Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Flutter VS Onsen UI

Compare Flutter VS Onsen UI and see what are their differences

Flutter logo Flutter

Build beautiful native apps in record time 🚀

Onsen UI logo Onsen UI

HTML5 Hybrid Mobile App UI Framework - work with Angular, React, Vue, Meteor & pure JavaScript. Material & Flat design.
  • Flutter Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-12-14
  • Onsen UI Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-21

Flutter features and specs

  • Cross-Platform Development
    Flutter allows you to create applications that run on multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, web, and desktop, using a single codebase, thereby significantly reducing development time and effort.
  • Hot Reload
    The Hot Reload feature allows developers to see the results of their code changes almost instantly without a full restart, boosting productivity and making the debugging process more efficient.
  • Rich Set of Pre-Built Widgets
    Flutter offers a comprehensive collection of customizable widgets that follow modern design guidelines, allowing developers to build attractive and consistent UIs effortlessly.
  • Performance
    Flutter applications are compiled directly to native ARM code, which can result in superior performance comparable to native applications.
  • Strong Community Support
    As an open-source project, Flutter has a large and active community, providing abundant resources, third-party libraries, and plugins to accelerate development.

Possible disadvantages of Flutter

  • Large App Size
    Flutter apps tend to have a larger file size compared to native apps, which could be a concern for users with limited storage space or slow internet connections.
  • Limited Ecosystem
    While Flutter is growing rapidly, its ecosystem is not yet as mature as those of more established frameworks, meaning that certain third-party libraries, tools, and plugins might be lacking or underdeveloped.
  • Platform-Specific APIs
    Despite its cross-platform capabilities, Flutter may require the development of custom platform-specific code for certain functionalities, which could complicate the development process.
  • Learning Curve
    Flutter uses Dart, a programming language that is less commonly used compared to JavaScript, Java, or Swift, which may result in a steeper learning curve for new developers.
  • State Management Complexity
    Managing states effectively in large applications can be challenging in Flutter, potentially leading to convoluted code if not handled properly.

Onsen UI features and specs

  • Cross-Platform Compatibility
    Onsen UI supports iOS, Android, and Windows platforms, allowing developers to create apps that work seamlessly across multiple operating systems using a single codebase.
  • Easy to Learn
    Onsen UI provides clear documentation and an extensive set of components, making it easy for developers, including those who are new to mobile development, to get started quickly.
  • Performance
    Onsen UI is known for its performance, providing smooth animations and transitions on both mobile and desktop devices. It's optimized to work well even on less powerful devices.
  • Integration with Popular Frameworks
    Onsen UI can be seamlessly integrated with popular front-end frameworks like Angular, React, and Vue.js, enhancing its versatility and allowing developers to use their framework of choice.
  • Customizability
    The platform offers a high level of customizability, letting developers create unique and tailored user experiences by extending and modifying existing components.
  • Active Community
    Onsen UI has a robust community and active support, which means developers can readily find solutions to problems, share knowledge, and get updates on new features.
  • Built-in Theme Support
    Onsen UI provides built-in themes that automatically change the look and feel of the application to match the target platform, enhancing user experience by providing a native look and feel.

Possible disadvantages of Onsen UI

  • Dependency on Groovy
    Some features in Onsen UI depend on the Monaca CLI which uses Groovy, adding an additional technology layer that developers might need to learn.
  • Limited Plugin Ecosystem
    Compared to other frameworks like React Native or Flutter, Onsen UI has a relatively limited range of third-party plugins, which can restrict the functionality or require custom development for certain features.
  • Learning Curve for Advanced Customization
    While basic usage is straightforward, advanced customization may have a steeper learning curve, particularly for developers not familiar with mobile-first design principles.
  • Less Popularity
    Onsen UI is less popular compared to frameworks like React Native and Flutter, which can result in fewer resources, tutorials, and community support.
  • Debugging Complexity
    Debugging mobile-specific issues can be more involved when using a hybrid framework like Onsen UI compared to using native development tools.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing dependencies in a hybrid environment can sometimes be challenging, especially when dealing with different versions of libraries and platform-specific issues.

