Electron vs Xamarin: What are the differences?

Developers describe Electron as "Build cross platform desktop apps with web technologies. Formerly known as Atom Shell, made by GitHub". 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. On the other hand, Xamarin is detailed as "Create iOS, Android and Mac apps in C#". 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.

Electron belongs to "Cross-Platform Desktop Development" category of the tech stack, while Xamarin can be primarily classified under "Cross-Platform Mobile Development".

Some of the features offered by Electron are:

• 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.

On the other hand, Xamarin provides the following key features:

• Cross-platform development- Thinking about supporting iOS, Android, Mac and Windows? Xamarin allows you to write it all in C#.
• Reuse existing code- Use your favorite .NET libraries in Xamarin apps. Easily use third-party native libraries and frameworks.
• Discover as you type- Explore APIs as you type with code autocompletion.

"Easy to make rich cross platform desktop applications" is the top reason why over 50 developers like Electron, while over 111 developers mention "Power of c# on mobile devices" as the leading cause for choosing Xamarin.

Electron is an open source tool with 74.4K GitHub stars and 9.72K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Electron's open source repository on GitHub.

Slack, WebbyLab, and triGo GmbH are some of the popular companies that use Electron, whereas Xamarin is used by Rdio, Olo, and Rumble. Electron has a broader approval, being mentioned in 213 company stacks & 366 developers stacks; compared to Xamarin, which is listed in 74 company stacks and 65 developer stacks.