The Best Android SDK Tools of the Year

Pimple Popper, an app for popping virtual pimples; Habitica, an app for gamifying your tasks; and Splitwise, an app for carving up bills — these Android apps are totally different from one another in concept, but all have one common, fundamental requirement: Android SDK tools.

As app professionals, you already know that in order to stand out and thrive in the saturated mobile-app ecosystem, you’re going to need all the help you can get. Android SDK tools can help in many different ways, from better in-app payments, location data collection, monetizing your app, and better understanding your users.

With so many great Android SDK tools to choose from and so many different app categories, choosing the right one for your app is not an easy task. But worry not, we’re here to help!

We’ve selected what we believe are the best Android SDK tools of the year, per category:

The Best Android SDK Tools

1. Best Android Payment SDK – Braintree

Braintree, now a PayPal service, is a popular full-stack payment gateway solution adopted by a number of reputed mobile companies around the world. It is an all-in-one Android SDK solution that helps both smaller startups and enterprise companies set up and collect payments any way they want. It has great features, including the excellent drop-in UI, the ability to customize your own payment UI, fraud protection, and recurring billing detection.

2. Best Android Analytics SDK – Appsee

While there are many app analytics SDKs to choose from in the Android ecosystem, Appsee is one of few solutions that provide app developers with the ability to see exactly what happened to users during moments before a bug/crash occurred. Many developers still struggle with reproducing bugs and crashes in their app, and Appsee is here to change that. With tools like user session recordings and touch heatmaps, and automatic event/screen tagging — app developers can reproduce issues within minutes and even catch individual-level issues before they become widespread. In short, Appsee provides a powerful combination of app analytics, qualitative analytics features, and crash reporting capabilities, all rolled into one lightweight SDK.  

3. Best Android Attribution SDK – Appsflyer

Appsflyer is perhaps the best android SDK when it comes to user attribution. Appsflyer’s attribution tool helps app owners understand where their traffic is coming from and measures their advertising. Along with that, there are more great features, like an active fraud solution, real-time analytics, download/install tracking algorithms, and a robust mobile-marketing platform.

4. Best Android Crash Reporting SDK – Crashlytics

Crashlytics, now a Google-owned company, is a lightweight, real-time crash-reporting SDK. This free SDK helps app developers track, prioritize, and fix stability issues that ruin their app quality. Crashlytics helps app developers discover the errors that cause their app to crash. Even more, it highlights the exact line of code that produced the issue.

5. Best Android Engagement SDK – Apptentive

Apptentive is a mobile customer-engagement SDK that aims to help app developers listen to, engage with, and retain their users. App developers can easily engage with users thanks to tools like in-app messaging, rating prompts, and surveys. Apptentive also utilizes a unique intelligent interaction algorithm, which identifies the best users and the best time to engage with them.

6. Best Android Advertising SDK – Mopub

Mopub offers app developers and mobile publishers an open source SDK that enables them to monetize direct ads, ad networks, and utilize the platform’s real-time bidding system. There is a great selection of ad formats to choose from as well. The Mopub SDK for Android is designed to be easy-to-use, flexible, and to work across multiple platforms.

7. Best Android Mobile A/B Testing SDK – Apptimize

Apptimize helps native Android apps rapidly iterate to make great user experiences through A/B testing. Although originally a mobile-focused Android SDK tool, it has now added robust cross-platform capabilities to assess the impact of tests on a variety of digital touch points. In addition to this holistic view, some of its top features include instant updates, feature flags, and onboarding optimizations. With Apptimize, you can launch tests instantly without any approval needed from the Play Store.

8. Best Location SDK – Radar

Radar is a lightweight, easy-to-integrate location SDK for Android. Although a newer SDK in the ecosystem, Radar already has an impressive list of clientele. It helps app developers gather location-based data and turn it into actionable product-insights. These insights will help build better apps and better understand users’ behavior. Some of the great features you can find with Radar are tagging user places, location-based events, contextual insights, and more.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, finding the best SDK for your Android app is a big deal. It’s important to make sure the solution is lightweight, out of the box, and compatible with other Android SDK tools that are critical to your brand. If the match isn’t right, you can end up spending precious time and resources on a solution that you don’t even need.