Flutter vs Kotlin: Which one to choose for your app development project? - Prismetric

Flutter vs Kotlin: Which one to choose for your app development project?

Kotlin Vs Flutter – what beats what

The cross-platform app development market has been an apple of not only developers’ eyes but also buyers’. The reason is simple – it is a perfect alternative to get semi-native performance without digging a big hole in your wallet. In other words, open-source mobile app frameworks are getting a preferred choice to develop any customized app because they are cost-effective and offer faster development.

It is worth noting that though this article clearly defines the difference between Flutter and Kotlin, choosing the right platform for your mobile app development solely depends on the specific needs and your business objectives. You can always ask your IT partner for the development needs and fix the right technology.

Before we get into Kotlin vs Flutter, let us drive you through the definitions.

What is Kotlin?

Developed by JetBrains, Kotlin is a general-purpose programming language intended to provide interoperability with java. Since the giant Google supports this wonderful language, hundreds of thousands of Android app development is performed every day using Kotlin. The story began when Google declared its primary support for the technology.

What is Flutter?

Google’s very own UI toolkit, Flutter has been natively developed for Android technology; hence, Flutter is powerful, appealing, and rich in features. According to a Flutter app development guide, the best part is Flutter offers the same look and feel on all three platforms web, mobile, and desktop. Even further, Flutter has also proved its efficiency par excellence for cross-platform app development for Android, Mac, iOS, Windows, Linux, Google Fuchsia, and the web using a single codebase.

Flutter vs Kotlin – comparison factors

Cross-platform app development framework Flutter vs. Kotlin shall be based on eight prime factors.

  • Popularity
  • Community support
  • Efficiency
  • Ease of use and deployment
  • Time-to-market (speed of development)
  • Cost and testing support
  • User-friendliness
  • Quality

Popularity

The popularity of any item or goods shows its usefulness and adaptability among millions of people worldwide. Flutter is quite a popular technology that even giants such as Google, BMW, Alibaba, eBay, Square, etc., use it. The recent Flutter 2.0 has brought a revolution in the cross-platform mobile app development industry and programmers simply love it.

On the other hand, with immense popularity on the GitHub repository, Kotlin is one of the top five most loved languages, according to StackOverflow Developer Survey 2020. The technology is used by Yandex, Autodesk, TouchLab, Chalk, and IceRock etc.

flutter vs Kotlin

The term Flutter is way more popular as compared to Kotlin especially post-pandemic i.e., for the year 2020 and beyond.

For StackOverflow, hardly 55K questions were tagged with the word Kotlin as compared to whopping 83K questions labeled with Flutter.

Community support

Google-produced Flutter is working flawlessly due to the open-source community of computer programmers, designers, and technology experts. The platform continuously grows in terms of its own features and programming, as well as among businesspersons and multinational companies across the world. Google is regularly updating and supporting Flutter to keep it alive and kicking for all three web, desktops, and mobile.

On the other hand, Kotlin marks its presence a step ahead of Flutter. Since Flutter is comparatively a new baby in the market, Kotlin is believed to be a sturdy tough guy with much more maturity in terms of stability and robustness. Hence, Kotlin is an official language for Android app development. A rich ecosystem, ever-growing community, and impeccable scalability make Kotlin win this race.

Efficiency

In Kotlin vs Flutter cross-platform frameworks’ efficiency race, Flutter has its upper hand. The technology goes over the edge by dint of its super feature called hot reloading. Hot reloading is loved by mobile app developers as this wonderful feature enables them to develop customized mobile apps faster.

Flutter’s hot reloading feature functionality adds convenience to application programmers in making any changes at the backend and testing it (view it) simultaneously at the front end (display). This procedure, otherwise, requires a great amount of time and therefore increase the app development time. That said, when you hire remote flutter developers to build a customized app or tool, they can quickly decide whether the changes made are aligned with business logic and go good on UI.

Kotlin, on the other hand, does not disappoint the mobile app developers completely. As Kotlin app developers opine, the platform’s biggest benefit is that it compiles the code quite similar to the format according to the targeted platform. Hence, hire Kotlin developers and you shall have better app customization just like a natively programmed product.

Ease of use and deployment

If you compare ease of use or getting on to the technology platform i.e., learning curve, in Kotlin vs Flutter battle, the former wins inevitably. The reason behind Kotlin’s victory is its Java interoperability. In addition, the Kotlin syntax is quite easier as compared to Flutter as it has several similarities with already popular and common languages such as Swift, Java for iOS and Android respectively. Though there are limited resources available for Kotlin, the easy learning curve of the platform enables mobile app developers to quickly get on to whatever is available.

Its counterpart, Flutter app development, is based on Dart language. It means that app engineers or developers will have to learn the language from the scratch.

Time to market

As mentioned earlier, Flutter’s hot reloading functionality is the prime feature why most mobile app developers prefer this platform. Hence, in the battle of Flutter vs Kotlin, the former has an upper hand in this factor. The feature allows quick experiments and changes in the mobile app development cycle as a result it gets app development companies a faster UI development. Plenty of rich widgets, complete customization, and layered architecture are woven together with an impeccable feature of hot reload – it all adds potential to mobile app developers to build a quality product quickly and get semi-native performance in a cost-effective way.

On the other hand, the Kotlin multiplatform has great things to offer to mobile application development agencies. That said, you won’t find a scarcity of IT companies using Kotlin for developing customized mobile apps. And, not to mention that Kotlin is also fast.

