One fact I learned very quickly in my development journey is this: unlike those brightly colored popcorn shirts from the 90’s, software frameworks are not one size fits all. There are tons of different technologies to choose from, all with their own sets of pros and cons, as well as communities of people who will defend their obvious superiority over competing technologies ruthlessly on any internet platform they can find. This, coupled with the fact that new libraries and frameworks pop up, rise and then inevitably fall in popularity what feels like every other week, can make the task of choosing the right one for your next project feel pretty overwhelming. In this blog I’ll go over some of the differences between two of the biggest fish in the mobile development pond: React Native and Flutter, and hopefully it can be of use to someone struggling to choose between the two.

Let’s start with some basic introductions.

What is React Native?

React Native is an open source mobile framework designed by Facebook in 2015. It’s been around for a few years and in that time has gained a loyal following of developers who have used it to create many successful apps we know and love today, such as Facebook, Instagram and Skype. It can be used for both mobile and web applications, and is built on top of ReactJS and JavaScript, allowing developers to use the power of React to create user interfaces with elements that look native to Android, iOS and UWP.

What is Flutter?

Flutter is an open source software development toolkit that can be used for both mobile and web applications. It was created by Google in 2018, and although it hit the scene much later than React Native, it has quickly made a name for itself as it significantly decreases the time needed to build an app compared to native development. Flutter uses an object-oriented programming language called Dart. Some popular apps made with Flutter are eBay, Alibaba and Google Ads.

Now that we have a basic idea of what these two different technologies are, let’s get into some of the major differences.

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