React Native vs Xamarin: What Any CTO Needs to Know

When you consider the cost range for each stage in the development of a mobile app, it's not surprising that an increasing number of companies and organizations are turning to write-once-run-anywhere development frameworks like Xamarin and React Native. 

Both React Native (owned by Facebook) and Microsoft's Xamarin have gained a loyal following among enterprises wishing to reduce the time and costs involved in development, without sacrificing the quality, performance and user experience typical of true native mobile apps. Let's run a head-to-head comparison of React Native vs Xamarin and see which option is best for enterprises. 

Before selecting React Native vs Xamarin for your mobile app development solution, you'll want to evaluate the costs of procurement and implementation, so licensing is clearly an important factor in your decision-making process. The good news is that both Xamarin and React Native (RN) are open-source frameworks. React Native has always been, but in the case of Xamarin, it took the acquisition by Microsoft to open up access to the SDKs and tools. Had that deal not happened, the prohibitive licensing costs of Xamarin would probably have rendered it a far less popular cross-platform solution than it has ultimately become. Indeed, data from Stack Overflow shows an explosion in Xamarin interest among developers after the Microsoft acquisition. Questions posted about Xamarin jumped from 20% of the total questions asked on Stack Exchange at the beginning of 2016, to 45% during the second quarter of that year. 

It would be logical to presume that Microsoft's decision would place Xamarin and React Native on a level-playing field in terms of suitability for commercial use. However, there is a twist in this plot, provided courtesy of a rather ambiguous and awkward patent clause that Facebook imposes on the users of React Native. This clause reduces the desirability of RN as a solution for building commercial apps. 

While there isn't much to choose between the two competitors in terms of cost then, Xamarin's licensing approach presents less risk if your apps will become (or be integrated with) commercial products. 

One truly objective aspect of the Xamarin vs React Native comparison, though, is the degree of flexibility around IDE use. React Native wins hands down in this regard, since it can be used with just about any platform and text editor. That being said, some IDEs are more compatible with RN than others. The most popular platforms include:

• Nuclide
• Atom
• Sublime Text
• Visual Studio Code
• VIM Editor

Xamarin is almost a polar opposite to RN in terms of IDE flexibility, being almost completely unsuitable for any platform other than Visual Studio. It's not that using other platforms is impossible, but the nature of coding in C# is such that any IDE other than Visual Studio will frustrate your developers to the point of distraction. While a seasoned C# developer working on private projects might enjoy the challenge of using a different solution, Visual Studio is really the only viable option for commercial app development. If you're planning to have a development company build your apps for you, this lack of flexibility is unlikely to present an issue, but it's certainly something to consider if you will be developing in-house. 

To a certain extent, some of the characteristics already mentioned have an impact on a development framework's popularity. In the Xamarin vs React Native debate, for instance, Xamarin's dependency on Visual Studio, whilst presenting a drawback for flexibility, can actually be a benefit in terms of popularity. Visual Studio is after all a popular IDE with many features that simplify a developer's task. React Native is editor-agnostic, which can in its own way make it easier to use, as developers may be able to choose the IDE with which they are most comfortable. It also has some inbuilt features of its own which make it highly usable, such as the "hot reloading" that saves developers from having to recompile an app after code modifications. Though Xamarin has, in fact, received a similar feature with a recent update, React Native developers have been putting it to use for years. Both tools offer some pre-built components to help speed up and simplify app development. React Native should actually be a way out here, because its whole approach to mobile development is based on a modular structure, which minimizes the amount of code that must be compiled from scratch. This factor will become even more important as React Native matures. Right now though, its value is limited by a relatively small number of components available, and as many of these are written by third-party volunteer developers, the quality is sometimes questionable. 

1. Costs are likely to be similar for Xamarin and RN, but Xamarin's licensing conditions are more straightforward and less restrictive.
2. The design patterns used by Xamarin and RN are very different, but each approach holds appeal for developers and companies, depending on whether they are more familiar with JavaScript or ASP.NET technology.
3. React Native offers much more flexibility in the choice of an IDE than Xamarin.
4. Both frameworks use popular coding languages, so your company's language preference will play an important part in selecting whether to use React Native or Xamarin.
5. React Native's modular development methodology and flexibility make it slightly more usable than Xamarin, but the range of available components is limited. This will of course change as the framework matures and increases in popularity.