Flutter vs React Native: Which is best for your idea?
Flutter and React Native are both great open-source frameworks for complex cross platform development. But which one is best for you?
What is cross platform development?
Cross platform development is a certain type of development where you have a great idea for an app or business, which needs to be on multiple platforms, usually IOS, Android and Web. Frameworks like Flutter and React Native have a single codebase that can be adapted, compiled and run on multiple platforms of your choice.
Some examples of apps that you probably use made with these frameworks are: Google Ads, Alibaba, Facebook, Instagram and Bloomberg.
These frameworks increase developer efficiency and cost efficiency for companies (especially startups!) as they need only one or two developers for multiple platforms, rather than multiple groups of developers for each.
React Native, designed by Facebook, is the more popular option of the two. It was started by Facebook in 2015, and has nearly 100k GitHub stars as of October 2021. React Native is mostly made in JavaScript, and the main languages you will be using is JSX, a javascript — HTML fusion language and normal JavaScript. It is also able to be used with typescript.
Pros
Great, easy to navigate and descriptive Docs
Easy installation Process
Fast Testing Options
Cons
Lacks some compatibility features between multiple platforms
Is backed by a social media company that could potentially share your data
Flutter is a Google made framework with around 130k GitHub stars that comes with its own unique language, Dart. Dart is good for curly brace developers (developers with experience in Java, JavaScript, C++, etc.) as it is very syntactically similar to those languages. Dart is an object-oriented programming language. Flutter is mainly focused around mobile development, but definitely works with web too.
Pros
Flutter has components that adapt to the language you are exporting your app to (e.g if you app was web, flutter would transform a section in dart to a <div> in HTML)
Flutter is backed by a company that has a better presence publicly, Google
Cons
Tedious installation process
Not as good docs as React Native
Smaller community than React Native
Conclusion
In my small experiences with both of these frameworks, I would definitely choose React Native over Flutter as it is easier to use and develop with.
Flutter is still a great choice if you somehow have experience with Dart before, or if you want to keep something able to be changed in its respectable native language.
