Top 7 Cross-Platform App Development Frameworks

1. Flutter

Created and backed by Google, Flutter has rapidly become a favorite for developers and businesses alike. It’s an open-source UI toolkit and open source framework for building cross-platform applications that stands out for its ability to create visually stunning, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase.

Flutter uses the Dart programming language and is known for its ‘write once, run anywhere’ efficiency. Its key strength lies in giving developers granular control over every pixel on the screen, allowing for highly customized and expressive user interfaces that look and feel great everywhere.

Key Features:

• Fast Development: Features like Stateful Hot Reload allow developers to see the effect of code changes in real-time without restarting the app, dramatically speeding up the development and iteration cycle. The website’s agile development process ensures smooth execution when working with complex frameworks like Flutter’s real-time reload.

• Expressive and Flexible UI: A rich set of fully-customizable widgets allows for the creation of beautiful, high-fidelity user experiences.

• Excellent Performance: Flutter code compiles directly to ARM or Intel machine code, ensuring fast, native-like performance on any device.

• Single Codebase: Develop for iOS, Android, web, and desktop from one codebase, saving significant time and resources, as developers can write code once and deploy it across multiple platforms.

Pricing:Flutter is completely free and open-source.

Best For:Flutter is ideal for projects where a highly branded, custom UI is a priority. It’s perfect for MVPs that need to look polished and get to market quickly, as well as for larger applications demanding consistent performance and appearance across platforms. Notable apps built with Flutter include Google Ads, which demonstrates the framework’s real-world capabilities.

2. React Native

Developed by Meta (formerly Facebook), React Native brings the power and simplicity of the React web framework to mobile development. It allows developers to build native-rendered apps for iOS and Android, enabling the development of both android apps and ios apps from a single codebase, using JavaScript and a library of core UI components.

Unlike Flutter, which controls every pixel, React Native uses native platform UI components. This means a button in a React Native app is the actual native button for that operating system, ensuring an authentic platform-specific look and feel. When building with React Native, aligning component choices with your user journey mapping process becomes critical to maximizing engagement.

Key Features:

• Native Look and Feel: By rendering native UI components, apps feel genuinely native to the platform they’re running on.

• Large Ecosystem: Leverages the massive JavaScript and React ecosystem, with countless libraries and tools available.

• Strong Community Support: React Native benefits from strong community support, which drives ongoing development and popularity.

• Hot Reloading: Similar to Flutter, this feature allows you to inject new code directly into a running app, speeding up development.

• Code Reusability: Share a significant portion of your codebase between iOS, Android, and even your web app if it’s built with React.

Avoid the mistake of over-developing by evaluating how React Native’s ecosystem aligns with your team’s JavaScript expertise; see common pitfalls in framework selection).

Pricing:React Native is free and open-source.

Best For:Teams with existing JavaScript or React expertise will feel right at home with React Native. It’s an excellent choice for apps that need to feel deeply integrated with the native platform and for projects that can benefit from sharing code between a web and mobile front-end.

3. Kotlin Multiplatform

From the creators of the Kotlin programming language, JetBrains, comes Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP). This technology offers a uniquely flexible approach to cross-platform development. Developers can write the app logic once and reuse it across multiple platforms, enabling faster releases and a consistent user experience. Instead of enforcing a single codebase for everything, KMP allows you to share what makes sense—from business logic and data layers to the entire UI.

Kotlin Multiplatform’s flexibility lets you share business logic between platforms—an approach we implemented successfully in real-world implementation like Taraki, where a common codebase dramatically reduced maintenance while preserving native quality.

You can write shared logic in common Kotlin and then build native UIs for iOS and Android, or you can go all-in with Compose Multiplatform to share more components, including the UI.

Key Features:

• Flexible Code Sharing: Choose to share only business logic, or go further and share more components, including the UI.

• Seamless Integration: Shared Kotlin code compiles into platform-specific binaries, integrating perfectly into any native project.

• Full Native Access: No limitations on using platform-specific APIs, giving you the best of both worlds.

• Modern Language: Built on Kotlin, a modern, safe, and concise programming language officially supported by Google for Android development.

Pricing:Kotlin Multiplatform is open-source and free to use.

Best For:KMP is perfect for teams that want to dip their toes into cross-platform development without a complete rewrite. It’s fantastic for making an existing Android app work on iOS by sharing the core logic, and teams can efficiently develop apps for both platforms using shared code. It’s also a powerful choice for new projects that want maximum code reuse while retaining the option for a fully native UI.

4. .NET MAUI (formerly Xamarin)

For developers in the Microsoft ecosystem, .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) is the go-to framework. As the official successor to Xamarin.Forms, .NET MAUI is an open-source platform for building native applications for iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows with C# and .NET.

.NET MAUI’s performance advantages mirror our philosophy in modern development approaches: optimizing for lean execution while maintaining power—critical for scaling MVCs efficiently.

Support for Xamarin officially ended on May 1, 2024, and Microsoft has transitioned its cross-platform efforts to .NET MAUI. It builds on Xamarin’s foundation, allowing developers to create native UIs from a single, shared C# codebase while offering improved performance and a more streamlined development experience.

