Electron vs Flutter

Overview

Electron

Stacks11.6K

Followers10.0K

Votes148

Flutter

Stacks17.7K

Followers16.8K

Votes1.2K

GitHub Stars173.7K

Forks29.4K

Electron vs Flutter: What are the differences?

Electron and Flutter are both popular frameworks used for developing cross-platform applications. Here are the key differences between Electron and Flutter:

Programming Languages and Frameworks: Electron is a web-based framework that enables building desktop applications using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It leverages web technologies and popular frameworks like Node.js and Chromium. On the other hand, Flutter uses the Dart programming language, which is specifically designed for building user interfaces. Flutter provides a comprehensive UI framework and widget library, enabling developers to create visually rich and highly performant applications.
User Interface and Performance: Electron applications use web technologies for building user interfaces, which allows for flexibility and familiarity for web developers. However, this can also result in a less native-like feel and performance compared to applications built with native toolkits. Flutter, on the other hand, utilizes its own rendering engine and widget library, enabling developers to create highly customized and visually appealing user interfaces. Flutter's reactive UI framework allows for smooth animations and performance optimizations, resulting in a native-like experience across different platforms.
Platform Support: Electron primarily targets desktop platforms such as Windows, macOS, and Linux. It provides a consistent development and deployment experience across these platforms, allowing developers to create applications that run seamlessly on different operating systems. Flutter, on the other hand, is designed for building applications that run on mobile, web, and desktop platforms. It provides a unified codebase and UI framework for creating applications that can be deployed on Android, iOS, web browsers, and even embedded devices.
Ecosystem and Community: Electron has a mature and extensive ecosystem with a wide range of libraries, frameworks, and tools available for web development. It benefits from a vast web development community and resources. Flutter has gained significant popularity and has a growing ecosystem. It provides a rich set of UI components and libraries, and its hot-reload feature allows for rapid development and iteration. Flutter also benefits from the support of Google, which contributes to its continuous growth and improvement.

In summary, Electron is based on web technologies and allows for cross-platform desktop application development, while Flutter uses Dart and provides a reactive UI framework for building applications across multiple platforms.

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Advice on Electron, 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.

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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

Electron	Flutter
With Electron, creating a desktop application for your company or idea is easy. Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor, Electron has since been used to create applications by companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, and Docker. The Electron framework lets you write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. It is based on io.js and Chromium and is used in the Atom editor.	Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.
Use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with Chromium and Node.js to build your app.;Electron is open source; maintained by GitHub and an active community.;Electron apps build and run on Mac, Windows, and Linux.;Automatic updates;Crash reporting;Windows installers;Debugging & profiling;Native menus & notifications	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 -	GitHub Stars 173.7K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 29.4K
Stacks 11.6K	Stacks 17.7K
Followers 10.0K	Followers 16.8K
Votes 148	Votes 1.2K
Pros & Cons
Pros 69 Easy to make rich cross platform desktop applications 53 Open source 14 Great looking apps such as Slack and Visual Studio Code 8 Because it's cross platform 4 Use Node.js in the Main Process Cons 19 Uses a lot of memory 8 User experience never as good as a native app 4 Does not native 4 No proper documentation 1 Wrong reference for dom inspection	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 Electron, 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.

Apache Cordova

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.

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.

Related Comparisons

Programming Languages and Frameworks: Electron is a web-based framework that enables building desktop applications using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It leverages web technologies and popular frameworks like Node.js and Chromium. On the other hand, Flutter uses the Dart programming language, which is specifically designed for building user interfaces. Flutter provides a comprehensive UI framework and widget library, enabling developers to create visually rich and highly performant applications.
User Interface and Performance: Electron applications use web technologies for building user interfaces, which allows for flexibility and familiarity for web developers. However, this can also result in a less native-like feel and performance compared to applications built with native toolkits. Flutter, on the other hand, utilizes its own rendering engine and widget library, enabling developers to create highly customized and visually appealing user interfaces. Flutter's reactive UI framework allows for smooth animations and performance optimizations, resulting in a native-like experience across different platforms.
Platform Support: Electron primarily targets desktop platforms such as Windows, macOS, and Linux. It provides a consistent development and deployment experience across these platforms, allowing developers to create applications that run seamlessly on different operating systems. Flutter, on the other hand, is designed for building applications that run on mobile, web, and desktop platforms. It provides a unified codebase and UI framework for creating applications that can be deployed on Android, iOS, web browsers, and even embedded devices.
Ecosystem and Community: Electron has a mature and extensive ecosystem with a wide range of libraries, frameworks, and tools available for web development. It benefits from a vast web development community and resources. Flutter has gained significant popularity and has a growing ecosystem. It provides a rich set of UI components and libraries, and its hot-reload feature allows for rapid development and iteration. Flutter also benefits from the support of Google, which contributes to its continuous growth and improvement.

Electron vs Flutter