Flutter vs React Native: What Is the Best Language for Food Delivery App Development?

Mobile apps are no longer our future; they are our reality entirely involved in our life. Spending over 90% of the smartphone time on mobile apps, they have proved to be the most efficient tool to connect to your customers and ensure they get the best experience. Mobile apps are working strategies for any segment, but with global changes happening since 2019, the on-demand economy, particularly food delivery, is now much more dependent on mobile apps. The field has skyrocketed in the past two years and needs highly productive apps to meet customer requirements. In these terms, we have searched for the best alternative platform for creating the most responsive food delivery application. And we are still facing a choice: Flutter or React Native. 

Flutter vs React Native: Why Consider Them?

Service providers have hard times deciding how to build the best experience for customers. The Food-delivery app needs to be simple and attractive. To make it happen faster with less expense, you can go for building an app from scratch or choosing a cross-platform framework. The two most popular platforms, Flutter and React Native, are the answer to the question “How to create a food delivery app?”

Why go for a cross-platform framework? Like any other choice, it should be reasoned and based on the advantages your choice has.

Cost reduction. With a unique set of tools and cross-platform options, Flutter and React Native frameworks are the top cost-reducing options for developing an on-demand app.

Open-source. Both platforms are open-source with plenty of plugins and third-party services that can fill the food delivery app with functionality the users will love too.

Ready-made UI/UX elements. On-demand apps have the hardest thing to do; it is, gets user retention. With attractive UI and UX elements, it is possible to create an attractive app that once downloaded will never be deleted.

Easy to maintain. Flutter and React Native has an option of easy debugging and updating. Regardless of the stage of development or testing, the app can be easily changed.

User-experience. On-demand apps are for the mass market. They should be simple and flexible with all the functionality right beside the user. Cross-platform frameworks are nailing it.

What Is Flutter?

Google first introduced the open-source cross-platform framework in 2017. The framework is working on Dart programming language, similar to JavaScript, but it is much simpler. UI software toolkit is highly productive for developing interactive cross-platform apps with a single codebase.

Flutter is a complete SDK with a set of tools, widgets, and APIs, UI library with ready-made buttons and elements. The platform is a handy tool to build and deploy MVP products for the on-demand economy smoothly operating on iOS and Android. 

What Is React Native?

React Native was released even earlier in 2015 as an open-source framework created by Facebook and working on JavaScript. The framework requires little to zero preparation thanks to the support of open-source tools and a powerful community. The framework is perfect for building apps for not only iOS and Android but also other platforms like Microsoft Universal Windows Platforms, Apple tvOS, and others. 

The Difference between Flutter and React Native. Which One Is More Popular?

Having two great working and flexible frameworks perfect for building a food delivery app, it is quite hard to understand which one is a better fit. To make the choice easier, let’s put things in their place.

Popularity and market share

According to Statista, React Native is still the most popular cross-platform mobile framework taking 42% of the global share. Flutter follows it with a 30% market share. In the non-web framework list, react-native holds the 6th with 11.50% share, and Flutter has 7.20% and occupies 9th place. 

Setup

Both platforms are open-source with well-written documentation about software installation. However, Flutter has a more straightforward setup process with automated system problem checkups, which React Native misses.

Flutter–1

React Native–0

Programming Language

As mentioned before, the platforms are working on different languages and one definitely has a priority. React Native built on JavaScript is a highly popular programming language, and it is much easier for developers to start with.

React Native–1

Flutter–0 

User Interface

In the user interface, these two frameworks have different behavior when building UI. React Native connects to native iOS and Android components using third-party components, while Flutter has customizable widgets. With the first option, developers often face challenges reproducing complex user interfaces. And, one last thing to mention, React Native components act differently across platforms while Flutter runs identically on both platforms.

Flutter–1

React Native–0

Development time

Two cross-platform frameworks are best to build a food delivery app with minimal budget and development time. In this run, Flutter is a winner with native UI components. Dart language is not that popular among the developers, so it may take time to learn the techniques.

With the popular JavaScript language, React Native may be developed faster but the fact that it has most plugins and components to be integrated, the development time may be a little longer.

Flutter–1

React Native–0  

App performance

We love both experiences with Flutter and React Native, but with this feature too, one of the frameworks is a winner. Flutter turns out to be faster. React Native uses a JavaScript bridge to interact with device components that may slow down the running time. Flutter is compiled into the native ARM code for iOS and Android and it never faces performance issues.

Flutter–1

React Native–0

Test support

Here is another point where Flutter is an absolute winner. React Native has only a few unit-level testing frameworks and no official support. There can be used third-party platforms for testing apps but again, they are not official.

Flutter has a bunch of testing features for testing the app in any of its development levels.

Flutter–1

React Native–0

Cyber Security

In terms of security, Flutter still has room to improve its services. The encryption libraries of Dart programming language meet basic data encryption, while native Android and iOS are more comprehensive. The security documentation may cause data threats. Compared to Flutter, React Native is more secure as it is older and enhanced with more developed technologies. 

Flutter–0

React Native–1

What Is Important for Food Delivery Apps?

Food delivery app is all about third-party APIs like online payment, integrated maps, chatbots, route optimization, etc. The Tech stack should be smoothly integrated into the app UX and easily navigated. When creating a food delivery app, you should consider the factors that will help meet business perspectives.

• Deciding on the business model of the on-demand app.
• Deciding the budget.
• Choosing the framework.
• Setting up a user-friendly interface.
• Integrating third-party APIs.

Building such a complex app requires hours of development time which eventually implies huge expenses. Going for a cross-platform framework with SDK and ready-made components will half-cut the costs for app development at the same time not cutting the quality of the final product.  

To Sum Up

Wrapping it all up, both React Native and Flutter have turned out to be optional for creating a food delivery app. Both frameworks help to build user-friendly applications for iOS and Android in the period and budget set for the project.

What does it mean to build an on-demand app on Flutter or React Native?

• A large talent pool of developers mastered Dart and JavaScript
• Fast coding and hot reload
• One codebase and 2 mobile apps
• Reduced testing time
• Solid UI experience for both platforms
• Perfect for creating MVP 

These are the key reasons to consider cross-platform frameworks for your project. Remember that the choice of the framework first depends on the app’s complexity and the business objectives.