Flutter vs Qt

Overview

Stacks464

Followers637

Votes138

Flutter

Stacks17.7K

Followers16.8K

Votes1.2K

GitHub Stars173.7K

Forks29.4K

Flutter vs Qt: What are the differences?

Flutter is a versatile open-source UI toolkit that allows developers to create natively compiled applications for various platforms. On the other hand, Qt is a cross-platform C++ framework known for its robustness. Let's explore the key differences between Flutter and Qt:

Platform Independence: One of the major differences between Flutter and Qt is their platform independence. Flutter is primarily focused on mobile app development and has extensive support for both Android and iOS platforms. On the other hand, Qt is a cross-platform framework that can be used to develop applications for desktop, mobile, web, and embedded systems. Qt's versatility in platform support sets it apart from Flutter.
Programming Language: Another significant difference is the programming language used in Flutter and Qt development. Flutter uses Dart, a modern, single-threaded language with a strong focus on reactive programming. Qt, on the other hand, provides bindings for multiple programming languages such as C++, QML, and JavaScript. This flexibility in language choice allows developers to leverage their existing skills and preferences.
UI Design Approach: Flutter and Qt also differ in their approach to UI design. Flutter follows a declarative UI programming model, where the UI is described using a widget tree and is rebuilt whenever there is a change in the widget's state. Qt, on the other hand, offers a combination of declarative and imperative programming models. It provides Qt Quick for declarative UI design using QML and Qt Widgets for imperative UI design using C++. The choice between declarative and imperative design depends on the preferences and requirements of the developers.
Community and Ecosystem: The size and maturity of the community and ecosystem are important factors to consider when choosing between Flutter and Qt. Flutter, backed by Google, has gained significant popularity and has a growing community with a wide range of packages and libraries available. Qt, on the other hand, has a long history and a strong community with extensive documentation, tutorials, and a large number of libraries and tools. The community and ecosystem support for both frameworks differ, and developers should consider the level of community engagement and availability of resources based on their specific project needs.
Development Workflow: Flutter and Qt also differ in their development workflow. Flutter uses a hot-reload feature that allows developers to see the changes instantly without requiring a full restart of the application. This feature enables rapid iterations and speeds up development. Qt offers a similar live-coding feature called Qt Quick Live Preview, which allows for real-time UI changes during development. However, Qt may require recompilation for certain changes, which can be slower compared to Flutter's hot-reload.
UI Customization and Control: When it comes to UI customization and control, Flutter and Qt offer different levels of flexibility. Flutter provides a rich set of customizable widgets and allows for extensive UI customization using its widget system. Qt, on the other hand, offers a wide range of UI controls and styles that can be customized using the Qt Stylesheet mechanism. Qt provides more fine-grained control over the UI elements compared to Flutter, making it suitable for applications requiring highly custom and platform-specific UI designs.

In summary, Flutter excels in its simplicity and flexibility for multi-platform development, while Qt stands out for its powerful C++ foundation and extensive feature set, making it a preferred choice for applications demanding a native user experience on diverse platforms.

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Advice on Qt, 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

Qt	Flutter
Qt, a leading cross-platform application and UI framework. With Qt, you can develop applications once and deploy to leading desktop, embedded & mobile targets.	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 -	GitHub Stars 173.7K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 29.4K
Stacks 464	Stacks 17.7K
Followers 637	Followers 16.8K
Votes 138	Votes 1.2K
Pros & Cons
Pros 17 High Performance 13 Declarative, easy and flexible UI 12 Performance 12 Cross platform 9 Fast prototyping Cons 5 Paid 4 C++ is not so productive 2 Lack of community support 1 Not detailed documentation 1 Lack of libraries	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 Qt, 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.

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

Flutter vs Qt: What are the differences?

Platform Independence: One of the major differences between Flutter and Qt is their platform independence. Flutter is primarily focused on mobile app development and has extensive support for both Android and iOS platforms. On the other hand, Qt is a cross-platform framework that can be used to develop applications for desktop, mobile, web, and embedded systems. Qt's versatility in platform support sets it apart from Flutter.
Programming Language: Another significant difference is the programming language used in Flutter and Qt development. Flutter uses Dart, a modern, single-threaded language with a strong focus on reactive programming. Qt, on the other hand, provides bindings for multiple programming languages such as C++, QML, and JavaScript. This flexibility in language choice allows developers to leverage their existing skills and preferences.
UI Design Approach: Flutter and Qt also differ in their approach to UI design. Flutter follows a declarative UI programming model, where the UI is described using a widget tree and is rebuilt whenever there is a change in the widget's state. Qt, on the other hand, offers a combination of declarative and imperative programming models. It provides Qt Quick for declarative UI design using QML and Qt Widgets for imperative UI design using C++. The choice between declarative and imperative design depends on the preferences and requirements of the developers.
Community and Ecosystem: The size and maturity of the community and ecosystem are important factors to consider when choosing between Flutter and Qt. Flutter, backed by Google, has gained significant popularity and has a growing community with a wide range of packages and libraries available. Qt, on the other hand, has a long history and a strong community with extensive documentation, tutorials, and a large number of libraries and tools. The community and ecosystem support for both frameworks differ, and developers should consider the level of community engagement and availability of resources based on their specific project needs.
Development Workflow: Flutter and Qt also differ in their development workflow. Flutter uses a hot-reload feature that allows developers to see the changes instantly without requiring a full restart of the application. This feature enables rapid iterations and speeds up development. Qt offers a similar live-coding feature called Qt Quick Live Preview, which allows for real-time UI changes during development. However, Qt may require recompilation for certain changes, which can be slower compared to Flutter's hot-reload.
UI Customization and Control: When it comes to UI customization and control, Flutter and Qt offer different levels of flexibility. Flutter provides a rich set of customizable widgets and allows for extensive UI customization using its widget system. Qt, on the other hand, offers a wide range of UI controls and styles that can be customized using the Qt Stylesheet mechanism. Qt provides more fine-grained control over the UI elements compared to Flutter, making it suitable for applications requiring highly custom and platform-specific UI designs.

Flutter vs Qt

Overview