Mobile App Frameworks

Flutter175.7k★

If you want to build one app that runs on iOS, Android, web, and desktop from a single codebase, Flutter is Google's answer. You write in Dart, and Flutter renders everything with its own engine — no native UI components, no web views, just pixels painted directly to the screen. That means your app looks identical on every platform. 175K stars, BSD 3-Clause, Dart. The widget system is composable — everything is a widget, you nest them like LEGO bricks. Hot reload is genuinely fast, making UI iteration feel instant. The package ecosystem (pub.dev) has thousands of plugins for maps, payments, cameras, Bluetooth, and more. Completely free. No paid tier, no usage limits, no premium SDK features. Google uses it for their own apps (Google Pay, Stadia, Ads) and maintains it as a free tool. Solo: free, excellent for shipping to both app stores from one codebase. Small teams: free, huge time savings vs maintaining native iOS + Android separately. Medium: free, strong for teams without native mobile expertise. Large: free, but evaluate whether platform-specific UX matters enough to justify native development. The catch: Dart. Almost nobody learns Dart for anything other than Flutter. The talent pool is smaller than React Native's JavaScript ecosystem. Flutter's custom rendering means your app won't look or feel exactly like native iOS or Android — Material Design everywhere. Some packages are poorly maintained. And web support, while functional, produces large bundles that don't feel like a real web app.