In today’s modern age of smartphones and tablets, every mobile app developer looks for the easiest and quickest ways to develop feature-rich applications. iOS and Android are the two big players having billions of apps under different categories.
The need for comparison
Many businesses look for iOS or Android applications to engage the users. They look for experienced mobile app developers for creating high performing apps. Building an app for two different platforms may be a time-consuming task. Moreover, the cost of app development would be doubled for 2 or multiple platforms. This is the major reason why most of the developers and clients prefer to develop a single app that work seamlessly on both platforms iOS and Android. Xamarin and React Native help to build cross platform apps.
Helpful Reading : Xamarin or Android Studio – Which one to choose for enterprise app development?
Let’s compare Xamarin and React Native for different parameters.
Performance
React Native
React Native helps to build near-native performance apps at a fast speed. Developers can make use of native languages such as Java, Swift, and Objective-C to build native performance apps. Even if you want to develop some part of the app using native code and remaining part with React Native, it can be done. Facebook app is developed in the same way.
Xamarin
Xamarin also allows you to build high-performance apps. It uses platform-specific hardware to deliver great app development speed. Just like React Native, Xamarin also gives near-native performance.
Documentation
React Native
Documentation is accurate and concise with React Native and all the components are in place. It offers very organized documentation.
Xamarin
Xamarin requires some improvements in the quality and quantity of the components of documentation.
Development speed
React Native
React Native is known for faster app development because of its Hot Reloading feature. It helps you save a lot of time as it allows reloading of your app instantly. Once the modifications in the code are made, you do not require code compilation again. There are various pre-built components in React Native that can help you in faster app development.
Xamarin
It has development tools like Visual Studio to speed up the app development process. The layouts and controls help you save a lot of time while developing an app. There is no need to code the controls from the scratch. Xamarin and NuGet plugins help you save a lot of time and efforts.
Market share
React Native
React Native is used by several startups and established companies. The mobile apps that use this framework are Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tesla, Uber, Vogue, Walmart, and more.
Xamarin
Xamarin is used by Honeywell, BOSCH, Slack, and Cognizant to name a few.
Community support
React Native
This platform gets a strong support from the developer community. There are a lot of learning materials available over the internet. One can learn React Native app development with the help of online tutorials, videos, and other information on internet.
If developers are stuck in the middle of app development, they can conduct online research or contact the community experts to get proper solutions.
Xamarin
Xamarin is also backed up with an amazing community support. The framework has a good number of online courses, tutorials, and videos to guide the developers and users.
Testing
React Native
Testing React Native apps becomes easier with the right tools available for it. PropTypes can be a good starting point for developing high performance apps. Jest is a well known javascript testing framework that is widely used by the developers.
Xamarin
One can use Microsoft Visual Studio Test Tools or NUnit for testing Xamarin apps. Developers also use Xamarin Test Cloud to test the app on multiple devices.
Which framework wins the race? – Xamarin or React Native
Answering the above question may be a tricky question to answer. Both of them help to build high quality and feature-rich applications. There’s no clear winner for xamarin cross platform mobile app development. Instead of asking which framework is better, you should ask which one is the right fit for your project. Compare all the factors such as market share, development time, performance, and others to determine which one works the best for you. Both the platforms have ready-made components for building mobile apps.
