React Native vs Flutter: Which is the Best Framework for Mobile App Development?

Published on

Oct 25, 2024

Anmol

10 mins

When it comes to building mobile applications, React Native and Flutter have emerged as two of the most popular cross-platform frameworks. Both are powerful and enable developers to create high-performance apps for iOS and Android, but each has its own strengths and weaknesses. In this blog, we will explore the differences between React Native and Flutter to help you decide which one is the better choice for your next mobile app project.

Overview

  • React Native is a JavaScript framework developed by Facebook. It enables developers to build native mobile apps using JavaScript and React, one of the most popular web libraries.
  • Flutter is a UI toolkit developed by Google. It allows developers to build natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase using the Dart programming language.

Popularity and Community Support

React Native:

  • More Popular & Mature: React Native was introduced in 2015, giving it a head start over Flutter, which was released in 2017. Due to its longer presence, React Native has a larger community of developers and more extensive support across forums, GitHub, and Stack Overflow.
  • Popularity: According to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2023, React Native is still one of the top choices for mobile development, especially because it leverages JavaScript, the most widely used language in the world.

Flutter:

  • Rising Popularity: Despite being newer, Flutter has rapidly gained popularity and has been widely adopted by the developer community due to its excellent performance and growing support from Google.
  • Google’s Backing: Flutter benefits from Google’s continuous investments, and many popular apps (such as Google Ads and Alibaba) are built with Flutter.

Verdict: React Native is currently more popular due to its mature ecosystem and large community, but Flutter is quickly catching up.

Performance

React Native:

  • Bridge Architecture: React Native uses a JavaScript bridge to communicate between native components and JavaScript code. While this architecture enables React Native to run JavaScript code on mobile platforms, the bridge introduces a slight performance overhead, especially for complex animations or intensive computations.
  • Native Feel: React Native apps offer a “close-to-native” performance. For standard apps, it’s often difficult for users to tell whether they are built with React Native or purely native code.

Flutter:

  • Native Compilation: Flutter doesn’t require a bridge to communicate with native components. It uses Dart and compiles directly to native ARM code, offering better performance and smoother animations.
  • High Performance: With Flutter’s Skia engine, it renders apps at 60fps or even 120fps in some cases. Flutter has a clear edge when it comes to high-performance animations, as seen in many complex, graphically intensive apps.

Verdict: Flutter offers superior performance due to its direct compilation to native code and no need for a bridge, making it ideal for apps with heavy animations or high-performance needs.

UI and Flexibility

React Native:

  • Leverages Native Components: React Native allows you to use native UI components. This can make your app look more native on both Android and iOS platforms but might require more work for platform-specific customizations.
  • Flexibility: React Native provides flexibility by allowing developers to write custom native code for both Android and iOS. Developers can blend React Native components with native ones when needed, but that may involve more complexity.
  • UI Libraries: React Native has many libraries to simplify UI development, such as:some text
    • React Native Paper: A library offering Material Design components.
    • React Native Elements: A UI toolkit for building modern apps.
    • React Navigation: For handling in-app navigation.

Flutter:

  • Customizable Widgets: Flutter offers a widget-based architecture. Every component in Flutter is a widget, making the entire UI highly customizable, flexible, and uniform across platforms. You can craft complex UIs using pre-built widgets or build custom ones from scratch.
  • UI Consistency: Flutter guarantees UI consistency across iOS and Android, unlike React Native, where the UI may vary slightly due to using native components.
  • UI Libraries: Flutter provides rich widget libraries like:some text
    • Material Components: A complete library of UI elements based on Google’s Material Design.
    • Cupertino Widgets: Native iOS-styled widgets for iOS apps.

Verdict: Flutter is more flexible for creating visually rich UIs thanks to its widget system, and it ensures a consistent look across platforms. React Native, while customizable, relies on native components and might need platform-specific tweaking.

Library and Ecosystem Support

React Native:

  • Library Support: React Native has been around longer, so it has a wider range of third-party libraries. Popular libraries include:some text
    • React-Native-Vision-Camera: A modern camera library for React Native, offering high-performance features like frame processors.
    • Redux: State management library.
    • Lottie: Animation library for adding smooth animations to apps.
  • Mature Ecosystem: Due to React Native’s age and widespread use, developers have more resources, guides, and libraries at their disposal, which accelerates development and debugging.

