apps created with React Native a more enjoyable experience.

Because of third-party plugin support, React Native has a ton of community-made libraries with native components. If your developers can’t find something built-in, they can take features created by the community and implement them with almost no adjustments. If you want to create a fitness app, React Native developers can add readymade calendars, trackers, and video players in a very short time. This saves you time and money on development.

Community support

This framework is lauded as the most popular cross-platform tool in the world. React Native has amassed a community of over 700 000 developers. That’s because JavaScript is very popular and easy to get into. You’ll find no shortage of React Native developers who can help you create the app of your dreams.

The community keeps updating the framework and providing their own solutions. There’re almost 1000+ community-made component libraries for React Native — your developers won’t have to reinvent the wheel to build a mobile app with necessary features, and you’ll save money. Also, it has UI-elements made by other developers which look exactly like the ones Android or iOS use.

With React Native, there’s no need to develop new native user interface components, and this reduces the overall development time.

Flutter vs React Native: Comparison

We made a comparison table with 9 features analyzed in detail. are some of the differences between these frameworks relayed in depth.

Feature	Flutter	React Native
👾UI	Has widgets that resemble native components	Has native components for both Android and iOS — better user experience
💻Programming language	Dart — created by Google, not used by many programmers	JavaScript — ubiquitous, so it’s easy to find developers with relevant skills
🏃Performance	Lags briefly behind native apps, but can be optimized	Lags briefly behind native apps, but can be optimized
📄Documentation	Extensive, but hard to navigate	User-friendly, covers basic topics — deals with 80% of problems one can encounter in development
🌐Community support	Not as big as React Native, but it’s still one of the most popular frameworks	The most popular cross-platform framework — easy to find answers and speed up development as a result
🤔Minimal iOS and Android versions required to run the app	iOS 8 and Android 5.0	iOS 8 and Android 5.0, but can be an earlier version, at the expense of some features
🧑‍💻Code reusability	Can’t reuse components	Reuse components shared by Android and iOS versions of the app
🛠Debugging	Has a debugging tool	Has a debugging tool
💾Backend integration	Can use AWS Amplify, so you’ll have to find a developer with similar experience	Can use Node.js which is also based on JavaScript code, so hiring developers is easy

Flutter apps examples

Take a closer look at some of the apps powered by Flutter, among them — Reflectly, Alibaba, and eBay.

Reflectly

It’s an AI journaling app. A user writes down their thoughts and feelings based on daily prompts. The app later repurposes these diary entries to guesstimate the user’s mood and wellbeing. If there’s not enough info, the app asks personalized follow-up questions to better understand the user’s psychology.

There’re also AI-powered tests with an emphasis on cognitive-behavioral therapy. The app records the user’s answer and later generates stats with general trends on their psychology. It’s easy to understand what needs to change to get to a better place mentally.

This Flutter app revolves around habit building. There’s a habit tracker designed with positive reinforcement techniques. The app sends notifications in a fixed pattern so that the user improves their wellbeing and hones the skills they want.

Reflectly is supported by Flutter. It was created with UI-widgets present in the cross-platform framework. Shadows, animations, and other native elements were all integrated with the help of Flutter.

Alibaba

It’s one of the leading e-commerce platforms in the world. Alibaba is a Flutter app, a B2B marketplace with tools that simplify shipping, marketing, and overall online sales.

One of the things sellers can do is set up their own personalized storefronts. A unique banner design and item cards can help businesses stand out from their competition. And if there’re any questions some customers may have, they can contact vendors through the chat without leaving the app.

Alibaba is made with Flutter. Xianyu, which is the team behind the marketplace, adores the framework. One of the main reasons why they decided to go with Flutter is efficiency. Maintaining a singular codebase for two apps is convenient. UI widgets are another reason — they owe their sleek user interface to widgets available in the framework. In their own words, it’s an incredible time-saver.

eBay

One of eBay’s subsidiaries, eBay Motors, specializes in selling and buying rare cars. Users can search for specific car parts they can buy to refurbish or beautify their vehicle. Or they can find a new car model that strikes their fancy, talk to a seller, and cut a deal with them all in the app.

The team behind eBay Motors was tasked with creating iOS and Android apps for the service in under a year. They turned to Flutter, because they didn’t have resources to hire another team responsible for a different app version. Not to mention that building an app development team in that time — finding and onboarding people — was impossible.

So far, eBay is pleased with the capabilities of Flutter. Most Flutter developers on the team believe that the app was developed in half the time it would take natively. All this happened thanks to shared code between iOS and Android apps.

React Native apps examples

React Native powers some of the most widely used apps in the world. Among their clients are both ambitious startups and established Fortune 500 companies. Let’s check some of these “giants” of their respective industries: e.g. Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Instagram

One of the most popular React Native projects. It’s a photo-sharing app that started off as two native apps — the team over at Meta combined them into a single cross-platform app. 

The main reason is for efficiency. It’s easier to maintain a single codebase than two separate ones. 

Another reason is rooted in performance issues. Before React Native, some UI elements would take a long time to render — after integrating a cross-platform framework, the team saw loading times improve significantly.

Some of the most iconic features of Instagram were implemented with React Native, like saving and checkpoints. 

