Apache Cordova vs Flutter

Overview

Apache Cordova

Stacks686

Followers892

Votes218

GitHub Stars955

Forks345

Flutter

Stacks17.7K

Followers16.8K

Votes1.2K

GitHub Stars173.7K

Forks29.4K

Apache Cordova vs Flutter: What are the differences?

// Markdown Code

Key Differences Between Apache Cordova and Flutter

Cross-Platform Development Approach: Apache Cordova is a framework that allows developers to use web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) to create mobile applications. It uses a WebView container to render the application, which often results in lower performance. On the other hand, Flutter provides a platform-specific SDK and a rendering engine, enabling developers to build high-performance, native-like applications using a single codebase written in Dart.
User Interface: Cordova relies on web technologies to create the app's UI, resulting in a UI that is more similar to a responsive website rather than a native app. In contrast, Flutter offers a fully customizable and native-like UI, using its own set of widgets that can be easily customized to match specific platform guidelines.
Performance: Due to its reliance on web technologies, Cordova apps often suffer from performance issues, especially when compared to natively developed applications. Flutter, on the other hand, utilizes Dart's JIT (Just-In-Time) compiler during development and AOT (Ahead-Of-Time) compilation for release builds, resulting in faster performance and smooth animations.
Tooling and Ecosystem: Cordova offers a wide range of plugins that allow developers to access native device capabilities, making it suitable for integrating with various device functionalities. In comparison, Flutter provides a rich set of pre-built widgets and packages, along with extensive tooling support like hot reloading, which improves development efficiency.
Platform Support: Cordova supports a broad range of platforms, including iOS, Android, Windows, and more. It relies on the WebView available on those platforms to render the app's UI and provide access to device features. In contrast, Flutter currently supports iOS and Android, with beta support for web and desktop platforms, allowing for a more consistent and refined user experience.
Developer Productivity: Cordova allows developers with web development backgrounds to leverage their existing skills and knowledge, as it uses familiar web technologies. Flutter, although requiring familiarity with Dart, provides a more comprehensive development ecosystem with features like hot reloading and a reactive programming style that can boost developer productivity.

In summary, Apache Cordova is a cross-platform framework that uses web technologies for app development, resulting in a more web-like UI and performance limitations. Flutter, on the other hand, offers a native-like UI, better performance, extensive tooling support, and a more refined user experience across supported platforms.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on Apache Cordova, Flutter

Nick

CTO at Pickio

Jun 2, 2020

Decided

We built the first version of our app with RN and it turned out a mess in a while. A lot of bugs along with poor performance out of the box for a fairly large app. Many things, that native platform has, cannot be done with existing solutions for RN. For instance, large titles on iOS are not fully implemented in any of existing navigations libraries. Also there's painfully slow JSON bridge and many other small, yet annoying things. On the other hand Flutter became a really powerful and easy-to-use tool. A bit of a learning curve, of course, because of Dart, but it worth learning. Flutter offers TONS of built-in features, no JSON-bridge, AOT compilation for iOS.

491k views491k

Comments

Anonymous

CEO at ME!

Jun 7, 2020

Decided

While with Ionic it is possible to make mobile applications with only web technologies, Flutter is more performant and is easy to use if you are willing to learn Dart, which is a fun language. Plus, it has awesome documentation and, while its ecosystem isn't near as big as JavaScript's is, it has a good package manager called Pub and its packages are generally high quality.

403k views403k

Comments

Thuan

FE Lead at SOLID ENGINEER

Jun 16, 2020

Decided

Javascripts is the most populated language in the world.
Easy to learn & deployed production
Fast development
Strong community
Completed Documents
Native performance with lower RAM used.
Easy to handle native issues by using native code like Java / Objective C
Powered by Facebook.