Flutter:

  • Growing Ecosystem: While Flutter’s ecosystem is younger, it is growing rapidly with continuous contributions from Google and the open-source community. Libraries like provider (for state management) and Flame (for game development) are popular.
  • Integration Support: Flutter also offers plugins to access native device features such as camera, GPS, and sensors. Notable libraries include:some text
    • camera: Provides extensive support for camera usage.
    • flutter_blue: A library for working with Bluetooth devices.

Verdict: React Native still has an advantage in terms of library support, but Flutter’s ecosystem is expanding quickly.

Camera Libraries

React Native:

  • React Native Vision Camera: One of the most powerful and popular camera libraries in React Native, supporting frame processors, video capture, face detection, and QR code scanning. It’s highly performant, making it a great choice for apps requiring advanced camera functionalities.

Flutter:

  • camera: Flutter’s official camera plugin allows developers to capture photos, videos, and handle different camera functions. However, it is still evolving, and developers might need to write native code for more advanced camera features.

Verdict: React Native Vision Camera is more feature-rich and advanced compared to Flutter’s camera plugin, making it better for camera-intensive applications.

Both React Native and Flutter have been used to build various successful and famous apps across the globe. Each framework has its own set of advantages, and large companies have adopted both for different use cases. Here’s a detailed look at some of the popular apps and tools built using React Native and Flutter:

Famous Apps Built Using React Native

1. Instagram

  • Overview: Instagram, the popular photo and video-sharing social media platform, uses React Native for several parts of its app. They initially integrated React Native in the post-promotion feature and later expanded it to other areas.
  • Why React Native?: Instagram chose React Native to improve their developer efficiency and reuse their existing codebase across iOS and Android.

2. Facebook

  • Overview: Facebook, the company behind React Native, uses the framework extensively in their mobile app, especially in the Ads Manager and other performance-heavy areas.
  • Why React Native?: Facebook leveraged React Native to streamline their mobile development process, allowing them to create shared features across iOS and Android.

3. Skype

  • Overview: Microsoft used React Native to rebuild Skype's mobile app, offering a unified codebase for iOS and Android with smooth performance and responsive UI.
  • Why React Native?: The decision to use React Native was driven by the desire to unify the app across platforms, improve speed to market, and reuse code.

4. Walmart

  • Overview: Walmart’s mobile app integrates React Native to give users a seamless experience for shopping online and in-store.
  • Why React Native?: Walmart chose React Native to enhance the performance and user experience, as well as to speed up the development process for both iOS and Android.

5. Pinterest

  • Overview: Pinterest, the visual discovery engine, has used React Native in various parts of their mobile app.
  • Why React Native?: They used React Native to improve developer productivity, reduce app release times, and provide a consistent UI/UX across both platforms.

6. Uber Eats

  • Overview: Uber Eats, the food delivery arm of Uber, used React Native for the restaurant dashboard application that helps restaurants manage orders.
  • Why React Native?: Uber Eats used React Native for faster iterations, real-time updates, and cross-platform support to streamline the user interface for restaurant partners.

7. Tesla

  • Overview: Tesla uses React Native for their app, allowing users to interact with their cars, check charging status, and control different features.
  • Why React Native?: Tesla integrated React Native to benefit from its rapid development cycle and cross-platform consistency.

8. Discord

  • Overview: The gaming and chat platform Discord uses React Native to deliver a high-performance experience for their mobile users.
  • Why React Native?: Discord’s decision to use React Native was driven by the need for high performance, native feel, and rapid iteration.

Famous Apps Built Using Flutter

1. Google Ads

  • Overview: Google Ads, a Google service for managing online advertisements, uses Flutter to build its mobile app. The app allows users to track ad campaigns, update bids, and manage budgets.
  • Why Flutter?: Google Ads chose Flutter because of its excellent performance, UI flexibility, and cross-platform capabilities, ensuring that users have a consistent experience across mobile platforms.

2. Alibaba

  • Overview: Alibaba, one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world, uses Flutter to build parts of its mobile app for both iOS and Android, offering a smooth and visually appealing shopping experience.
  • Why Flutter?: Alibaba wanted a highly customizable UI framework that would allow them to deliver fast and smooth user experiences, which they achieved using Flutter’s widget system.

