React Native vs Xamarin - Which Cross-Platform is Better?

The mobile app industry is growing at an exponential pace. Each & every business is using a mobile app as a medium to interact with their customers. And to fulfill the increasing demand, companies like Facebook & Microsoft took the initiative to develop a cross-platform.

Nowadays, the growing popularity of cross-platform is putting a lot of people in great confusion. Everyone has the same confusion between the two favorite platforms of mobile app developers - React Native and Xamarin.

Are you also confused between the two? The major difference between React active vs. Xamarin is that With Xamarin, developers can leverage code reusability up to 96 percent. In addition, it offers forms components, making it better for code reuse compared to React Native and other cross-platform technology, which share an average of 60–90 percent of codes.

Let's compare both the platforms in detail on different parameters & find out which comes out as a champion!

Advantages of Cross-Platform Development

Write once deploy everywhere: The most significant advantage is having a single codebase exporting to multiple operating systems.

Uniformity: Having a single codebase gives the same look, feel and experience across different platforms. The updates and fixes are automatically reflected everywhere.

Saves resources: Instead of having separate teams with different skills, hire mobile app developers who can work on shared codebase. This allows you to leverage smaller teams and quicker development time and money.

Audience reach: You have a wider audience reach as you are targeting iOS and Android, both the users. That too without any added efforts thereby increasing your chances of getting more downloads & users.

What is React Native and Xamarin?

React Native: It is an open source mobile app development framework created by Facebook. Using this framework, you can develop an iOS and Android application under one common language; JavaScript.

Xamarin: Owned by Microsoft, Xamarin is also an open-source mobile app development framework. To develop a mobile app, developers should have good knowledge of C#.

React Native & Xamarin Benefits 

Advantages of React Native

Performance: React Native gives near native performance. With the tools, you can build apps at a super-fast speed.

Code re-usability: The language allows developers to use the same code for building both Android and iOS apps.

Live Reload feature: Allows developers to view the changes made by code to application in real time.

User-interface: Implements native UI components allowing apps to look like native apps. It also provides a high quality user interface.

Ready-made components: Offers vast library of UI components for faster development time.

Platform specific code: allows you to further optimize separate native aoos with native codes.

Reliability: Developed and supported by Facebook.

Recommended Read: How to Hire React Native Developers? Things to Consider!

Advantages of Xamarin

Performance: Xamarin apps have native like performance levels.

Complete development ecosystem: C#, .Net and Microsoft Visual Studio with Xamarin is all that is required to build apps with this technology. This makes it one of the most complete cross-platform app development frameworks.

Seamless user experience: It allows you to take the advantage of standard interface elements by providing a library of templates so that codes can be reused across different platforms. Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android can be used for manual customization whenever required.

What is the Need for this Comparison?

It is often found that businesses need to create the same application for iOS and Android. Which may be supporting different operating systems too. The app developed with Android tools won’t be optimally working with iOS devices vice versa. React Native and Xamarin address the same issue. This saves a lot of development time and there is no need to write two different codes for different platforms. This leads to a one-app-for all scenario.

Now, it's time for React Native and Xamarin comparison!

1. Performance:

• React Native: React Native is used for rapid development. The framework allows individuals to use native code in the app. This tool helps to achieve 60 frames per second. Also, it helps in building some part of the app with the help of native code and remaining with react native. Facebook app is built this way. React native doesn’t support 64-bit mode on Android. But it manages to give a custom UI design framework that uses fast native widgets under the hood.
• Xamarin: Helps in building high-performance apps. With the help of platform-specific hardware acceleration, the speed increases. Just like React Native, Xamarin also gives a near-native performance. GUI, 64-bit support and quick execution is the factor taken into consideration.

2. Development:

• React Native: React Native development team strives hard to fulfill the demand of the customers. This web development tool offers a lot of flexibility as it lets you choose a development environment. Any IDE/text editor can be selected for the app, and the best part is that there are plenty of good IDEs and text editors available on the internet like Visual Studio.
• Xamarin: If the developer wants to build a Xamarin app, he has to work in Visual Studio. This is restricted and working with other options is a bit typical. Additionally, Xamarin provides an amazing Integrated Development Environment offering you useful tools, controls, and layouts to make the app work smoothly.

