Despite some limitations, cross-platform development is quite popular. Instead of creating two separate native apps, for example with Swift and Kotlin, you only need one framework and a little setup to create an app for both iOS and Android. There are many cross-platform frameworks out there, including Xamarin, Ionic, and PhoneGap. Throw in other technologies like progressive web apps (PWAs) and it becomes clear that choosing the right cross-platform technology is not an easy task. Many developers choose React Native because it’s popular and supported by Facebook — a huge company that invests in their technology. However, Flutter is a new technology that you need to look out for. Now, let’s find out which platform is better.
A history of Flutter and React Native
Before starting our in-depth comparison of these two platforms, it would be right to layout their histories and core functionalities.
Flutter started its journey in 2015 and was called Sky at the time. Later, it was renamed as Flutter. Google released an alpha version of Flutter in May 2017. However, Flutter 1.0, the first stable version of Flutter, was only released in December 2018. The platform’s core programming language is Dart, which is based on C and C++. This provides developers with the opportunity to use platform-specific SDKs for Android and iOS.
Also in 2015, Facebook released React Native. At its core is the React library, which is based on JavaScript. This lets developers create cross-platform applications. React Native uses HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which makes it a bit similar to a web framework. Similar to Flutter, ReactNative lets developers reuse components in different parts of their apps, which can speed up development.
According to a Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 75.4% of developers loved Flutter in 2019. Considering that Flutter is a relatively young platform, this is an amazing statistic. In the same survey, 62.5% of respondents said they loved React Native, making it the third most popular framework that developers would like to work on.
Both of these platforms are convenient and fast for developing mobile apps. Reusing components saves lots of time and lets developers create apps for both iOS and Android way faster than building two native apps.
React Native and Flutter are quite different, and each has its advantages and disadvantages. Let's find out more about these two frameworks and understand which is best suited for developing your mobile project.
Comparing of React Native and Flutter
Since Flutter and React Native are quite different, we’ve decided to compare them based on key factors for a structured comparison.
Essential components
The main difference between Flutter and React Native is that Flutter uses its own widget toolbox, so components are displayed natively. React Native uses native components that are built with JavaScript.
This difference can be spotted when developers try to customize components. With React Native, you might need to do some extra styling work because the components are pretty basic and aren’t always customizable enough. That’s because they’re wrapped over native views.
On the contrary, with Flutter, you get widgets that are based on Material Design, which makes them easy to customize. Flutter widgets are adaptive, and developers can use the same widget for both Android and iOS.
Interaction with native functionality
React Native and Flutter are both wrappers around the app, which means they need to access native components.
Flutter uses a special communication method called Platform Channels to connect Data to native languages, and it’s not that easy to use at times.
React Native uses Native Modules for accessing core device functionality. The problem that developers can face with React Native is that access to APIs can be inconvenient, and integrating your own data exchange protocol into a third-party library isn’t easy. But React Native has a wide variety of libraries, so developers don’t use these modules that often.
Performance
Let’s compare Flutter and React Native in terms of performance. In my opinion, Flutter clearly has the upper hand here. It has quite high performance, with a standard 60 frames per second (fps). React Native loses this battle because it uses JavaScript Bridge to initialize screens, which can make its performance a bit rough.
Developers can use tools like Dart Analysis and Flutter Inspector to analyze their code and keep the performance at a high level. Android Studio provides similar tools for optimizing and debugging code.
Industry adoption
React Native is rather big in the mobile app development industry. On the contrary, Flutter hasn’t been massively adopted yet. Since Flutter is a bit younger of a platform, it doesn’t have that many libraries, add-ons, and out-of-the-box solutions.
Some things that already exist in React Native you’ll need to build from scratch in Flutter. This makes Flutter development more time-consuming and expensive. Despite the slower adoption, however, some of the biggest apps are made with Flutter, such as Google Ads and Alibaba.
Code structure
When it comes to code structure, Flutter and React Native mirror the technologies that inspired them: native Android and JavaScript.
With React Native, developers can separate styles and executed code into different classes, the same as with JavaScript. This is great because you can create one style sheet for all elements and make it work for every part of your application. Also, with React Native, developers can create a separate file for their styles or add styles to their own code file.
Native Android has a similar principle, but styles are usually stored elsewhere. When using Flutter, developers need to create their own view with their styles. With Flutter, they can write styles directly in the same class as the element, but this is not required.
The companies behind the frameworks
The companies behind Flutter and React Native make a big difference in terms of their future, support, and goals for code structure and the development environment.
Flutter is one of Google’s big creations, the same as Android, which is why Flutter developers can enjoy working with Android Studio. Android Studio is one of Flutter’s greatest strengths, as it offers everything you need to improve your development process, from emulators to code analysis tools. Android Studio makes it easy to initialize a Flutter app.
As for the future, Google has big plans for Flutter. It will be the core framework for their upcoming operating system called Fuchsia OS. The goal of this new operating system is to create a completely new development system for more easily making applications and adapting them for different screens and devices.
React Native initializes an app with Expo, which is also a great toolbox. Sometimes it’s difficult to use Expo if you have any packages outside of its ecosystem. Also, its builds sometimes crash, and it’s hard to determine why.
Time required for development
React Native dramatically reduces the time it takes to develop mobile apps, and what’s more, it makes it easier to create engaging user experiences. This framework offers ready-to-use components to speed up project development.
Flutter has many advantages in this regard, such as ease of installation and configuration. However, Flutter is relatively new, so it doesn't have as wide a selection of tools as React Native. React Native has more IDEs and tools to support it, and Flutter has a lot of work to do to catch up.
Hot reload
Now, let’s compare a feature that both of these platforms have: hot reload. In 2015, when Google announced Flutter’s release at the Dart Developer Summit, they showed the hot reload feature, which was very impressive and fresh back then.
Hot reload means the ability to launch an application when new versions of files are added that are edited at runtime.
Hot reloading is fast enough for both React Native and Flutter, but it’s slightly faster in Flutter. If developers make changes to a Flutter app while users are using it, the app will reload the modified code and allow users to pick up where they left off.
Documentation and support
Flutter has high-quality and comprehensive documentation that’s easy for developers to follow. It’s a Google product, after all.
React Native has basiс documentation that’s easy to understand. However, this framework has external development tools, and the general React Native documentation is not as complete as Flutter’s. React Native has a big and strong community of developers. The Flutter community is not yet as big as the React Native community, but that’s to be expected since Flutter came out later.
That being said, the Flutter team at Google provides solid support when developers need help. Combined with better documentation, this support tilts the balance in Flutter's favor.
Conclusion
For Android developers, Flutter is a great framework that’s easy to understand and with which you can build cross-platform apps. As the community grows, Flutter will become more versatile, offering many libraries and add-ons. This will make development faster and more efficient.
That said, I believe Flutter will be a great foundation for future projects, and if you’re planning on creating your own project in 2021, you might as well take a look at Flutter. If you’re a developer, you should definitely start learning Flutter and maybe even create your own unique solutions that will help the community grow. The mobile market is constantly changing, and tomorrow Flutter could be the next Kotlin — or even more popular.