React Native vs Xamarin: A question worth millions of dollars

Citing the benefits of cross platform mobile app development over the native app development, the mobile app development has experienced an enormous shift. The major concern in the cross-platform mobile app development is the appropriate selection among the technologies.

React Native vs Xamarin: A question worth millions of dollars

The two major popular frameworks in the market are React Native and Xamarin. Both of them are at extreme competition due the communities of developers build around them.

The selection among them is one of the major concern for the successful delivery of the final product. In this context, let's compare both the technologies to arrive at the ultimate decision.

Learning curve
If the development team has experience in .NET development, then it'll be easy and quick to learn Xamarin development

In order to learn React Native, the development team should have experience in JavaScript. Moreover, the shift would be easy if the developer knows React. This is one of the main reason behind the success of react native development services.

Development environment options
As both the environments are open source frameworks, so there is no issue in finding and downloading. The difference appears in setting up the development environment. let's enlighten some facts.

Nowadays, Microsoft's Visual Studio is the most popular one for Xamarin development. The Android SDK (tool needed to create android apps) is already integrated. Another tool called XCode is needed which is available for Windows only. Now if the developer wants to develop an iOS app on the Windows Operating System, the only answer is NO. You can't do that. You need a Mac for the compilation purposes.

Contrary to this, you have to install Node and any development environment tool to write JavaScript. To speed up the react native development, you can use a tool named Expo. It's a cool tool that lets you try out your app on Android and iOS devices without requiring the Mac. Therefore, react native app development is comparatively easy for the starters

Community and Access Support
In comparison to React Native, Xamarin in on more mature since the release of the framework in 2011. After that Xamarin was acquired by Microsoft in 2016.

Today, Xamarin has over 1.4 million developers in the market. Therefore, there are lots of resources online for the developers willing to start with Xamarin development.

The React Native has a huge community that is very active. Being highly connected to react, the react native cross-platform technology inherits some developers from there too. This is making the react native evolve day by day.

It must be noted that React Native is not as mature as Xamarin.

Compilation time and development time
In the case of Xamarin, the compilation time increases as the application grows. Therefore, as the project scales, the compilation affects the development cost and time.

On the other hand, the react native is more effective as compared to Xamarin as there is no need to compile the code as its built on JavaScript. This clearly provides the advantage that React Native projects can be tested and modified rapidly.

Code deployment and app performance
From a human's perspective, there isn't any difference in the performance created with react native and Xamarin.

How can all of this affect your project?
As we have studied the various aspects of the Xamarin and React Native cross-platform app development. The selection among two can affect the development process time and app's future maintenance. However, it all depends on the development team's experience and knowledge. Opting among the two technologies can lead to the development of great applications particularly saving time and money. Therefore, the selection among the two is one of the major concern for a react native development company.