StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Languages
  4. Languages
  5. Swift vs SwiftUI

Swift vs SwiftUI

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Swift
Swift
Stacks21.9K
Followers13.6K
Votes1.3K
SwiftUI
SwiftUI
Stacks590
Followers567
Votes6

Swift vs SwiftUI: What are the differences?

Key differences between Swift and SwiftUI

Swift is a programming language developed by Apple, whereas SwiftUI is a user interface toolkit also developed by Apple. Both Swift and SwiftUI are used for developing applications for Apple platforms, but they have some key differences.

  1. Syntax: Swift is a general-purpose programming language with a C-like syntax. It uses imperative programming paradigms and has a rich set of features like optionals, generics, and pattern matching. On the other hand, SwiftUI is a declarative user interface toolkit that uses a very different syntax. It's based on a reactive programming model and uses a combination of declarative and functional programming paradigms.

  2. User Interface: Swift is mainly focused on the logic and functionality of an application. It provides many libraries and frameworks to build the user interface, such as UIKit and AppKit. SwiftUI, on the other hand, is specifically designed for building user interfaces. It provides a unified and intuitive way to create UI elements and layouts, making it easier and more efficient to develop visually appealing apps.

  3. Platform Compatibility: Swift is a programming language that can be used to develop applications for various Apple platforms, including iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. It can also be used for server-side development. SwiftUI, on the other hand, is a framework that is specifically designed for building user interfaces on Apple platforms, starting from iOS 13, macOS 10.15, watchOS 6, and tvOS 13. It can't be used for server-side development or with older versions of the operating systems.

  4. Live Preview: One of the major features of SwiftUI is the live preview functionality. With SwiftUI, developers can preview their UI in real-time, making it easy to iterate and experiment with different designs and layouts. This can greatly speed up the development process compared to the traditional approach of writing code, compiling, and running the app to see the changes.

  5. Accessibility: SwiftUI has built-in support for accessibility features. It makes it easier for developers to create apps that are accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. Swift, on the other hand, doesn't have built-in support for accessibility, but it provides libraries and APIs that can be used to implement accessibility features in the user interface.

  6. Compatibility and Migration: Swift is a mature programming language that has been around since 2014. It has a large ecosystem of libraries, frameworks, and tools that are compatible with older versions of the language. SwiftUI, being a relatively new framework, has a limited ecosystem and may require re-architecture or migration of existing apps built with older frameworks like UIKit or AppKit.

In summary, Swift is a general-purpose programming language that focuses on logic and functionality, while SwiftUI is a user interface toolkit designed specifically for building visually appealing apps. SwiftUI has a different syntax, offers a live preview functionality, provides built-in accessibility support, and requires platform compatibility and migration considerations.

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)
or
Manual

Detailed Comparison

Swift
Swift
SwiftUI
SwiftUI

Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.

Provides views, controls, and layout structures for declaring your app's user interface. The framework provides event handlers for delivering taps, gestures, and other types of input to your app.

-
Declarative Syntax; Design Tools; Drag and drop; Dynamic replacement; Previews; Native on All Apple Platforms; Generate dynamic, interactive previews of your custom views; Define interactions from taps, clicks, and swipes to fine-grained gestures; Control and respond to the flow of data and changes within your app’s models; Integrate SwiftUI views into existing apps, and embed AppKit, UIKit, and WatchKit views and controllers into SwiftUI view hierarchies; Present your content onscreen and handle user interactions
Statistics
Stacks
21.9K
Stacks
590
Followers
13.6K
Followers
567
Votes
1.3K
Votes
6
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 259
    Ios
  • 180
    Elegant
  • 126
    Not Objective-C
  • 107
    Backed by apple
  • 93
    Type inference
Cons
  • 6
    Must own a mac
  • 2
    Memory leaks are not uncommon
  • 1
    Is a lot more effort than lua to make simple functions
  • 1
    Its classes compile to roughly 300 lines of assembly
  • 1
    Very irritatingly picky about things that’s
Pros
  • 2
    Smaller Scalable views
  • 2
    XCode Canvas feature
  • 2
    Live previews
Integrations
Cocoa Touch (iOS)
Cocoa Touch (iOS)
macOS
macOS
Xcode
Xcode

What are some alternatives to Swift, SwiftUI?

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Related Comparisons

Bootstrap
Materialize

Bootstrap vs Materialize

Laravel
Django

Django vs Laravel vs Node.js

Bootstrap
Foundation

Bootstrap vs Foundation vs Material UI

Node.js
Spring Boot

Node.js vs Spring-Boot

Liquibase
Flyway

Flyway vs Liquibase