3. Reflectly

  • Overview: Reflectly, a personal journaling app, uses Flutter to provide users with a visually appealing and smooth experience.
  • Why Flutter?: Flutter allowed Reflectly to build a beautiful, interactive interface with smooth transitions and animations, while keeping the codebase minimal.

4. BMW

  • Overview: BMW Group uses Flutter to build their My BMW App, which connects users to their vehicles and offers features such as remote start, locking, and trip logs.
  • Why Flutter?: BMW selected Flutter due to its cross-platform efficiency, ability to create consistent and smooth UIs, and the ease of updating and maintaining the app across multiple platforms.

5. Google Pay

  • Overview: Google Pay (Tez in India) was partially built using Flutter to deliver a seamless, fast, and reliable payment experience across mobile platforms.
  • Why Flutter?: Google Pay took advantage of Flutter’s performance optimization, cross-platform consistency, and custom widget capabilities to build a reliable payment app.

6. Realtor.com

  • Overview: The real estate listing app Realtor.com uses Flutter to offer a smooth user experience across platforms, making it easy for users to search for homes and view listings.
  • Why Flutter?: Flutter’s ability to provide a rich UI, fast animations, and seamless platform consistency was key in developing the Realtor.com app.

7. Tencent

  • Overview: Tencent, one of the largest internet companies in the world, uses Flutter to build several of their mobile applications, including apps for video streaming and news.
  • Why Flutter?: Tencent needed a framework that provided high performance and smooth UI transitions, and Flutter delivered that while allowing for rapid cross-platform development.

8. New York Times

  • Overview: The famous New York Times crossword app was developed using Flutter to provide a smooth and fast user experience for crossword enthusiasts.
  • Why Flutter?: Flutter was chosen due to its rich set of customizable widgets, which made it easier to create a visually consistent and engaging puzzle-solving experience.

Reliability and Efficiency

React Native:

  • Mature & Stable: React Native’s mature ecosystem makes it a stable choice for long-term projects. The framework is highly reliable for standard business applications, and the use of JavaScript makes debugging relatively easy.
  • Updates: React Native’s updates can sometimes break existing functionality due to changes in the bridge architecture, which might require extra attention during upgrades.

Flutter:

  • Stable and Robust: Flutter’s architecture is designed to avoid performance bottlenecks such as those caused by JavaScript bridges in React Native. It’s more efficient for graphics-heavy applications, but it can be overkill for simple apps.
  • Reliability: Flutter’s strong performance across different platforms and stable UI rendering make it a very reliable framework for creating high-performance apps.

Verdict: Flutter has an edge in terms of reliability for performance-intensive apps, but React Native remains reliable for standard business apps.

Development Speed and Ease of Use

React Native:

  • Faster Development: JavaScript is widely known and React Native’s hot-reloading feature speeds up development. For teams already familiar with React, picking up React Native is relatively easy.
  • Learning Curve: Developers already familiar with web development (React) will find it easier to transition to React Native.

Flutter:

  • Learning Curve: Flutter requires learning a new language, Dart, which can slow down developers initially. However, Flutter’s hot-reload and comprehensive documentation make it easy to experiment and quickly implement changes.
  • Codebase: Flutter’s single codebase for mobile, web, and desktop apps can significantly speed up development when targeting multiple platforms.

Verdict: React Native is faster for teams with React experience, while Flutter offers quick iteration with its hot-reload and a single codebase for all platforms.

Conclusion: Which is Better?

  • Choose React Native if:some text
    • You have a team experienced in JavaScript and React.
    • You need a wider selection of libraries and third-party integrations.
    • You want a framework with a more mature ecosystem and better camera support (e.g., React Native Vision Camera).
  • Choose Flutter if:some text
    • You need high-performance apps with smooth animations or graphics-heavy UIs.
    • You want consistency in UI across platforms.
    • You’re interested in writing one codebase for mobile, web, and desktop.

In the end, React Native is the better choice for teams with strong JavaScript knowledge and for projects that require quick and stable development using well-established libraries. Flutter is ideal for high-performance, graphically rich apps and is quickly becoming a favorite for developers targeting multiple platforms from a single codebase.