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Cross-platform mobile development

When to choose cross-platform development, what the advantages and limitations of the approach are, and how to compare React Native, Flutter, and Kotlin.

  • Brief overview of React Native, Flutter, and Kotlin
  • React Native, Flutter and Kotlin compared across key parameters
  • Speed and ease of development
  • Development cost

What this article is about

  1. When developing a mobile app, businesses want a multiplatform product with minimal costs and the fastest possible time to production.

  2. A cross-platform app can solve this kind of task, whether for customer-facing products or apps designed to automate internal company processes.

  3. Frameworks and programming languages for building cross-platform apps usually emerge and evolve in response to this kind of task.

  4. They form the foundation of development, onto which each new team adds its own code.

  5. How to choose the right tool for quickly building a stable app with high

Performance

while keeping costs to a minimum? In this article, KT.Team experts compare React Native and Flutter with the Kotlin programming language, assessing their simplicity, development speed, popularity (the availability of developers in the CIS market and the number of ready-made solutions for common processes), and performance.

Brief overview of React Native, Flutter, and Kotlin

  1. Created by Facebook in 2015.

  2. Simplifies mobile app development by allowing the same code to be used across platforms.

  3. It ranks second (42.62%) in the popularity rating of web frameworks used by developers.

  4. It has more than 100,000 stars on GitHub.

  5. React Native apps: Facebook, Instagram, Skype, Tesla. Flutter.

  6. A free, open-source framework from Google.

  7. Released in 2014 for building cross-platform mobile apps.

  8. More than 2 million developers choose Flutter, citing fast development, rich functionality, and the ability to build beautiful user interfaces.

  9. GitHub rating: more than 150,000 stars.

  10. Flutter apps: Alibaba.com, Birch Finance, Google Ads, Grab. Kotlin.

  11. A programming language created by JetBrains in 2011. In 2017, Google announced Kotlin as the official programming language for Android.

  12. More than 60% of all developers use Kotlin to build secure, high-performance software with minimal bugs.

  13. Kotlin apps: Coursera, Evernote, Pinterest, Trello, Uber.

Speed and ease of development

  1. Development speed depends not only on the technology itself, but also on how many apps have already been built with it.

  2. A framework's or language's popularity indicates a large number of ready-made solutions for common application processes and tasks. React Native.

  3. The clear leader thanks to the ability to write in JavaScript, which gives access to a vast pool of libraries and ready-made solutions and significantly speeds up development.

  4. Moreover, by studying many successful React Native and JavaScript case studies, developers begin to find solutions for complex technical problems that often arise during development more quickly. KT.Team's team portfolio also includes React Native projects, such as a corporate app for receiving materials at construction sites. Flutter.

  5. It uses Material Design to create UI solutions and allows changes to be loaded into the app almost instantly without recompilation, reducing development time.

  6. It is also a great option for developing a cross-platform mobile app (Android and iOS) and a web app, since you only need one backend.

  7. However, Flutter still falls short of React Native in ease of building Android and iOS solutions with complex UI, where different code has to be added for each platform. Kotlin may be one of the most comfortable languages for mobile app development, with a simple and intuitive architecture plus a rich set of features and tools.

  8. The language structure will appeal to developers with Java experience.

  9. However, compared with React Native and Flutter, Kotlin has the slowest app creation process, which means initial project setup may take more time.

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Development cost

The more expensive a developer's services are, the higher the cost of mobile app development, and vice versa. When comparing frameworks, you also need to factor in the rates of specialists who work with the programming languages used by each framework. In terms of solution cost, our ranking from lowest to highest looks like this. React Native is the cheapest option, mainly because JavaScript developers charge moderate rates and are relatively easy to find in the CIS market.

On average, a React Native specialist costs 197,000 rubles per month (as of April 2023). However, compared with other options, React Native is often still more cost-effective because businesses can hire qualified specialists faster due to the framework's and JavaScript's popularity, and can also get a cross-platform app relatively quickly.

03

Flutter reasonably belongs in second place, given the affordable rates for developers and the ability to build a cross-platform app for mobile and web. On average, a Flutter developer can earn 191,000 rubles per month, likely because demand in the CIS market is relatively low. Kotlin is the most expensive option for several reasons.

04

First, it is only suitable for Android development, so a cross-platform requirement will force you to spend money on an additional team. Second, a Kotlin developer earns around 253,000 rubles per month on average.

Technology popularity

The more popular a technology is, the larger its community and the better its support. In development, that means faster access to ready-made solutions, better security, and greater stability. Flutter gradually took first place in the ranking of cross-platform mobile frameworks: according to Statista, 42% of developers worldwide used it in 2021, which is 4% more than React Native.

Still, the rivalry continues: 16.48% of professional developers preferred React Native, while only 13.35% chose Flutter. React Native holds a clear second place, as demand for the framework in cross-platform mobile development has declined in recent years.

According to the Statista data mentioned above, 42% of developers used it in 2019-2020, and by 2021 that figure had already dropped to 38%. As the youngest technology, Kotlin is only gaining momentum.

According to Statista, only 9.16% of developers used it in 2022.

A similar result appears in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2021: 9.09% of professional IT specialists said they like working with Kotlin.

Performance

To be honest, cross-platform solutions will never reach the performance level of native development.

In other words, request processing speed and application stability will always be somewhat worse, because the range of possibilities when building multiplatform apps is limited. With that in mind, you should assess how closely cross-platform technologies can match native development metrics.

Flutter can deliver high-quality results even on complex projects, since it makes it possible to build large, resource-intensive apps without sacrificing request processing speed.

Another advantage is its own UI rendering engine, which helps deliver a smooth and responsive interface.

Kotlin can be used to build high-performance Android apps with a convenient modular system and integration with native APIs, which make direct interaction with native Android components possible. Of course, this will take more time during development, but it will let you use device resources as efficiently as possible. React Native lags behind both alternatives, sacrificing

Performance

favoring simplicity and accessibility, which can lead to delays in component loading and rendering. Do not skimp on experienced developers if you plan to build a complex or resource-intensive app, and the result will satisfy you.

Conclusions

  1. The choice of framework or language depends directly on your business goals.

  2. If you need to build a relatively simple app quickly and at low cost, React Native is the right choice.

  3. Given JavaScript's popularity, finding an IT specialist will not take long, and neither will development itself, thanks to its simplicity and accessibility.

  4. If you need a stable, high-performance app that can serve tens of thousands of users and process their requests quickly, consider Kotlin and Flutter. The process will take longer and cost more, but in the end you will get an advanced solution with performance close to native.

  5. If you are not sure which framework or language fits your tasks, consult an IT company with experience delivering projects on all three technologies and the ability to give an objective recommendation based on its own practice.

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