React Native vs. Flutter: Which one to choose for 2023?

Companies have shifted their focus to mobile products as a result of the global success of mobile development. Although frameworks were initially used to create hybrid apps that included a website, they have evolved into entirely native apps with hybrid capabilities.

This is simply great! React Native and Flutter are now the two most widely used frameworks. Although their structures and approaches are very different, their goals are comparable, if not the same, across the two.

This article explains how each of these frameworks achieves what it does, as well as pointing out some pros and cons.

1. Reactive and Flutter, what are they?

Facebook Inc. created the Reactive UI toolkit. React Native allows a developer to write unique code for each platform. When developing platforms (iOS and Android) with React Native, a separate optimization is needed for each platform, which makes it slower than Flutter.

Some of the top React Native developers include; ChopDawg.com, STX Next, and Spire Digital. The top React Native applications are; Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Skype, and Tesla. The Google framework Flutter, which is also more recent, gives you the tools you need to create a fully native app that works on iOS, Android, and other platforms. Although the end result is the same, Flutter and React Native differ greatly.

The fact that Flutter compiles the application to native code is one of, if not the major, differences. It doesn't involve another program executing and then communicating information to a native project. This basically implies that any software you create will be translated into a native language that the iOS and Android devices can immediately comprehend. In the majority of specific cases, this might result in higher overall application performance. Top Flutter mobile apps include; Alibaba, Google Ads, Philips Hue, etc.

2. Reactive or Flutter: Pros and Cons

First of all, we will show you the key difference between React Native and Flutter.

Flutter uses Dart and React Native use JavaScript

React Native lets coders develop a mobile app using JavaScript, which does not need any introduction. Needless to say, Javascript has received enormous popularity, be it as web, mobile, or server-specific source code.

On the other hand, Dart is pretty new to mobile app developers. It uses modern features of multiple languages in order to code native apps beautifully. Again, you should keep in mind that there are not any styling or JS components. Also, there is no separation of style, templates, and data files. Dart is easy-to-use for those developers who have experience developing an app in different OOP languages, such as Java and C++.

Flexibility And Stability

In terms of stability, there is not a significant difference, as both of these frameworks are managed by well-established tech communities.

If we talk about customization and flexibility, Flutter renders a rich set of customized widgets in order to build captivating experiences. On the other side, React Native offers a seamless user experience via direct communication with the native platforms.

Flutter is still trying to make a reliable position in this highly competitive market due to the recent stable release, whereas React Native is enjoying the top position in the list of hybrid mobile app development tools.

Development Time of An App

Leveraging cross-platform, some of the best mobile app development companies in India already save precious time that is generally spent coding mobile apps in multiple languages.

In addition to that, React Native and Flutter are committed to providing a quick time-to-market for a mobile app. You can use any ready-to-use components and third-party libraries to build a mobile app. A high-quality and customized range of widgets helps in creating a mobile app in less time as compared to native app development.

Performance

Flutter wins over here because of its simplicity.

Although React Native is quite popular for providing excellent UX on both platforms, Flutter has the extra advantage of reusing the same code, whereas in this case React Native is less suitable because of its architecture. One more advantage of Flutter is that it has a JavaScript layer that makes communication easier with other native components.

Community and ecosystem

React Native has been around longer and currently has a bigger community than Flutter. Most of the common issues in React Native app development have already been answered on StackOverflow. Because React Native is part of the JavaScript ecosystem, help is readily available.

While the Flutter ecosystem is smaller, it is expanding rapidly and has a very enthusiastic community. Flutter packages are listed on pub.dev (the equivalent of NPM for Dart). Flutter is growing faster and has better maintainer support than React Native.

Understanding differences between Flutter and Reactive that you can define pros and cons of each framework:

Pros of React Native

Community support: since it is an open-source framework, doubts and confusions can be easily solved by asking peer developers. And also, developers will be encouraged to share their codes and products and grow the community even more every single day.

Code reusability is a handy feature as most of the functions and codes are similar for the iOS and Android platforms. This helps reduce the time required in the development process, thus improving the entire system’s efficiency.

Third-party plugin and library support: A lot of third-party libraries consisting of complex functions can be easily imported and utilized in your app; this helps reduce the complexity of the entire process, and the libraries are tested so that there are very few chances of creating buggy codes while using these libraries.

Cons of React Native

Difficult to Learn: Learning app development can be pretty difficult using React Native, specifically for newbies who are just trying their hand in the world of application development. Other than that, to get started with React Native, one has to have experience in native app development. So, React Native is not the best option to start your app development career with.

Poor Memory Management: React Native does not do well with memory management because of its Javascript-based framework. Complex computations are also handled in a very inefficient way in React Native. Hence, it is the best framework choice for developing apps that are supposed to perform complex analytical tasks.

Low security: The open-source nature of Java also comes with its drawbacks. Every resource is open to the public. The apps that are developed using React Native have very low security and can be penetrated by another developer with ease. So, when it comes to building apps related to banking or transactions, developers stay away from using React Native.

Pros of Flutter

Fast developmental process: Using Flutter, there is no need to write two different codes while developing iOS and Android applications. Because Flutter has its own UI and widget libraries, apps on different operating systems use the same UI. Less testing is required by the developer as both the apps are identical; checking one ensures that the other will be the same.

Multiple device support: Flutter makes sure that the user will enjoy the same interface and features even if they are using a smartphone with an older processor or an older version of iOS or Android. This helps maintain uniformity and makes sure that a wider group of customers can use its products.

Faster code writing and implementation: Flutter is a dynamic and flexible platform compared to other application development frameworks. Another unique feature of Flutter is “hot reload,” which allows the developer to make changes in the code and see the direct impact of those changes on the app instantly, thus making the testing process a lot easier.

Cons of Flutter:

Lack of enough libraries: Flutter is a relatively new platform, so although it is open source and has pre-built libraries, the number of such features remains minimal. It is up to the developer to create libraries from scratch and upload them to the community to help others.

Large file sizes: The Flutter file size can become enormous and sometimes hard to manage due to its enormous size. This is considered a drawback, as this feature might move the developer to another platform with more compact files.

3. The future of React Native and Flutter

Even though many other hybrid frameworks are on the market, we continue to see tight competition between Flutter and React Native. The IT community considers them to be the most advanced solutions today. Nevertheless, they have many competitors, including Xamarin, Cordova, Ionic, and others.

Let’s start with StackOverflow statistics. The category of “most loved technologies” shows how many specialists began using a particular tool and would like to continue working with it. By this criterion, Flutter’s score is 68.17%, while React Native has 58.08% of voices.

The statistics present the number of contributors to open-source projects. React Native has 9.1k contributors, while this number for Flutter reaches 13k.

Both of these frameworks are in use, are becoming mainstream, and will be market leaders in the future because of their benefits.

Conclusion

We have compared two popular hybrid mobile app development frameworks, Flutter and React Native. I hope most of the doubts have been cleared. These two frameworks have increased the demand for cross-platform mobile apps. They not only save time but also reduce the cost of mobile application development.

If you are a business owner and want to have your own mobile app, you can contact MLTech Soft. We provide you with mobile app development that uses advanced technologies and libraries to make your app work right out of the box.