666k views666k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Apache Cordova	Flutter
Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs that allow a mobile app developer to access native device function such as the camera or accelerometer from JavaScript. Combined with a UI framework such as jQuery Mobile or Dojo Mobile or Sencha Touch, this allows a smartphone app to be developed with just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.	Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.
Cross-platform (CLI) workflow;Platform-centered workflow;Hundreds of plugins	Fast development - Flutter's "hot reload" helps you quickly and easily experiment, build UIs, add features, and fix bug faster. Experience sub-second reload times, without losing state, on emulators, simulators, and hardware for iOS and Android.;Expressive UIs - Delight your users with Flutter's built-in beautiful Material Design and Cupertino (iOS-flavor) widgets, rich motion APIs, smooth natural scrolling, and platform awareness.;Access native features and SDKs - Make your app come to life with platform APIs, 3rd party SDKs, and native code. Flutter lets you reuse your existing Java, Swift, and ObjC code, and access native features and SDKs on iOS and Android.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 955	GitHub Stars 173.7K
GitHub Forks 345	GitHub Forks 29.4K
Stacks 686	Stacks 17.7K
Followers 892	Followers 16.8K
Votes 218	Votes 1.2K
Pros & Cons
Pros 48 Lots of plugins 35 JavaScript 26 Great community 25 Easy Development 18 Easy to learn Cons 2 No native performance 1 Hard to install 0 Hard to install	Pros 149 Hot Reload 126 Cross platform 107 Performance 90 Backed by Google 74 Compiled into Native Code Cons 29 Need to learn Dart 11 Lack of community support 10 No 3D Graphics Engine Support 8 Graphics programming 6 Lack of friendly documentation
Integrations
No integrations available	Android SDK Firebase Dart

What are some alternatives to Apache Cordova, Flutter?

Ionic

Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.

React Native

React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.

Xamarin

Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

NativeScript

NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms.

Framework7

It is a free and open source mobile HTML framework to develop hybrid mobile apps or web apps with iOS native look and feel. All you need to make it work is a simple HTML layout and attached framework's CSS and JS files.

Qt

Qt, a leading cross-platform application and UI framework. With Qt, you can develop applications once and deploy to leading desktop, embedded & mobile targets.

PhoneGap

PhoneGap is a web platform that exposes native mobile device apis and data to JavaScript. PhoneGap is a distribution of Apache Cordova. PhoneGap allows you to use standard web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for cross-platform development, avoiding each mobile platforms' native development language. Applications execute within wrappers targeted to each platform, and rely on standards-compliant API bindings to access each device's sensors, data, and network status.

Expo

It is a framework and a platform for universal React applications. It is a set of tools and services built around React Native and native platforms that help you develop, build, deploy, and quickly iterate on iOS, Android, and web apps.

Vue Native

Vue Native is a mobile framework to build truly native mobile app using Vue.js. Its is designed to connect React Native and Vue.js. Vue Native is a wrapper around React Native APIs, which allows you to use Vue.js and compose rich mobile User Interface.

Shoutem UI

Shoutem UI is a set of styleable components that enables you to build beautiful React Native applications for iOS and Android. All of our components are built to be both composable and customizable.

Related Comparisons

Apache Cordova vs Flutter: What are the differences?

// Markdown Code

Key Differences Between Apache Cordova and Flutter

Cross-Platform Development Approach: Apache Cordova is a framework that allows developers to use web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) to create mobile applications. It uses a WebView container to render the application, which often results in lower performance. On the other hand, Flutter provides a platform-specific SDK and a rendering engine, enabling developers to build high-performance, native-like applications using a single codebase written in Dart.
User Interface: Cordova relies on web technologies to create the app's UI, resulting in a UI that is more similar to a responsive website rather than a native app. In contrast, Flutter offers a fully customizable and native-like UI, using its own set of widgets that can be easily customized to match specific platform guidelines.
Performance: Due to its reliance on web technologies, Cordova apps often suffer from performance issues, especially when compared to natively developed applications. Flutter, on the other hand, utilizes Dart's JIT (Just-In-Time) compiler during development and AOT (Ahead-Of-Time) compilation for release builds, resulting in faster performance and smooth animations.
Tooling and Ecosystem: Cordova offers a wide range of plugins that allow developers to access native device capabilities, making it suitable for integrating with various device functionalities. In comparison, Flutter provides a rich set of pre-built widgets and packages, along with extensive tooling support like hot reloading, which improves development efficiency.
Platform Support: Cordova supports a broad range of platforms, including iOS, Android, Windows, and more. It relies on the WebView available on those platforms to render the app's UI and provide access to device features. In contrast, Flutter currently supports iOS and Android, with beta support for web and desktop platforms, allowing for a more consistent and refined user experience.
Developer Productivity: Cordova allows developers with web development backgrounds to leverage their existing skills and knowledge, as it uses familiar web technologies. Flutter, although requiring familiarity with Dart, provides a more comprehensive development ecosystem with features like hot reloading and a reactive programming style that can boost developer productivity.

Apache Cordova vs Flutter

Overview

Apache Cordova vs Flutter: What are the differences?