3. Technology

• React Native: The open source has JavaScript-based framework so it leverages the most commonly used languages in web development. Developers having experience in JavaScript can get into mobile app development. For business, there are a huge amount of developer applications and no shortage of skilled developers to hire.
• Xamarin: This is also an open source platform but uses C# programming language with .NET framework. Having good support from Microsoft means it can be used within the Visual studio environment. Xamarin gives the mobile app developers rich editor, native platform integration and debugging tool set.

4. Market Share:

• React Native: React Native has managed to gain massive popularity within a short time span since its introduction. For this reason, the demand for react native app developer has increased. According to Github, approximately 1002 contributors committed 7971 times in 45 branches with 124 releases.  The most popular ones are Facebook, Instagram, Bloomberg, Uber, Walmart, Vogue.
  
• Xamarin: According to Forbes, Xamarin is used by 20% of Fortune companies like Bosch, Samsung, Haliburton, SAP and is deployed among 120 countries. Helps for building cross-platform apps, lets developers reuse code and debug products. Building a strong relationship with Microsoft, it has a community over 700,000 developers till date and over 15000 companies rely on it. Some of which are Novarum, CA mobile and Story.

5. Popularity:

React Native: According to StackOverflow survey, 90000 developers claimed React Native as the 6th most popular framework with 10.5% votes. It was also voted as the 8th most loved cross-platform application development framework with 62.5% votes. Also, it was the 3rd most wanted framework with 13.1% votes.

Xamarin: In the same StackOverflow survey, Xamarin has ranked 10th in popularity with 6.5% votes which means 4ranks behind React Native. It is the 15th most loved framework with 48.3% votes (9 ranks behind React Native).

6. Community and Assistance:

• React Native: It has very strong support from the developer community. Moreover, plenty of online courses, tutorials and videos are available on the internet that will help you to learn. In addition, there are numerous blog posts written regarding React Native. In fact, there is a good number of learning resources available for this framework, and the number keeps increasing.
• Xamarin: Xamarin also has good community support as it has a lot of learning material. Like React Native, there are plenty of articles and blog posts written about it.

7. Code Compilation

React Native: It uses JIT (Just in Time) compilation for Android app development. For iOS apps, it has to interpret JS code because Apple restricts execution of dynamically generated codes on the devices.

Xamarin: The C# codebase framework makes good use of JIT for Android apps. For iOS app development, AOT (Ahead of Time) compiler is used to compile the managed codes. Because AOT is better than JIT, Xamarin is the preferred choice for both app developers when code compilation is concerned.

8. Available Components

React Native: There is a diverse range of available components having adequate documentation to help the developers utilize them. The tools include those useful for testing, user-interface, type-checking, networking, forms and more.

Xamarin: Xamarin also has a wide range of components in the component store. Although the store is better than what React Native has to offer having the scope for improvement in documentation.

9. Cost

React Native: Developers and businesses can use the open source framework and its libraries free of cost.

Xamarin: Xamarin is also a free open source platform but using Visual Studio comes at a cost especially for enterprise use.

10. Framework

React Native: React Native uses one-way data flow. This could be more productive but in a marginal way. If you are pleased with the recent changes in the JS web development, then you will certainly like it.

Xamarin: If you are hiring .Net developers or MV* devel

React Native vs Xamarin, which one is better?

When it comes to React Native vs Xamarin, deciding which one is better is a tough job. It's because both platforms offer high-quality application backed by brand names like Facebook and Microsoft.

Both platforms are credible to reduce the time and cost of development. So, closely observe both the platforms in terms of performance, development, market share and community assistance.

Having amazing market support from developers and businesses, availability, popularity and cost effectiveness, React Native is the best choice.

Finally, if you don’t have employees who can fulfill your task, it is advisable to hire professionals. You can also choose to hire mobile app developers & bring down your development cost up to 80%.