NativeScript Vs. Flutter: What’s Better For Mobile App Development & Why?

A Smith
Quick Code
Published in
4 min readAug 29, 2023

The digital world is becoming a norm today, making mobile app development a necessity for businesses. But why is there so much rage between NativeScript and Flutter within app development settings? Both options are well-known frameworks designated to develop applications for businesses.

Today, many companies prefer them to deliver cutting-edge app development. As a result, the choice of framework has begun the debate between the two most prominent app development technologies.

Both frameworks fit well in developing Android and iOS applications and work as a development technology of the day to deliver high-quality applications easily.

Using these tools makes writing code easier, improves your app’s performance, and increases the number of users that can access it. Additionally, they reduce the time you need to spend developing your application, helping you save money.

Both frameworks are well known because of their capabilities to deliver amazing applications.

We know it is not easy to choose the best of well-known frameworks. Hence, we cover edge-to-edge differences between Flutter and NativeScript to make the choice easier.

About Flutter

Flutter uses Google’s Dart language, which is open-source cross-platform. Moreover, Flutter App Development capabilities provides a richer UI toolkit to create cross-platform applications using a single codebase. With Flutter, it’s possible to create UIs that are expressive and flexible while still having native performance.

Moreover, the Flutter platform has the support of Google developers and a large developer community that’s always improving it. Many bugs raised by budding developers have been dealt with quickly by the Flutter team.

Why choose Flutter app development?

  • Simple and fast development. The advantage of Flutter’s Hot Reloading concept is that it allows code changes to be displayed on emulators, simulators, and hardware right away.
  • A high level of productivity. With Flutter, you can create apps for iOS and Android using the same codebase.
  • Compatibility. With widgets being an integral part of the app and not the platform, users will encounter fewer compatibility issues. As a result, less testing time is required.

About NativeScript

NativeScript is a JavaScript framework for building native mobile apps. In addition, it allows you to develop native iOS and Android apps using the essential tools and APIs. As a result, it will help you build apps faster and with fewer lines of code since you can share code between your apps.

As NativeScript enables you to translate between programming languages, you can create native applications. JavaScript, TypeScript, or Angular allow you to directly tap into device APIs.

Why choose Native Script

Native Performance

With NativeScript, you get smooth animations and responsive interfaces, leveraging the native APIs of your platform. In terms of performance, the apps are similar to native apps since there’s no abstraction layer.

Native API Access

NativeScript lets developers control the behavior and appearance of apps directly using native APIs. This makes it easy to integrate platform-specific features.

Familiarity With Development

NativeScript is easier for developers with prior experience in JavaScript, TypeScript, or Angular. With this in mind, it makes sense for teams with web development skills to use it.

Flutter vs. NativeScript: Head-to-Head Framework Comparison

Architecture

Using a layered architecture, Flutter can integrate simple or complex components according to the application’s needs. Alternatively, NativeScript uses an architectural pattern based on MVC or MVVM, allowing enterprise-grade applications to benefit from certain features and facilitate module management.

Popularity

Each framework has its advantages and applications. To determine which framework to use, designers and developers seem to consider popularity.

With Flutter, native modules communicate directly without requiring a communication bridge. Due to this, Flutter uses the Skia graphics library to update the UI as changes are made to the app’s view, thereby improving performance.

Compared with other cross-platform frameworks, NativeScript does not offer very high or very low performance. Their performance is improved by combining manual tools with instrumentation.

Performance

Flutter performs better than its competitors. Due to the availability of native components by default, a bridge isn’t needed to communicate between native modules.

A smaller number of frames were discarded. Flutter uses Skia for graphics, enabling dynamic redrawing of the user interface. A frame rate of 60 frames per second is excellent for Flutter.

NativeScript will perform between low and high. Animations based on NativeScript run efficiently at 120 frames per second. Furthermore, it allows for the efficient offloading of certain long-running processes.

Creating complex applications

Flutter is not well-suited for building complex applications, but it is perfect for prototyping and creating MVPs. Unlike other frameworks, NativeScript is well suited to developing complex and advanced applications with high performance.

This framework offers official documents for developing complex apps, such as guidelines, third-party libraries, and plugins.

Conclusion

There are a lot of mobile frameworks to choose from when building a mobile app. While NativeScript and Flutter each have their strengths, assessing your app’s needs and goals is important before choosing a framework.

Using NativeScript or Flutter, you can build cross-platform, beautiful apps. The two have very different performance, infrastructure, and plugins, so you won’t easily decide.

If you want to develop a mobile app that meets high-quality standards, hire Flutter developers today. A complete testing and debugging framework, Flutter offers many additional features.

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A Smith
Quick Code

Albert Smith is a Digital Marketing Manager with Hidden Brains, a leading enterprise web & mobile app development company specializing in IoT, Cloud & Big Data