Though the app development speed depends on the complexity of the project, both cross-platform app development shall work fine on any project. They all use a single codebase to build a feature-rich and user-oriented application.

Cost and testing support

Both open-source mobile app frameworks are free to use, and both offer faster development of mobile applications. Even further, both have great demand among developers because of their semi-native performers. Hence, there is no clear winner for this factor.

Yes, if it comes to testing the hybrid platforms give tough competition to each other. Flutter showcases a variety of testing features such as unique widget testing and so on, Kotlin’s primary aim is to deliver a backend as a service tool. And, it does it through Firebase for better security.

User-friendliness

Billions of dollars are spent on user interface and user experience (UI/UX). Any leading mobile app development company, when hired, is asked to focus on these two prime factors. In other words, when cross-platform programming is opted for, the mobile app development companies deploy specialists to take care of the user interface in order to make it highly engaging and user-friendly.

Kotlin vs Flutter may have their own pros and cons, but when it comes to user-friendliness, they both render a near-native experience. Both have their own charms, but their developers support their expertise. For instance, hire flutter developers and they shall prove you that Flutter is known for its unified user experience on all platforms as it is a widget-based cross-platform framework with terrific options to customize the app. As a result, Flutter app developers can build a product that is functional and scalable.

On the other hand, Kotlin programmers opine that , you can build any kind of app through its general-purpose programming language and especially when you develop Android apps using Kotlin. Kotlin app developers have amazing freedom to build tailor-made user interfaces aligned with the business objectives defined as the scope of the project.

Quality

The ultimate goal for any mobile application development lifecycle and the final product is to achieve the quality that meets not just development needs but also predefined business objectives. Not to mention, for the buyer, the product should be cost-effective.

Both hybrid platforms Kotlin and Flutter offer quality using the unique features and facilities they offer to app developers. Overall, offshore companies use both frameworks to deliver the best quality products to their clients.

A quick look at the pros and cons of Kotlin vs Flutter

While you carefully read the Kotlin vs Flutter battle based on the above-mentioned factors, it is also crucial to know the advantages and disadvantages for a quicker decision.

Pros of Kotlin

The benefits of Kotlin are many, here are a few to mention.

  • Goes well with Java: Kotlin is said to preserve good chunks from Java’s object-oriented programming nature. Hence, migrating the code from Java to Kotlin is not a pretty big sum. In other words, updating from an obsolete system to the latest one is easier and faster.
  • Crisp code: Kotlin’s seamless syntax is due to its crisp code which is clear and concise. Hire Kotlin app developers and stay worry-free as they would get you the best code with few trivial bugsor no bugs.
  • Secure and scalable: As the code is crisp and reliable, any unwanted error or flaw is easily visible and can be solved in a very short them. On the other hand, the final product is scalable i.e., a future-ready app.

Cons of Kotlin

If you have the benefits of a technology tool, you also come across a few disadvantages.

  • It’s a fresher: Though Kotlin and Java share some similar characters, Kotlin is comparatively a new baby in the market. Even leading mobile app development companies are in constant search of dedicated Kotlin app developers and specialists. The IT community shall grow for Kotlin but it may take some time.
  • Indirect costs: Though the cross-platform development framework is free to use, the indirect cost to develop Kotlin mobile applications is a bit high. You need to invest in teaching cross-platform app developers the expertise.
  • Weaker native support: Kotlin is the cross-platform framework and, therefore, the native coders have less participation in enhancing the community.

Pros of Flutter

Though a pet of Google, Flutter, too, has some advantages and disadvantages. Here is a few worth mentioning.

  • Learning curve: While most IT projects are outsourced, getting programmers for a particular technology is difficult. But when you hire remote Flutter developers, the Flutter-Dart combination is quite familiar to most mobile app developers. Even further, if any programmer has ever learned React Native, Swift, or Java, getting on to the Flutter cross-platform framework is not a big deal.
  • See as you change: The hot reload is a mind-boggling feature that opens all avenues of the app development cycle to work faster and more efficiently. The backend and frontend changes and observations are in real-time and that adds a lot of value to the coding and performance.
  • Native support: As Flutter has impeccable animation-enabled UI build for unparalleled UX, even native developers of Android and iOS love this platform. Even further, due to its capability to build directly onto the machine code, there are fewer or no chances of bug occurrence.
  • The future is bright: Google’s baby has a bright future because more and more entrepreneurs, for their dream projects, prefer Flutter due to its flexibility. Looking at the present demand, the future of Flutter development is indeed prosperous.

Cons of Flutter

A few cross-platform app development companies are still reluctant to use Flutter due to some though trivial disadvantages.

  • Larger app size: Mobile apps developed on the Flutter platform are relatively larger. Hence, cross-platform app developers who are trying to build apps that are customized for Android and Apple devices thinking that they won’t consume already limited space are in the wrong game.
  • Limited learning resources: Flutter, though popular among developers, is not as widely adopted. It is due to limited educational resources and classes. Again, it is because Dart is quite less popular as compared to Kotlin, JS, Java, C, and C#. While this is getting written, there are 400+ courses on Udemy teaching Flutter, while there are close to 1000 courses on Kotlin.

So, who is the winner in Kotlin vs Flutter 2022 battle? Well, they both are kings and have their own strengths and weaknesses. Only you can decide which one has a foreseeable future and support. You can hire a renowned app development company to consult and hire experts in Kotlin and/or Flutter to know more about it. You can discuss your projects and business objectives with your IT partner so that they can advise you on a proper platform that suits your purpose and is cost-effective.

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