Today In this world of Digitalisation, mostly Individuals are spending their online time on mobile and web applications. You are the best live example yourself who is reading this blog right now. Today almost everyone deals with mobile. But Some users are using android while some are using iOS and an app developed for Android will not work for iOS and vice-versa. That means you have to hire different developers for building apps for iOS, web and android platforms. So it's clear that in the increasing demand for apps nowadays, every business is looking for mobile applications that can be available across all platforms where you don't have to hire different developers, rather you change the way of working and look towards the new frameworks.

This has made cross-platform mobile apps trending these days where new frameworks are introduced that can build native apps without using Swift for iOS or Java for Android. Among the various options available, React Native and Flutter are two of the leading cross-platform development frameworks that are being used to develop thousands of mobile apps today. So here It's like I am going to debate with you about the two most popular cross-platform mobile development frameworks - React Native and Flutter.

But firstly let's have some talk about these two Frameworks. React Native

React Native is one of the most popular cross-platform app development framework of today that was built and open-sourced by Facebook in 2015. Code was completely written in javascript using React. This framework delivers a native-like experience by providing natively rendered mobile applications for iOS and Android. It enables the use of a single codebase for building applications.

Flutter

Flutter is another popular cross-platform framework that was launched by google in 2018. It is also an open-sourced framework that was written in a totally different programming language known as Dart. It also delivers a good native experience. It also enables the use of a single codebase for building applications. Here we can consider lots of similarity between React Native and Flutter but they do exist with differences.

Now it's the time to learn which framework React Native or Flutter will be best for app development?

Let's explore some of the key differences which will clear all of your doubts -

• In Terms of Programming Language:

  React Native uses a javascript library whereas Flutter is based on the language called Dart. 90% of developers deal with javascript which makes it easy for them to use React Native framework rather than Flutter where developers must have to learn the Dart language first.

  Javascript is one of the popular and most used programming languages from 1995. On the other hand, Dart is the new language developed by Google in 2018.

• In Terms of Projects(Applications):

  Flutter becomes useful in the case of building simple and single applications whereas React Native is useful for complex projects.

  Flutter prefers limited budget projects whereas React Native go for sufficient fund projects which gives good results.

• In Terms of Installation:

  Easy Installation of any framework is the first importance. React Native can easily be installed by you with little prior knowledge of JavaScript. It can be installed by using the React Native CLI. The yarn needs to be installed to manage the packages.

  Installing Flutter is a little more difficult. The binary for a specific platform needs to be downloaded. A zip file is also required for macOS. It is then required to be added to the PATH variable. This means that Flutter takes extra steps for Installation.

• In Terms of Developers Ecosystem:

  Developers who are interested in building Flutter apps refer to the official documentation. However, in the case of React Native, you have several options. You could use the official documentation or you could use a different platform, the most popular being Expo which offers more features and customizations, including an integrated icon library, whereas the official React Native docs are more bare-bones. So The React Native ecosystem is more mature and has more users since JavaScript has been around since 1995.

• In Terms of Development Time:

React Native requires less development time as it produces a faster time to market an app. You can use third-party libraries and ready to use components, which decreases development time.

On the other hand, Flutter takes time in development as compared to React Native.

• In Terms of Code Stability:

React Native provides code stability as it uses downward data flow. The developer can easily modify the specific components of the app which then allow better stability and efficient app performance.

On the other hand, Flutter has two versions - The alpha version and the Beta 2 version. Its Alpha version lags the stability quotient and is not supported for large projects.

• In Terms of Developers Productivity:

  This is very essential to talk about this point so that you can see which framework is better suited to the developer. The React Native code is reusable across all the platforms and JavaScript is supported by all editors. React Native also gives the Hot reload feature which means that changes done in the backend will be directly visible on the frontend, even without recompilation. Flutter also offers the Hot reload feature where the compilation time is shorter. But all editors do not support Dart as it is not common.

• In Terms of Community Support:

  Both the frameworks are open-sourced which results in a large community of contributors or developers. Communities help in sharing knowledge about specific technology and solving problems related to it.

Since being founded in 2015, React Native has gained popularity increasingly.

On the other hand, Flutter started gaining popularity in 2017 after Google has promoted it. So Its community is smaller.

• In Terms of Job Prospect:

  React Native has been around since 2015 and uses React and JavaScript (two popular options) which leads to better job prospects.

  According to the StackOverflow Survey of 2019 React Native is more wanted in comparison to Flutter. We can't take quick decision on jobs in flutter but as of today, there are lots of React Native jobs available. This may also because React Native developers are also React developers and React is the most popular front-end framework Tool in the Market. So learning React Native might be more profitable if you are looking for a job.

Zeiq also works on this Cross-Platform Framework - React Native. So Here we can consider React Native is very popular today withholding so many strong points in comparison with Flutter which is an emerging one and can gain popularity in the coming time. But for now, I must say that React Native is a good choice for Cross-Platform App Development. I hope that this blog was helpful. I wish you a Happy Reading! Thank you!