Flutter and React Native are innate competitors as these two are the most used multi-platform mobile app frameworks. Debates happen, developers dispute, and in the end, apps are dispatched, using one platform or the other.
So The Question is Which Platform is Better? React Native or Flutter?
The smart reply is, the one that senior engineers will say with a bold attitude, is: “It depends. Both of them have their benefits and drawbacks, and in the end, it is a decision about tradeoffs.”
But that’s barely a satisfying answer. It’s like stating the best player in the NBA is “depends on their role”. That doesn’t produce talk show hype, drive clicks, and increase engagement!
So let’s create some drama and ruffle some feathers, and discuss how one of them is better than the other, i.e Flutter Development or React Native Development.
What does Matter?
Here, we can talk about all the things that don’t actually matter: developer experience, performance, native integrations, Dart vs JavaScript, standard libraries, and much more.
The title is provoking; I’ll give you that. But this article isn’t just click-bait! In reality, I am going to do a deeper delve into most of those things in a more fine way later in this blog.
But let’s come to the point. What actually matters?
The answer lies not in the technical factors of React Native and Flutter at all. It is not actually something that a mobile app development company probably cares about.
Whereas to the people making decisions about what to use for their next app development, this is what matters right now:
Hiring
Hiring developers is famously challenging right now. Tech salaries are very high and supply is restricted. Finding qualified developers that like to work for your company is really hard these days.
Flutter developers are passionate about their work and possess high-quality skills — this is in no way taking the favor of the Flutter development community! They just aren’t high in quantity as compared to React Native App Development community. It’s not like you have a massive pool of Dart developers to choose from. You’re always training, most likely every hire.
On the other hand, React Native developers have an extensive pool to draw from, and that’s the JavaScript community. JavaScript (and its popular form, TypeScript) is until now the most famous programming language in the world and still growing fast. React.js, which powers React Native app development service, is one of the biggest coding frameworks globally. It’s still hard to employ, but the pool of developers to draw from is far bigger than Flutter. Taking a React developer and transforming them into a reasonably productive React Native application developer is a straightforward process.
You may also like to read: 20 Most Popular React Libraries to Consider in 2022
Sharing Code, Knowledge, and Developers
While hiring is the biggest, most impactful element of the decision to use Flutter or React Native, there’s one more very important one I should note, and that is sharing code, knowledge, and developers.
What’s more pleasing than a good code? Less code. And one of the finest ways to have smaller code is to share code between numerous apps. It can reduce your starting development time and simplify maintenance long-term.
Chances are, your company is utilizing React.js, or at least JavaScript, in its websites, web apps, servers, and many more. Being capable to share code between your React.js app, Node servers, and others is a massive superpower for React Native — and something that Flutter isn’t nearly as powerful on.
Beyond code sharing, it’s also a huge benefit to be able to communicate knowledge between your web, backend, iOS, and Android teams. You can have shared wikis, Slack channels, and more. Furthermore, there are a lot of resources about React Native, React, and JavaScript online such as tutorials, blogs, StackOverflow Q&A, and more.
You can too also share actual developers between these app development projects, and be capable of ramping up headcount on a crucial task without having to re-train nearly as much.
In the end, it’s difficult to see past these totally critical factors when making a choice between React Native and Flutter.
Also Read: Flutter vs React Native – What to Choose in 2022?
