Difference Between React Native and Flutter

React Native is an open-source framework backed by Facebook which was released on GitHub that covered the way for combining both iOS and Android platform’s native APIs. However, Google’s Flutter is a comprehensive move, which allows you to create Android and iOS highly responsive native apps at the same time.

Flutter is a mobile app SDK (software development kit) built by Google that allows us to create high-performance, high-fidelity and extremely fast applications that can run on multiple platforms like Android and iOS. Now, what makes flutter powerful as it has a thin layer of C/C++ code but most of its systems are implemented in Dart (Dart is a general-purpose programming language originally developed by Google ) that developers can easily approach read, replace, or remove. This gives developers tremendous control over the system. 

• 42% of developers are reported to use React Native for cross-platform application development. (Source: Statista)
• 11.5% of developers prefer to use React Native for its native tools and libraries. (Source: StackOverflow)
• 39% of the population use Flutter to build cross-platform mobile applications worldwide. (Source: Statista)
• Flutter is loved by 68.8% of the developing community. (Source: StackOverflow)

Installation  

• React Native: Can be installed using Node Package Manager (NPM) while using macOS you need to have the HomeBrew package manager as well. So for developers having NPM installed the process is really easy whereas other developers would need to learn the ins and outs of NPM.
• Flutter: Supports binary download straight from GitHub for a particular platform. Also in the case of macOS after downloading the file needs to be added as a PATH variable.

UI Component and Development API  

• React Native: Relies heavily on third-party libraries to access most of the native modules.
• Flutter: Flutter is set of components comprising of each native module required which excludes the necessity of a third-party library. Also, Flutter is full of WIDGETS.

Developer Productivity  

• React Native: All IDEs support JavaScript so there will never be a problem regarding usage according to the developer which gives a great amount of liberty to every developer involved.
• Flutter: Dart is not being a regular language in terms of usage, there is a distinct lack of support in many IDEs and text editors.

Community Support  

• React Native: Being the framework which was released first out of the two, it is imminent to get a good amount of support and it surely did since 2015 as it is strongly maintained by the developer on GitHub and from many more communities across the world.
• Flutter: Flutter too is on a rapid rise in terms of community support but then again it will take some amount of time for resources to be made available which will eventually enable developers to solve common issues.

Testing Support  

• React Native: Again heavily relies on third-party tools for integration and UI testing.
• Flutter: Flutter has its own features to test apps at 3 levels which are unit test, widget test and integration test.