Key Features:

• Single Project, Multiple Platforms: Develop for mobile and desktop from a single project, with shared resources and code.

• Native UI and Performance: Access native APIs and create user interfaces that are rendered as native controls on each platform.

• .NET Ecosystem: Built on the powerful .NET framework, giving you access to a robust set of development tools and libraries, including Visual Studio and other productivity tools that streamline cross-platform development.

• IDE Support: Fully integrated with Visual Studio on both Windows and macOS for a world-class development experience.

Uncertain about whether Xamarin (.NET MAUI) fits your enterprise needs? Discuss your project with our experts to map the best path for your application’s lifecycle and architecture.

Pricing:.NET MAUI is free, open-source, and included with Visual Studio Community Edition.

Best For:Enterprise environments and development teams already proficient in C# and .NET. It’s a strong choice for building business applications that need to run on both mobile and Windows desktops.

5. Ionic

Ionic allows web developers to step into the world of mobile app development without leaving their comfort zone. It’s an open-source UI toolkit for building cross-platform apps using standard web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, along with popular frameworks like Angular, React, or Vue. Ionic enables the creation of hybrid apps that can run on multiple platforms from a single codebase.

When implementing Ionic, understanding how our team’s web development proficiency can accelerate delivery is decisive—our global development expertise delivers high-impact cross-platform solutions at scale.

Ionic’s fast development aligns with prototyping strategies, enabling rapid user testing of web-based mobile experiences and reducing feedback cycles.

Ionic apps are essentially web apps that run inside a native wrapper (using a tool like Capacitor) to access device features like the camera, GPS, and file system.

Key Features:

• Web-Based: Leverage your existing web development skills to build mobile apps.

• Framework Agnostic: Use your favourite front-end framework—Angular, React, or Vue—or no framework at all.

• Rich Component Library: A huge library of pre-built, mobile-optimized UI components that adapt across platforms.

• Native Access: Through its native runtime, accessed via Capacitor, Ionic apps can access device features.

Pricing:The Ionic Framework is free and open-source. Ionic also offers paid enterprise-grade services and tools, like Appflow (for mobile CI/CD), starting from around $499/month.

Best For:Web development teams tasked with building a mobile app. It’s perfect for creating apps that are primarily content-driven or for quickly building functional prototypes. Ionic is also well-suited for teams interested in hybrid development, offering a balance between web and native capabilities.

6. NativeScript

NativeScript occupies a sweet spot between the web-centric approach of Ionic and the purely native rendering of React Native. It allows you to build truly native apps using JavaScript, TypeScript, Angular, or Vue.js. NativeScript enables developers to avoid the need to write native code for each platform by providing direct access to native APIs through JavaScript, streamlining cross-platform development and reducing platform-specific programming efforts. Its key differentiator is its direct, real-time access to all native platform APIs.

NativeScript requires careful API integration planning—our FAQ explains how we handle security in cross-platform deployments to ensure your app is robust and compliant.

This means you aren’t limited by what’s available in a specific bridge or wrapper. If you can do it in Swift or Kotlin, you can do it in NativeScript, giving you unparalleled power and flexibility while still using familiar web technologies.

Key Features:

• 100% Native API Access: No restrictions. Directly call any native iOS or Android API from your JavaScript/TypeScript code.

• Native Performance and UI: Renders a truly native user interface, ensuring top-tier performance and user experience.

• Framework Flexibility: Works with modern frameworks like Angular, Vue.js, and even Svelte and React.

• Open Source: A community-driven framework that is part of the OpenJS Foundation.

Pricing:The NativeScript framework is free and open-source. Optional paid services are available for its developer productivity tool, NativeScript Sidekick.

Best For:Developers who want the power of native development without leaving the JavaScript ecosystem. It’s an excellent choice for performance-critical applications that require deep integration with platform-specific features.

7. Cordova

Cordova (formerly PhoneGap) is one of the original solutions for hybrid mobile app development. It enables developers to build apps using standard web technologies—HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—then wrap them in a native container that can access device APIs. This makes Cordova ideal for teams with strong web dev skills who want to go mobile fast without diving deep into native code.

Cordova isn’t aimed at performance-heavy or highly interactive apps, but for simpler apps or MVPs, it’s a fast, accessible solution that works across platforms with minimal overhead.

Key Features:

• Web Tech Stack: Build mobile apps using just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

• Plugin Ecosystem: Access native device features (camera, GPS, accelerometer, etc.) through a wide range of community and official plugins.

• Cross-Platform Deployment: Package once and deploy to iOS, Android, and more.

• Integration Ready: Easily combine Cordova with front-end frameworks like Angular, Vue, or React.

Pricing:Cordova is completely free and open-source. No licensing or usage fees apply.

Best For:Teams with existing web development expertise looking to quickly launch cross-platform apps with access to native features. A great choice for MVPs, content apps, and simple business tools, and for businesses seeking cost-effective mobile solutions that work seamlessly across multiple platforms.