Xamarin vs. React Native

Xamarin is purposely used by Xamarin developers to write native Android and iOS apps that provide the same feel and user experience as in the case of native apps. The reason being, it allows users to share 90% of apps across platforms.

In other words, it is an ideal choice among developers who aims to share code, test, and business logic across multi-platforms. In addition, the software framework also helps to write cross platform applications in C# with Visual studio. A few best examples of the app developed by Xamarin development language are Storyo, Just Giving, The World Bank, APX, Olo, and many more.
Xamarin development tools

The technology stack of Xamarin comprises a list of tools and libraries that helps to boost the experience of developer and performance of apps developed on it. These include Xamarin Programming Language, C#, Xamarin-Supported IDEs (Visual Studio, XCode), Development Tools (NuGet, Xamarin Inspector, Prism, MFractor, Resharper), Design Tools (InVision, Sketch, Balsamiq, AdobeXD), Unit Testing Tools (NUnit, xUnit.net, Visual Studio Unit Testing Framework), and Beta Testing Tools (Instabug)

Xamarin Vs Xamarin.Forms

In addition to the aforesaid tools, Xamarin holds utter significance because of its popular feature, Xamarin forms. It is one of the well-known mobile development frameworks extending the .NET developer with tools and libraries. The beginners often get confused between Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms. Thus, to let them clear the meaning, here we have curated the difference between the two, that is Xamarin vs Xamarin.Forms.

Where Xamarin is a cross platform to write code that runs on multiple platforms, Xamarin. Forms, on the other hand, is an approach for executing mobile app development. It is a framework from Microsoft that is meant to create a cross platform user interface. Clearly, it is quite hard to predict the difference between the two as both are cross-platform for building native feel apps. However, a few attributes that make the concept of Xamarin vs Xamarin.Forms a little transparent are differences in application development time, development costs, UI complexity, update and maintenance, and app functionalities.

What is React Native?

React Native is an open-source framework created by Facebook Inc. to develop mobile apps. It is one of the finest JavaScript frameworks that let React Native developers create natively rendered applications for Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Web, and UWP.

At present, React Native is a leading solution for mobile development. The popular examples of mobile apps developed using this JavaScript framework include Instagram, Facebook, and Skype. Interestingly, it can be used either in existing iOS or Android projects or to develop an application from scratch.

Why use React Native?

React Native is a great source to bring into light innovative and high-performance mobile applications for business or technical use. The best part about using this one of the best JavaScript frameworks is that it is a faster and cheaper way to execute the goal of mobile development, in contrast to native apps. Other significant benefits that make this framework the picture-perfect choice among React Native developers are a complete development ecosystem, seamless user experience, time and cost-effectiveness, and native-like performance levels.

React Native development tools

According to a survey, 42% of software developers make use of React Native framework. Other than its incredible benefits, the popularity of the framework is because of its out-of-the-box tools that make the development process smoother and convenient.

The essential tools for React Native development include Ignite CLI, Expo, TypeScript, Microsoft CodePush, svgr.now.sh for react-native-SVG, ESLint, React Navigation, Native Base, Visual Studio Code, Reactotron, Redux, Redux Saga, Deox. The use of these top-hole development tools helps React Native developers to enhance code maintainability, keeping the base of code consistent, delivering apps faster, and making the scaling of the DEV team easier.

Xamarin vs. React Native. Side-by-Side Comparison

Both Xamarin and React Native empowers endless mobile applications in the software world. Now that there is a precise idea about React Native and Xamarin pros and cons, their uses and purposes, it would be easy to compare both on the basis of popularity, development languages & components, and other attributes such as performance, availability, and support & ecosystem. Let’s start with React Native vs Xamarin based on the essential factors.

Popularity

Though popularity is not a top key to identify the worth of software, it plays a significant role in future decision-making in the world of software or application development. Comparing React Native vs Xamarin in terms of popularity, the latter lacks behind for it is not extensively open-sourced and maintained only by Microsoft. Above all, The Stack Overflow Insights also made it evident that React Native stands high in the popularity list.

The popularity of React Native actually surpassed Xamarin in 2017. The latest 2020 Developer Survey proposes that in the race of React Native vs Xamarin, 57.9% of developers prefer the former for building applications.

Development language and Components

The matter of development languages also holds substantial significance when it comes to selecting the most suitable between the race of Xamarin vs React Native. Where the development on the former platform is based on .NET languages such as C# and F#, the latter on the other hand uses JavaScript. Although JavaScript was not initially meant for React Native, it works well with the framework.

Both JavaScript and C# are the ideal choice for developers who wish to develop mobile applications with ease. While C# is the fifth most popular programming language for development in 2021, JavaScript holds the seventh spot in the list. Additionally, both help to enhance productivity and save a developer from a steep learning curve.

Furthermore, the in-built components of the Xamarin vs React Native frameworks are another consideration that helps companies cherry-pick the best framework out of two. Talking specifically about React Native, it consists of some pre-built components, however, most of them are not adaptive. On the flip side, even though many beginners are not aware of Xamarin pros and cons, the fact that Xamarin.Forms present a complete cross platform UI toolkit that makes it a better performer for building customized apps.