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Avalonia VS React Native

Compare Avalonia VS React Native and see what are their differences

Avalonia logo Avalonia

A multi-platform .NET UI framework

React Native logo React Native

A framework for building native apps with React
  • Avalonia Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-05-01
  • React Native Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-10-16

Avalonia features and specs

  • Cross-Platform
    Avalonia supports Windows, macOS, and Linux, enabling developers to write a single codebase that runs on multiple platforms.
  • MVVM Support
    Avalonia has strong support for the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern, which can help developers create maintainable and scalable applications.
  • Rich Styling System
    Avalonia provides a powerful styling system similar to CSS, giving developers the ability to easily customize the appearance of their applications.
  • Open Source
    Being open-source, Avalonia allows developers to contribute to its development, inspect the codebase, and ensure long-term viability without vendor lock-in.
  • Community Support
    Avalonia has an active and growing community, which can be beneficial for troubleshooting issues, finding resources, and sharing knowledge.
  • ReactiveUI Integration
    It integrates seamlessly with ReactiveUI, a powerful reactive programming library, for building dynamic and responsive applications.

Possible disadvantages of Avalonia

  • Maturity
    Avalonia is relatively young compared to more established frameworks like WPF or WinForms, which might result in fewer features and stability issues.
  • Smaller Ecosystem
    Given its younger age, Avalonia has a smaller ecosystem with fewer third-party libraries, tools, and components available for developers.
  • Performance
    Depending on the complexity of the application, performance may not be on par with native frameworks, especially on resource-intensive tasks.
  • Learning Curve
    Developers new to Avalonia may face a learning curve, especially if they are not familiar with its MVVM pattern and reactive programming paradigms.
  • Documentation
    Although improving, the documentation for Avalonia might not be as comprehensive or as polished as that of more mature frameworks.
  • Platform-Specific Issues
    Cross-platform development can bring platform-specific issues and inconsistencies that developers need to handle, which can increase complexity.

React Native features and specs

  • Cross-platform development
    React Native allows developers to write code once and use it to build applications for both iOS and Android platforms, significantly reducing development time and effort.
  • Performance
    React Native uses native components under the hood, providing better performance compared to hybrid technologies like Cordova or Ionic.
  • Community support
    React Native has a large and active community, which means plenty of libraries, tools, and support are available to help developers solve problems and add features.
  • Hot reloading
    React Native supports hot reloading, enabling developers to see the results of the latest change instantly without losing the application's state.
  • Reusable components
    Developers can use React Native's component-based architecture to create reusable UI components, making code more modular and easier to maintain.
  • Strong backing
    Backed by Facebook, React Native benefits from continuous development, regular updates, and a high level of reliability and stability.

Possible disadvantages of React Native

  • Complexity for advanced features
    Implementing complex features and achieving deep integrations with native APIs may require more effort and a good understanding of native programming.
  • Performance limitations
    While React Native performs well for most use cases, it may still fall short in performance-intensive applications compared to fully native solutions.
  • Limited third-party libraries
    Some third-party libraries might not be available for React Native, or they may lack features compared to their native counterparts.
  • Platform-specific code
    Despite being cross-platform, certain features might still require platform-specific code, increasing the complexity when developing for both iOS and Android.
  • Potential for outdated documentation
    As React Native evolves quickly, some documentation or tutorials might become outdated, leading to confusion and extra effort to find up-to-date information.
  • Size of the application
    React Native applications tend to have larger file sizes compared to their native counterparts due to the inclusion of the JavaScript runtime and other dependencies.

Avalonia videos

A Cross Platform .NET UI Framework - Hello World in Avalonia UI

More videos:

  • Review - Nikita Tsukanov - AvaloniaUI - cross-platform XAML-oriented .NET UI framework
  • Review - Avalonia XAML debugging. Where is your WPF/UWP/Xamarin.Forms now?

