Difference Between React Native vs Flutter
React native and flutter are great mobile development tools. Both flutter and react-native are very popular in the market. In this article we will have a detailed comparison of both react-native vs flutter as well as focus on the following points:
- Which of them is better?
- When to go for Flutter or react native
React Native: React Native is an open-source mobile app development framework. React Native can be used to build IOS and Android applications. To build a react native based application, you need to have knowledge of programming languages like JavaScript and React. React Native was released in March 2015.
Flutter: Flutter is basically reactive programming based mobile development framework developed by Google. It is a cross-platform mobile application development framework and can be used to build IOS and android applications. To develop a Flutter based application, you need to have programming knowledge of Dart. Dart was introduced by Google in 2011. Dart is easy to learn for developers comfortable with Java or JavaScript as it supports most object-oriented concepts.
Head to Head Comparison Between React Native and Flutter (Infographics)
Below are the top 14 differences between React Native and Flutter:
Key Difference Between React Native and Flutter
Let us evaluate react native vs flutter on the following factors:
- Performance: As far as performance is concerned, flutter gives better performance than react native. Flutter has native components build inside the framework and does not need to use a bridge to communicate with native components. Flutter compiles dart code to ARM code which can be directly run by CPU. On the other hand, react-native uses native components to interpret UI. Due to an extra layer of native components, applications built on react native tend to be slower.
- Architecture: React Native uses Flux architecture in which there exists a unidirectional data flow consisting of Action, Dispatcher, Store, and View. Flutter also follows unidirectional dataflow that contains Actions, Stores and Stop Watchers.
- Flexibility and Stability: Both react native and flutter are scalable and provides equal stability. In terms of flexibility, flutter wins the race as it contains a rich and advanced set of widgets as compared to react-native.
- Development Time: Both react native and flutter provide faster application development time. But due to its simplicity, flutter saves more time because it does not make use of native components that are time-consuming to understand.
- Fast Modification Support: React native supports hot reloading feature that enables running new code while keeping application state intact, instead of performing recompilation. This feature provides instant and efficient development. Flutter also supports stateful hot reloading, which allows instant reflection of code changes without changing the current state.
- Applications: Common applications built using React Native are Facebook, Instagram, Airbnb, Skype, and Walmart while Hookle, Topline, OfflinePal, BetaBubs, Alibaba, Google Greentea are developed using flutter.
- Founders: React Native was developed by Facebook whereas flutter was invented by Google.
React Native and Flutter Comparison Table
Here is a comparison table showing differences between React Native and Flutter:
| Basis of Comparison between flutter vs react native |
Flutter |
React Native |
| Founded By | Flutter was founded by Google in 2013. | React Native was founded by Facebook in 2015. |
| Programming Languages required | To develop applications using Flutter knowledge of dart is required. | To develop applications using react native, programming knowledge of JavaScript/Java/ C++ or Python is required. |
| Performance | Flutter provides faster UI as compared to react-native. | React native is usually slower than flutter. |
| Unit Testing | Because flutter makes use of dart which comes with excellent unit testing capabilities, testing of widgets can be done at runtime with high speed. | Java script support testing is quite complicated which involves making use of third party libraries. |
| Features | It provides richer and advanced features. | It provides richer features but is less flexible than flutter. |
| Library | It provides a very large and inclusive library. | It provides a small and non-inclusive library. |
| Native Performance | It provides excellent native performance. | It provides good native performance. |
| Architecture | Flutter flows Skia architecture and uses Actions, Stores, and Stopwatchers as primary components. | Makes use of Flux architecture consisting of Action, Dispatcher, Store, and View. |
| Hot Reload | Supported | Supported |
| Operating Systems Supported | Flutter can be used to build android, IOS based mobile applications. | Using react native android and IOS apps can be developed. |
| Users | Facebook, Instagram, Airbnb, Skype, and Walmart. | Hookle, Topline, OfflinePal, BetaBubs, Alibaba, Google Greentea |
| Code Reusability | It provides high code reusability. | It provides limited code reusability. |
| Use Cases | It can be used to build simple as well as complex applications. | It can be used to build simple as well as complex applications. |
| Market Support | Since it is relatively new it has less market support. | It has better market support. |
Conclusion
After covering features of both flutter and react native, it is difficult to determine which framework is superior to the other. Both frameworks are good for application development but as we have seen above flutter is relatively better than react native. Although due to the fact that flutter is a relatively new framework, it will take time to gain more popularity and it is estimated that flutter will be the future of mobile development. If you have expertise in dart development, then certainly flutter is the better option to go for a while if the developer has strong knowledge of JavaScript with react then you should go for react-native. It is worth noting that both flutter and react-native can be used for cross-platform development in which flutter provides more features.
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