React Native and Flutter are the popular cross-platform app development frameworks.
Both of these frameworks offer a range of benefits that include reuse of code, robust support, massive online community support, and so on.
While both of these leading cross-platform frameworks offer a similar value proposition, they also are quite distinct from one another.
Although a late entrant compared to React Native, Flutter offers more built-in tools which ensure that you are less dependent on using third-party tools.
React Native is supported by Facebook and Flutter gets full support from Google.
There is a constant debate happening on Flutter vs React Native among the developer community. Developers often get confused while choosing the best amongst them.
Even though both of these are very robust platforms for hybrid mobile application development, Flutter offers more benefits. Some of the advantages that the Flutter framework has over React Native include the following.
Six advantages of Flutter over React Native
Here are some of the most popular benefits of Flutter over React Native.
Amazing store of UI components and built-in APIs
Flutter offers a rich repository of UI rendering components.
These components help the developer to design the user interface quickly without compromising on its performance and customization.
In the case of React Native, the developer has to depend upon the third-party tools to make device-specific, local UI rendering.
This in turn can limit the scope of customization and compromise the performance of the app.
Flutter offers you built-in components that give the developers access to state management, APIs, app testing, navigation elements, and other such important libraries.
This access to the native modules makes Flutter a popular choice for developers who are planning to build a mobile app.
Flutter apps feature a consistent UI
If you want to build apps for both Android and iOS, you will find that React Native provides platform-specific UI components.
This means that both the platforms have some unique UI elements that make their user interface distinct from the other.
Therefore, if you want to make simple changes to the UI of the app, then you will need to perform multiple testing on both platforms.
Additionally, you cannot bypass the platform-specific elements that are present in one platform but not so in the other.
Compared to this, Flutter has its UI toolkit which ensures that your app UI looks consistent in both the operating system.
Furthermore, if you use Flutter you can easily introduce any new feature to the UI of the apps that are running on iOS and Android.
Therefore, if you are focusing on providing your users a consistent feel across different operating systems, then you should choose the Flutter framework to make your mobile apps.
Developing low footprint apps
The user of a mobile app always looks for smaller sizes.
If the app size is bigger, then not only do you have to spend a whole lot of time downloading the app but also provide dedicated storage space in your smartphone for it.
The app developed with the help of Flutter is smaller in size because the APIs that are used by Flutter are comparatively smaller than what React Native uses.
Making high-performance apps
If you want to make high-performance apps, then you should choose the Flutter framework as it edges out React Native in most of the performance tests.
The reason behind the faster performance of the Flutter app over the React Native is because in React Native the language used is JavaScript that uses a bridge to interact with the native components.
If you use Flutter, then this bridge is not required which improves the run times and also makes the development process much faster.
App release automation support
Releasing mobile apps on platform-specific stores takes a lot of time and effort and this is especially true for mobile app projects that are made for cross-platforms.
If you use React Native you will not find well-defined steps in its official documentation that could help you in automation in the app releasing process.
You have to go through the manual steps for releasing the app in either the App Store or on the Play Store.
On the other hand, in Flutter you will find a clearly defined command-line interface for this process.
The developer has to follow the steps in documentation and by using the command line tools they can easily launch the app in their respective markets (App Store and Play Store).
QA testing support
One of the big drawbacks of React Native is that it does not provide any official support for testing the app for various functionalities.
While you can make use of several unit test frameworks that are already available in JavaScript, the lack of comprehensive official support forces you to use third-party tools such as Appium.
On the other hand, if you are using Flutter, then you will get inbuilt testing features through which you can do integration tests, unit tests, and widget tests.
Furthermore, you also get well-defined documentation for these tests.
Conclusion
Although both these platforms have their advantages and weaknesses, when you compare them side-by-side you will find that Flutter has a slight edge over React Native.
It is packed with a range of tools, comes with built-in support, and also provides you documentation help.
All these puts together show that while React Native is a great framework, Flutter offers greater value.