Flutter videos

beginning of flutter youtube channel

Onsen UI videos

Onsen UI - Introduction

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Onsen UI Getting Started Tutorial
  • Review - Masahiro Tanaka - Hybrid Mobile Apps with Vue.js and Onsen UI | VueConf 2017

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Flutter and Onsen UI)
Development Tools
84 84%
16% 16
Developer Tools
75 75%
25% 25
JavaScript Framework
71 71%
29% 29
Application Builder
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Flutter and Onsen UI. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Flutter and Onsen UI

Flutter Reviews

Explore 9 Top Eclipse Alternatives for 2024
With Flutter 2’s release in 2021, developers now have full support to construct intuitive Windows apps, marking another milestone in Flutter’s inclusive cross-platform vision.
Source: aircada.com
Top 10 Flutter Alternatives for Cross-Platform App Development
So, above are some of the Flutter alternatives you can consider for your upcoming projects. To make the right selection, you should analyze the characteristics of your applications, which will help you make the most appropriate selection. You can also get in touch with a Flutter development company to go with the right option.
Top 5 Flutter Alternatives for Cross-Platform Development
Qt’s native capabilities contribute to its good app performance and size. Compared to Flutter, Flutter apps tend to be larger than native apps. However, the framework’s features and language are designed to boost Flutter app performance.
Source: www.miquido.com
Exploring 15 Powerful Flutter Alternatives
Beyond official Flutter built by Google, Flutter Community is an open-source fork-adding capability and component. Flutter Community has specifically expanded device testing coverage beyond Google’s in-house capabilities. With contributors volunteering devices for testing worldwide, Flutter Community tracks compatibility across over 3000 device variants spanning multiple...
Top 10 Android Studio Alternatives For App Development
Flutter is a framework that is used by stack developers to build multi-platform apps from a single codebase. It is an open-source project which was developed by Google to build app UI.

Onsen UI Reviews

Top React component libraries (2021 edition)
Originally based on AngularJS with support for jQuery, Onsen UI offers an adapted framework for React. Onsen was developed by Monaca Software which specializes in mobile app development and is based out of Japan. Based on the mobile-first origin, the Onsen UI framework is well suited for building mobile apps.
Source: retool.com
Top JavaScript Frameworks For Mobile App Development
OnSen UI is a powerful, free, opensource mobile application JavaScript framework that is bundled up with ready to implement features with a native nature. It is apt for building hybrid apps with Cordova and progressive web apps.There are 3 layers attached to it — CSS components, framework bindings, and web components.
Source: medium.com
Comparing popular React component libraries
Onsen UI is a bit different from the previous libraries we’ve examined. Because it’s built with a mobile-first design in mind, Onsen UI is mostly used to build cross-platform mobile web apps.
10 React Native Alternatives
Most importantly, the Onsen UI ecosystem has a toolkit known as Monaca that helps in developing hybrid mobile apps.
20 Best Front-End Frameworks For Bootstrap Alternative
Onsen UI is a hybrid framework that works well with PhoneGap and Cordova. With AngularJS, jQuery, Font Awesome and TopCoat as the foundation, Onsen UI can be a promising tools for developing amazing mobile apps. Onsen UI can help you build mobile apps easily using the concept of Web Components.
Source: beebom.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Flutter seems to be a lot more popular than Onsen UI. While we know about 363 links to Flutter, we've tracked only 2 mentions of Onsen UI. 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.

Flutter mentions (363)

  • 🚀 iOS vs Android Development: Which One Should You Learn First? (The Truth No One Tells You!)
    🎯 Still confused? Start with Flutter, which lets you build both iOS & Android apps with one codebase! Check it out here. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Writing and Reading NFC in Flutter | Comprehensive Guide
    Flutter provides robust support for NFC through third-party packages, making implementation seamless. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Building cost-effective AI-driven MVPs with Flutter development services
    Flutter is a powerful, popular, and open-source platform known for its developer-friendly environment, wide ecosystem of libraries, extensions and other tools. A key feature of Flutter app development services is that it promotes the development of cross-platform applications without needing to build or write two or three different codebases. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • How to Build a CRUD Application Using Flutter & Strapi
    In this tutorial, I'll show you how to build a full-featured mobile CRUD application with Flutter and Strapi 5. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • React v19 has been released
    I don't agree but if you're looking for something that renderers everything in a canvas it's called Flutter https://flutter.dev/, and strangely it's made by Google, even though Flutter's success means the end of scraping the web for search. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
View more

Onsen UI mentions (2)

  • 12 Frameworks for Hybrid Mobile Apps
    Onsen UI has quickly grown in adoption since its release in 2013. It is an open-source framework under the Apache v2 license. Onsen UI is framework-agnostic UI components, you can choose and switch among the frameworks: AngularJS, Angular, React, and Vue.js or go pure JavaScript to build your hybrid apps. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Why are HTML attributes set differently into the DOM?
    For one of our web applications, we used the Onsen UI js framework with its React support library. Source: about 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Flutter and Onsen UI, you can also consider the following products

React Native - A framework for building native apps with React

jQuery Mobile - jQuery Mobile

import.io - Import. io helps its users find the internet data they need, organize and store it, and transform it into a format that provides them with the context they need.

Ionic Framework - A front-end SDK to develop applications with HTML5 , CSS3 and JavaScript.

NativeScript - Build truly native apps with JavaScript

Content Grabber - Content Grabber is an automated web scraping tool.