It is no secret that a mobile app is among the most powerful tools at the disposal of the market and that too across all sectors. They not only empower companies with the ability to reach out to and engage with their customers all over the world but also deliver a powerful boost to their brand presence in their target market.
Cross-platform development is picking up pace today and you might wonder why. This is because it allows running apps on multiple platforms (iOS/Android) while helping businesses to reach out to more customers, thereby earning more money. The focus is gradually on steadily shifting cross-platform development, and new technologies to emerge more and more frequently. It is no secret that a mobile app is among the most powerful tools at the disposal of the market and that too across all sectors. They not only empower companies with the ability to reach out to and engage with their customers all over the world but also deliver a powerful boost to their brand presence in their target market. However, companies often find themselves struggling to decide which development tool is best-suited for their requirements. The choice, then, is quite often between Flutter and Kotlin — two of the most powerful development framework solutions out there. If you too are faced with this choice, you have come to just the right place. To help make the choice a tad easier, we have put together a quick comparison between Flutter and Kotlin. Here goes.
Flutter
An open-source programming solution, Flutter is a globally-renowned tool for the development of cross-platform applications, be it for mobile, desktop, or web. What this means is that this UI toolkit offered by Google enables the development of apps for iOS, Linux, Android, Mac, web, Windows, etc. with just one codebase.
Pros:
- Hot reload feature which makes app development significantly quicker
- Lower cost
- Reduced development time
- Expressive and declarative UI
Cons:
- Less than ideal performance with iOS apps
- Dearth of third-party integrations and libraries
- Steep learning curve for Dart programming language
Kotlin
Though a relatively new development language in the market, Kotlin is a statically-typed programming language that supports object-oriented programming as well as procedural programming. It may also be worth noting that Kotlin completely interoperates with Java and is Google’s preferred development tool for creating Android apps.
Pros:
- Secure and concise code
- Ease of learning
- Fuss-free code maintenance
Cons:
- A comparatively smaller number of Kotlin experts
- Compared to Java, Kotlin’s compilation speed is slightly lower
Now, a quick comparison of Flutter and Kotlin based on some key factors.
- Performance: Flutter apps, written using the Dart programming language, are compiled straight to the machine code, resulting in these apps being super fast. Whereas with Kotlin, an object-oriented programming language, the code is compiled in the same format as that of the platform for which the code has been written. As a result, Kotlin serves as a powerful solution for the development of cross-platform apps.
- Cost: In this context, both Flutter and Kotlin are at par since they are both open-source, i.e. can be used free of charge.
- Time-to-market: Flutter gets the hot reload feature which makes it easier for developers to assess and make changes rather quickly, allowing an accelerated development timeline Kotlin is admittedly not as fast as Flutter in this department, but it does offer benefits such as reusability of code, concise syntax, etc. — all of which ensure quicker app development.
Be it native mobile app development or cross-platform app development, both Flutter and Kotlin have proven their mettle as reliable solutions. Furthermore, both these Google-backed solutions can help reduce development costs as well as time. So, it is understandable that companies struggle to choose between the two. Nonetheless, a choice must be made; experts recommend that companies closely evaluate their unique requirements against the two options before deciding if they need a vendor for Flutter mobile application development services or one for Kotlin.
