When Google released Flutter, the whole digital world was interested to see if it will last and how it will perform against other major frameworks like Ionic, Xamarin, Cordova. No one argued React Native’s total dominance. But a few years later, people started to ask: “Will Flutter replace React Native?”.

As Gareth Smith and Karol Wegner discuss the billion-dollar question, we also need to ask one more thing: “Will Flutter live up to its hype”.

How it started

When Google released Flutter in 2017, the programming community welcomed the framework with huge hype. But did it live to the expectations just like React Native did (check out this article about Flutter vs React Native)?

What makes Flutter unique?

Flutter is a software development kit (SDK) that can be used to develop and run applications on iOS, Android, and the web. Flutter uses Google’s open-source project Dart, a programming language optimized for mobile app development. Flutter renders its widgets natively, so it only builds UI elements that show up on your device — this means it renders fewer elements, so your app loads faster. Since Flutter is not dependent on the bridge, you can build a sophisticated app entirely with Flutter.

Will Flutter really challenge React Native?

Before making a Flutter vs React Native performance comparison, we need to mention that Facebook’s product is used as a benchmark in all comparisons. For Flutter to overtake React Native, it should really stand out by quite a lot.

Ease of use

Dart is an incredibly powerful programming language that makes writing apps for the Flutter framework effortless. Dart and Flutter’s killer combination has been making waves in the app development world by proving that mobile apps can be sleek, functional, and fast with little work and even less code. The tricky part is that Dart isn’t easy to use. The language itself is sophisticated, challenging to learn, and often not worth the time investment. Dart’s popularity among programmers is relatively low, and it doesn’t seem likely to change soon. React Native, on the other hand, uses Javascript. And we all know how popular it is among app developers.

Community and popularity

React Native and Flutter are two of the most popular cross-platform development tools available — with StackOverflow’s survey reporting that React Native sits at #6 with 11.50% of users. In comparison, Flutter sits at #9 with 7.20%. Combined, they represent the two most widely-used cross-platform development tools across the developer community.

Both share a significant presence in the developers’ communities, such as GitHub, Reddit, Gitter, Facebook, and Twitter, among others.

If we compare Flutter and React Native and have to choose which one has a better community, we will probably hear different answers so that we can call it even.

Interest over time

React Native or Flutter? Which grabs more interest than the other? Well, according to Google Trends (past five years), we can see that React Native peaked against Flutter somewhere in April 2018. After 2020, interest in Flutter has grown significantly and is now more than twice as trendy.

Is the growing madness justified?

Growing mad from the Flutter framework is probably justified. The framework is proven to be an excellent tool for creating Minimum Viable Products. All new startups should consider using it — it is perfect for teams that are working on a shoestring budget.

Flutter’s single code base allows for the simple and efficient development of cross-platform mobile apps. Its easily accessible API lets developers run applications on Android, iOS, and Web. The platform is quickly growing in popularity and is quickly becoming the user interface development solution of choice for businesses all over the world.

Conclusion

Flutter is the new hot kid on the block in the world of mobile development. While it’s still in its infancy, Flutter has already garnered tons of buzz in the industry for its cross-platform capabilities and easy-to-use UI library, as well as its compatibility with native features (such as support for Material Design).

Will Flutter replace React Native?

While Flutter becomes more and more popular among coders, React Native is still here. And if you ask: “Will Flutter replace React Native?”, the answer is “Most probably yes.” But not today.