The “saving” feature allows users to save the posts they like the most to a separate tab in the app. They can revisit it any time they want to see their saved content again. 

Another feature they implemented with the framework are checkpoints. Some actions require better security measures: e.g. changing passwords, phone numbers, and e-mails. 

Checkpoints are flows which make this a bit safer by asking for verification. They were revamped with the help of React Native, and now they’re significantly faster.

By the way, check out our article if you’d like to know how to make a social media app like Instagram.

Facebook

It isn’t surprising that Facebook is maintained by React Native. Meta is the most ardent supporter of the framework — they’ve been investing into this tech since its inception. The team behind the conglomerate also took React Native under its wing, showcased it all over the world, and worked on improving it. 

The Facebook ecosystem is built exclusively on React Native. Facebook marketplace, the Messenger, Ads Manager, and many more apps were created with this framework. The teams behind these apps all report performance improvement — many of their products had shorter loading times and smoother animations. This led to better user engagement and retention. More people were inclined to use an app that loaded fast and wasn’t annoying.

Pinterest

It’s a popular app for finding inspiration on the internet. It hosts pins — photos and texts. Users can look up recipes, interior designs, lists of books to read, and fashion outfit ideas. People can save the pins they like to their own board and review it at their own leisure.

The team of mobile and web developers behind Pinterest wanted to integrate React Native for a variety of reasons. Among them are saving developer time, reducing the number of staff supporting the app, and saving money on maintaining existing features. The Pinterest team wanted to do all that and still save a native feel to the app — they didn’t want to sacrifice performance and the overall design of their product.

Pinterest has integrated React Native with great results. They managed to create an iOS prototype in 2 weeks, which is typical for an Agile sprint. Porting it to Android took 2 days — and that’s the power of cross-platform networks. They saved a lot of time and money on development. 

Some of the projects we made with React Native

At Purrweb, we’ve been working with React Native for over 9 years. We offer React Native development from the ground up, full-cycle style. That includes project analysis, UI/UX design, overall development, and QA. We have over 300 projects under our belt, many of which we helped release to the App Store and Google Play.

Here’re 3 examples of successful mobile apps, which we created thanks to a community-driven React Native framework. These are Broex, Energo, and Petbuddy.

Broex

This is a multi-currency crypto wallet. Users can buy and exchange cryptocurrency in the app. We made this app with total newbies in mind — people who don’t understand how Bitcoin or other currencies work. We kept the design minimal and to the point, so the app is easy to use and intuitive to navigate.

We’ve created this wallet from the ground up using React Native. It allowed us to cut development time in half and work on Android and iOS apps simultaneously. This framework was also useful for adding new features to the app. For example, we remade the custom currency selector from existing React Native libraries. It was much easier than creating a feature like this from scratch.

Energo

This is an IoT app for powerbank renting, and this was overall our first venture into IoT app development. Users download the app, scan a QR-code of a charging station with powerbanks, and take a charger with them. The main app consisted of two parts: one which communicates with the users + the otherwhich communicates with the charging stations. We assembled a mobile app development team of a project manager, a UI/UX designer, and three React developers — and got to work.

We chose a React Native tech stack with Node.js for backend integration. This framework helped immensely to optimize the app’s performance. For example, we wanted to implement animations that typically slow the app down. But thanks to third-party integrations, the animations worked as intended — they became smooth and pleasing to the eye.

Petbuddy

This is a mobile app for pet owners. A German veterinarian contacted us with an idea for a startup. They wanted to develop an app where users can calculate the amount of calories their pets consume, store medical records, and check on their health markers. Users can also find a vet clinic closest to them and book an appointment.

We completed the app from scratch in 3 months. We chose React Native as our framework of choice. Some of the features we integrated were authorization, push notifications, weight calculator, and diagrams. Some features were already made by third-party developers — they required minimal adjustments to add to the app. Other things we had to make from scratch, but it wasn’t difficult. We stuck to the deadlines we agreed to and helped our client save money.

Flutter vs React Native — what is better for startups

When it comes to startups, we consider React Native to be a better option. The reasons mostly revolve around ease of finding developers, better community support, and better performance. Let’s take a closer look at them:

Ease of finding developers. React Native is based on JavaScript code — one of the most popular programming languages in the work. Flutter is based on Dart, which is a more obscure language. There’re many more developers proficient in React Native, so there’re better chances that you’ll find a development team which is proficient in React Native and easy on your budget.

Better community support. This ensures that development doesn’t stall. Many problems React Native specialists face already have solutions on the Internet. If developers come up with out of the box solutions less often, the overall process speeds up significantly.

Better performance. As a whole, Flutter apps work a bit more poorly than React Native ones. This difference can be minuscule in some cases, but it’s a problem nonetheless.

Summary

In this article, we compared Flutter and React Native. Our conclusion is simple — we think React Native is the better tool. It’s a framework we stuck with for almost a decade, and we believe it’s going to be relevant for years to come. If you want to create a solid MVP for your startup or you need an app you can scale easily, React Native is the perfect choice.

If you have an idea for a project, don’t hesitate to contact us in the form below. Our project manager will return to you in a day with an approximate quote, so you can figure out whether it fits your budget or not.