A Technical Comparison of Flutter and React Native

Technological advancements over recent years brought significant changes to the mobile app development landscape, undermining the traditional approach of developing platforms-specific apps. With the availability of several cross-platform frameworks, developers can now build a single app that would work on multiple platforms. As a result, it accelerates the development process, and developers can build a cross-platform app using the same codebase.

Cross-Platform App Development technologies are becoming increasingly popular because they ensure agile development and less resource deployment. The two most popular cross-platform mobile app development frameworks are React Native and Flutter. In this blog post, we’ll have a detailed comparison between these two frameworks. Subsequently, you can examine the best-suited mobile app development framework for your business. We’ll compare the two frameworks based on the following parameters:

• Programming Language
• Technical Architecture
• Installation
• Performance
• Documentation

 

Also read New Features and Enhancements In Flutter 1.9 With Dart 2.5

 

Programming Language

React Native

React Native uses JavaScript for building cross-platform applications. It is commonly used with React and other popular JavaScript frameworks. Since JavaScript is one of the most extensively used programming languages worldwide, developers may find it easy to adopt the React Native framework.

Flutter

Flutter uses a dedicated programming language called Dart. It was introduced by Google in 2011. Although it is relatively easy to understand for Java developers (as it supports object-oriented programming), it is not as popular as JavaScript.

Dart has a great feature set and is easy to pick up. However, its use cases are limited in the developer community. On the other hand, JavaScript is widely used by web developers, thus giving React Native an edge over Flutter.
 

Technical Architecture

React Native

React Native development services rely heavily on JS runtime environment architecture, also known as JavaScript bridge. The JavaScript code is compiled into native code at runtime. React Native uses the Flux architecture.

Flutter

Flutter app development services use Dart-based programming. The framework enjoys the benefit of several in-built components, so it’s bigger in size and does not require the bridge to communicate with native modules. Flutter uses the Skia C++ engine which has all the protocols, compositions, and channels.

React Native uses the JavaScript bridge to communicate with the native modules, which results in poor performance. However, Flutter engine has most of the native components in the framework itself and doesn’t need a bridge for communicating with the native components.

Installation

React Native

React Native framework is installed using the Node Package Manager (NPM). Developers can install NPM packages locally or globally. The process of installation is extremely easy for developers having a JavaScript background.

Flutter

Flutter is installed by downloading the binary for a specific platform from Github. In the case of macOS, an additional flutter.zip file needs to be downloaded and added as a PATH variable.

In terms of installation, both React Native and Flutter lack one-liner installation with native package managers for a specific OS. But Flutter installation involves an additional step for adding binary to PATH and downloading it from the source code. On the contrary, React Native is installed by using package managers and does not involve downloading the binary from source.
 

Performance

React Native

React Native app development uses JavaScript to interact with the native components via a bridge. This makes the process comparatively lengthy and also results in poor performance.

Flutter

Flutter, on the other hand, does not use a JavaScript bridge to connect with the device native components. Instead, the Dart code is compiled to native machine code. Doing that enhances its speed of development and ensures better performance. In addition, the fact that Flutter has set the animation standard at 60fps is a clear sign of its high performance.

Thus, in this case, Flutter clearly has an upper hand over React Native.
 

Documentation

React Native

React Native provides general documentation that you can use. But it is rather disorganized and clumsy. Moreover, it depends on external development kits quite extensively.

Flutter

Flutter, however, offers documentation that is very detailed and hence it is very helpful and thorough. It provides efficiently organized documentation which simplifies the job of the app developers.

Flutter’s thorough and seamless documentation obviously gives it leverage.
 

You may also be interested in reading What To Expect From React Native 0.62 With Flipper

Final words

React Native and Flutter both have their pros and cons but the real intention here is to fill the gap between the two platforms, iOS and Android.

If your development team is already experienced in JavaScript, React Native app development is the choice of framework for you. It is a reliable cross-platform mobile app development framework with strong community support.

On the other side,  if you are looking for a rapid cross-platform mobile development framework with strong documentation backing it, Flutter is the choice of framework for you. It offers customizable UI and ensures a fast development and outstanding performance which makes it an ideal mobile app development framework.

Hence the final choice for cross-platform mobile app development framework depends on your business requirements and future goals.

Why choose Oodles Technologies for Mobile App Development?

We are a Flutter app development company that provides end-to-end mobile app development services using Flutter and React Native. At Oodles, we have gained extensive experience in building successful native and cross-platform mobile apps. Our development team is skilled at using the popular mobile app development frameworks like React Native and Flutter to build competent cross-platform applications.