Flutter vs NativeBase

Overview

NativeBase

Stacks85

Followers273

Votes3

GitHub Stars20.4K

Forks2.4K

Flutter

Stacks17.7K

Followers16.8K

Votes1.2K

GitHub Stars173.7K

Forks29.4K

Flutter vs NativeBase: What are the differences?

Introduction

Flutter and NativeBase are both popular frameworks used for developing cross-platform mobile applications. However, there are some key differences between the two.

Design Philosophy: Flutter adopts a declarative approach to building UI, where the UI is described using a widget tree. This allows for efficient rendering and enables hot reloading, making it easier for developers to iterate and experiment with different UI designs. On the other hand, NativeBase follows a more traditional imperative approach, where developers have to manually update the UI when there are changes in the application state.
Platform Support: Flutter is known for its strong cross-platform support, allowing developers to write code once and deploy it on multiple platforms such as iOS, Android, and even the web. NativeBase, on the other hand, is primarily focused on native app development and provides UI components specifically designed for iOS and Android platforms.
Development Speed: One of the advantages of using Flutter is its ability to quickly develop and prototype applications. Its hot reload feature allows developers to see the immediate impact of code changes without the need to rebuild the entire app. In comparison, NativeBase can have a slightly longer development cycle as changes may require a full rebuild and redeployment of the app.
Flexibility: Flutter offers a highly customizable UI experience with its extensive widget library and the ability to create custom widgets. This allows developers to have full control over the look and feel of their app. NativeBase, on the other hand, provides pre-built UI components that follow platform-specific design guidelines, which can be beneficial for maintaining a familiar and consistent user experience.
Community and Ecosystem: Flutter has gained a large and active community of developers, with a growing number of packages and plugins available for various functionalities. This vibrant community ensures continuous support, regular updates, and a plethora of resources. NativeBase, while still popular, may have a comparatively smaller community and ecosystem.
Learning Curve: Flutter introduces a new programming language called Dart, which developers need to learn in order to build apps. This could be a hurdle for developers who are already familiar with other languages like JavaScript or Java. NativeBase, on the other hand, utilizes existing programming languages such as JavaScript or TypeScript for React Native, making it easier for developers already versed in those languages to get started.

In summary, Flutter and NativeBase differ in their design philosophy, platform support, development speed, flexibility, community and ecosystem, as well as learning curve. These differences should be considered when choosing a framework for cross-platform mobile app development.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs

CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on NativeBase, 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

Allison

software engineer at AWS

Jan 12, 2021

Needs adviceon

Flutter

React Native

I am building an app that would need at least two external APIs: a map and a payment service. I am currently building in Flutter, but I am having trouble integrating one of the external APIs with the app. I wonder (because I am still at the beginning) if I should switch to React Native or build native iOS and Android apps separately. Any advice would be appreciated!

106k views106k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

NativeBase	Flutter
NativeBase is a free and open source framework that enables developers to build high-quality mobile apps using React Native iOS and Android apps with a fusion of ES6. NativeBase builds a layer on top of React Native that provides you with basic set of components for mobile application development. This helps you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms.	Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.
-	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 20.4K	GitHub Stars 173.7K
GitHub Forks 2.4K	GitHub Forks 29.4K
Stacks 85	Stacks 17.7K
Followers 273	Followers 16.8K
Votes 3	Votes 1.2K
Pros & Cons
Pros 3 Easy setup and use	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
React Native	Android SDK Firebase Dart

What are some alternatives to NativeBase, 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

Flutter vs NativeBase: What are the differences?

Introduction

Flutter and NativeBase are both popular frameworks used for developing cross-platform mobile applications. However, there are some key differences between the two.

Design Philosophy: Flutter adopts a declarative approach to building UI, where the UI is described using a widget tree. This allows for efficient rendering and enables hot reloading, making it easier for developers to iterate and experiment with different UI designs. On the other hand, NativeBase follows a more traditional imperative approach, where developers have to manually update the UI when there are changes in the application state.
Platform Support: Flutter is known for its strong cross-platform support, allowing developers to write code once and deploy it on multiple platforms such as iOS, Android, and even the web. NativeBase, on the other hand, is primarily focused on native app development and provides UI components specifically designed for iOS and Android platforms.
Development Speed: One of the advantages of using Flutter is its ability to quickly develop and prototype applications. Its hot reload feature allows developers to see the immediate impact of code changes without the need to rebuild the entire app. In comparison, NativeBase can have a slightly longer development cycle as changes may require a full rebuild and redeployment of the app.
Flexibility: Flutter offers a highly customizable UI experience with its extensive widget library and the ability to create custom widgets. This allows developers to have full control over the look and feel of their app. NativeBase, on the other hand, provides pre-built UI components that follow platform-specific design guidelines, which can be beneficial for maintaining a familiar and consistent user experience.
Community and Ecosystem: Flutter has gained a large and active community of developers, with a growing number of packages and plugins available for various functionalities. This vibrant community ensures continuous support, regular updates, and a plethora of resources. NativeBase, while still popular, may have a comparatively smaller community and ecosystem.
Learning Curve: Flutter introduces a new programming language called Dart, which developers need to learn in order to build apps. This could be a hurdle for developers who are already familiar with other languages like JavaScript or Java. NativeBase, on the other hand, utilizes existing programming languages such as JavaScript or TypeScript for React Native, making it easier for developers already versed in those languages to get started.

Flutter vs NativeBase

Overview

Flutter vs NativeBase: What are the differences?