Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

SwiftUI VS Flutter

Compare SwiftUI VS Flutter and see what are their differences

SwiftUI logo SwiftUI

SwiftUI is an innovative, exceptionally simple way to build user interfaces across all Apple platforms with the power of Swift.

Flutter logo Flutter

Build beautiful native apps in record time 🚀
  • SwiftUI Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-28
  • Flutter Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-12-14

SwiftUI features and specs

  • Declarative Syntax
    SwiftUI uses a declarative syntax, which allows developers to state what the UI should do, resulting in clearer and more maintainable code.
  • Cross-Platform Support
    SwiftUI allows for creating apps that work across all Apple platforms, including iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS, enabling more efficient code reuse.
  • Live Preview
    Xcode’s SwiftUI Previews allow developers to see changes in real time without building the entire app, speeding up the development process.
  • Seamless Integration with UIKit and AppKit
    SwiftUI can be easily integrated with existing UIKit and AppKit code, allowing developers to incrementally adopt it.
  • Automatic Dark Mode Support
    SwiftUI provides automatic support for dark mode, simplifying the process of creating themes for applications.

Possible disadvantages of SwiftUI

  • Limited Backward Compatibility
    SwiftUI is only available for iOS 13 and later, which limits its use if targeting older iOS versions is necessary.
  • Growing API
    Since SwiftUI is relatively new and still evolving, some advanced or specific UI components may be missing or not fully optimized.
  • Performance Overhead
    For complex UI setups, SwiftUI can introduce performance overhead compared to UIKit, especially in its initial versions.
  • Learning Curve
    For developers accustomed to UIKit, learning SwiftUI’s declarative style might take some time and adjustment.
  • Bugs and Stability Issues
    As a newer framework, SwiftUI might have more bugs compared to the more mature UIKit and can sometimes lead to stability issues.

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.

SwiftUI videos

How I learned SwiftUI - Design+Code Course Review

More videos:

  • Review - 3 Things I Love/Hate about SwiftUI Rant
  • Review - Should I Learn SwiftUI instead of UIKit?

Flutter videos

beginning of flutter youtube channel

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to SwiftUI and Flutter)
Development Tools
5 5%
95% 95
JavaScript Framework
14 14%
86% 86
Developer Tools
6 6%
94% 94
Javascript UI Libraries
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

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

SwiftUI Reviews

We have no reviews of SwiftUI yet.
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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.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Flutter seems to be a lot more popular than SwiftUI. While we know about 363 links to Flutter, we've tracked only 25 mentions of SwiftUI. 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.

SwiftUI mentions (25)

  • 🚀 Mastering SwiftUI with Composable Architecture: A Game-Changer for Scalable Apps
    TCA is a game-changer for SwiftUI development, making state management structured, predictable, and testable. While it has a learning curve, the long-term benefits outweigh the effort—especially for growing and complex applications. 🎯. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • How to Build iOS PDF Viewer with SwiftUI
    SwiftUI is Apple's latest user interface framework, designed to revolutionize the way developers create UI for iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. Launched at WWDC 2019, SwiftUI offers a modern, declarative syntax that allows developers to build complex UIs with less code and a more intuitive development process. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • SwiftUI vs. UIKit: What is the best choice for building an iOS user interface in 2024?
    As an iOS engineer, you've likely encountered SwiftUI and UIkit, two popular tools for building iOS user interfaces. SwiftUI is the new cool kid on the block, providing a clean way to build iOS screens, while UIkit is the older and more traditional way to build screens for iOS. SwiftUI uses a declarative style where you describe how the UI should look, similar to Jetpack Compose in Android. UIkit, on the other... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Easy Way to Display Markdown in SwiftUI using Text
    Struct ContentView: View { @State private var text: String = " **SwiftUI** helps you build great-looking apps across all _Apple_ platforms with the power of Swift — and surprisingly little code. You can bring even better experiences to everyone, on any Apple device, using just one set of tools and APIs.[SwiftUI](https://developer.apple.com/xcode/swiftui/)" // declare variable as LocalizeStringKey instead ... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
    It took me a bunch of iterations to figure out the value prop, but hmm...it's actually pretty good. I can see all the SwiftUI[0] inspiration in how to make compositions, instead of relying on CSS only. Recently there was Rux[1] which is JSX in Rails, but that is really only dealing with ergonomics oh having Components in a nice DSL. Then there is actual deployment story. I recently made a DRF + Next App, and I... - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
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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 / 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
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What are some alternatives?

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

React Native - A framework for building native apps with React

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

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.

ComponentKit - ComponentKit by Facebook: A React-Inspired View Framework for iOS

Quasar Framework - SPA front-end on steroids.

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