React Native videos

React Native in 2019 & Beyond

More videos:

  • Review - What Is React Native?
  • Review - Why React Native is garbage.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Avalonia and React Native)
Development Tools
18 18%
82% 82
Rapid Application Development
Javascript UI Libraries
0 0%
100% 100
Cross-Platform Development

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Avalonia and React Native

Avalonia Reviews

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React Native Reviews

Explore 9 Top Eclipse Alternatives for 2024
Pioneered by Meta Platforms, Inc., React Native is a remarkable JavaScript framework that merges native app development with JavaScript libraries, offering a dependable solution for creating exemplary native apps for Android, iOS, and other platforms.
Source: aircada.com
Top 10 Flutter Alternatives for Cross-Platform App Development
Introduced in 2015 by Facebook, React Native is an open-source framework based on JavaScript. Being a developer-friendly framework, it’s a mobile-first platform that is capable of rendering mobile apps for multiple platforms, including iOS and Android.
Exploring 15 Powerful Flutter Alternatives
React Native is an open-source UI framework for writing native Android and iOS apps using JavaScript and React. React Native does deliver excellent prototyping capabilities, however. The React framework lends itself nicely to creating basic proofs of concept and experimenting with different interaction models and UI designs with little overhead. Features like Fast Refresh...
THE BEST 34 APP DEVELOPMENT SOFTWARE IN 2022 LIST
Create native apps for Android and iOS using React. React Native combines the best parts of native development with React, a best-in-class JavaScript library for building user interfaces. You can use React Native in your existing Android and iOS projects or you can create a whole new app from scratch. Written in JavaScript—rendered with native code. React primitives render...
Top 10 Visual Studio Alternatives
React native is famous for enabling the users to develop the core native applications and offers the best quality. It does not compromise on providing the best customer services and support. The react-native components surround the codes that already exist and then interact with the native APIs. That, in turn, allows the developers to learn the development process and makes...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, React Native should be more popular than Avalonia. It has been mentiond 232 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Avalonia mentions (141)

  • Show HN: Meld RDP – A Fast, Portable Remote Desktop Manager (.rdp)
    - It's built with https://avaloniaui.net/ so it may be possible to get it working on Linux, though I have little experience there. Would love to hear any feedback, ideas, or feature suggestions! Thanks for checking it out! https://github.com/meld-cp/MeldRDP. - Source: Hacker News / 29 days ago
  • WASM Wayland Web (WWW)
    > The web had this before briefly. Back in the 90s and 00s, some people just wanted to use Flash. WebAssembly is different. WebAssembly brings every language to the web. Flash didn't. WebAssembly can render to canvas and enable applications that compile to desktop, mobile, and the web. UI libraries like Avalonia do this: https://avaloniaui.net/ For example, here's C# implementation of Visual Basic 6... - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • Servo in 2024: stats, features and donations
    That's why I mentioned https://avaloniaui.net/ which does the part. WPF is not bad compared to everything happening in the web frameworks. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Compiling Java into Native Binaries with Graal and Mill
    I don't know why anyone even uses the GUI frameworks from Microsoft these days. WinForms is only good if you need to throw something together quick. Everything else should be Avalonia (https://avaloniaui.net/). Cross platform and does support AOT. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Why Tracebit is written in C#
    MS UI has been a mess for years. They just can't pick a paradigm to run with apparently, so people just fall back to good ole' Winforms. That being said, check out Avalonia: https://avaloniaui.net/ and https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia Cross-platform, open source, MVVM & reactive. A breath of fresh air. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
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React Native mentions (232)

  • Apprendre Flutter
    React Native: Assez faile à prendre en main si on maitrise React. - Source: dev.to / 9 days ago
  • Migrating from AngularJS to React
    React skills work for React Native development - Although React Native is a separate framework designed specifically for building mobile applications, many of the skills a developer gains working with the React framework are applicable here as well. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • The Mobile Development Tech Stack for 2025
    React Native (Official Documentation) allows you to create apps for both iOS and Android with a single codebase, while TypeScript adds type safety to your JavaScript, reducing bugs and improving code quality. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • React + AI Stack for 2025
    React Native is the powerhouse for cross-platform mobile development. Write once, run everywhere, get native performance when you need it, enjoy hot reloading for rapid development, tap into a huge ecosystem of libraries and tools, and integrate with native modules when you need platform-specific features. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • How Do I Start a New React Native App?
    React Native is a powerful framework for building cross-platform mobile applications using JavaScript and React. Whether you're a seasoned developer or a beginner, starting a new React Native project can be both exciting and challenging. This guide will walk you through the essential steps, tools, and best practices to set up your React Native project efficiently and effectively. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Avalonia and React Native, you can also consider the following products

Uno Platform - Build Mobile, Desktop and WebAssembly apps with C# and XAML.

jQuery - The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript Library.

Qt - Powerful, flexible and easy to use, Qt will help you not only meet your tight deadline, but also reduce the maintainable code by an astonishing percentage.

Babel - Babel is a compiler for writing next generation JavaScript.

wxWidgets - wxWidgets: Cross-Platform GUI Library

Flutter - Build beautiful native apps in record time 🚀