Flutter vs Swift: Which is the Best Platform for Building iOS Apps?

Mar 29, 2023 |

10 minutes read

Flutter and Swift both are widely accepted by the developer’s community. These iOS development frameworks are designed for the enterprises and organizations to simply complex projects. However, these technologies have a great different in terms of adaptability and compatibility.

There are many aspects that you should consider for choosing the right technology for building iOS Application for your organizations or enterprise. All you need is to consider the native technology that will be able to compete with a cross platform? Also consider the development requirements of your application.

As per the data offered by Statista, mobile app development have generated more than $45 billion of revenue in 2019. The most popular app stores namely Play store and App store offers millions of apps created by these two technologies and all of these apps are consumed by more than 4.4 billion of the Internet users across the globe.

Certainly, it would be a good opportunity for many growing businesses to be a part of this innovative trend. Let’s check which technology can easily help you make the best iOS apps. In this blog, we are comparing and contrasting the solutions offered by these technologies.

Flutter App Development ServicesVs. Swift App Development Services, let’s find out which is the best platform for iOS app developers to build iOS apps in 2023.

Understanding Basics of Flutter

As per tech-giant Google, this technology is considered as the best cross-platform UI toolkit that is generally created to reuse codes between operations systems namely iOS and Android. Flutter app development is open-source technology and free to use for the developers to build. It works on object-oriented programming language named as DART. DART and Flutter ios app development both the technologies are invented by Google in 2011 and 2015 respectively. Flutter development enables the developers to create similar versions of the apps, due to its platform-agnostic nature. The developers can use flutter as the single code base that works on both the platforms.

When compared to Swift, it is a programming language, while Flutter is generally a platform that blends DART and widget idea to build flawless digital products.

Understanding basics of Swift

As stated above, Swift is a programming language created by Apple and it is considered as the success of its previous language Objective-C. Objective-C and Swift both the languages are used by the official Apple developers before making them to the rest of the developers.

Now, Apple has officially allowed developers to use these languages to create seamless iOS apps for iOS powered devices including iPhone, iPad and Apple watch. Since its released in 2014, Swift has gained immense attention by the developer community and has received countless enhancements and upgrades.

Detailed Evaluation of Flutter and Swift for building iOS apps

Now, you have known the basic concepts of Flutter and Swift technologies. Still, you should need to learn several parameters that are essentials for integrate the right technique for seamless iOS apps. Here’s a details comparison between these technologies to help you make an informed decision.

Deployment and implementation

Both Flutter and Swift are ideal for flawless deployment and implementation of iOS apps. When it comes to plugins and themes, Flutter offers different types of packages that the developers can easily implement without any hassle.

While Swift on the other hand, offers different types of APIs and frameworks that enable the developers to create seamless iOS applications. Besides, the developers can also find versatile and advanced range of toolkits including Xcode IDE.

Time to Market

As the name itself suggest, Swift is the best way to make and market your iOS application. Swift has less learning curve and offers speedy development and deployment to create and market your iOS apps, beating the competition. The Xcode IDE enables the developers to determine the application development time, enabling them to get the exact time to market.

Flutter on the other hand, is a single codebase platform for creating cross-platform apps. Although, the developers will not be able to determine the exact time to market while building apps with Flutter, then can certainly do real-time changes in the codebase, saving time and enabling quick to market process.

In comparison to Swift, Flutter has slow time to market process.

Size and complexity of the project

Flutter features a short runtime that makes it easier to create inexpensive, quick, and tiny mobile applications. Tree sharing and code spitting are only two of the many tools and optimisations it provides that help to further minimise the size of the programme.

Swift, a native iOS framework, facilitates the creation of lightweight and effective iOS applications. Its compiler aids in application size reduction and performance optimisation. Moreover, a variety of optimisation techniques, including whole-module and link-time optimisation, are available. They assist in further reducing the Swift apps’ application size.

Learning Curve

Unlike Flutter, Swift’s iOS beginning app is quick to learn and light once you’ve created a project in Xcode. This is due to the fact that Swift is all you need to become proficient in, but Flutter calls for knowledge of Dart programming.

Moreover, Swift was created by Apple to be “anyone’s first programming language.” SwiftUI may be used to create iOS apps as well.

Accessibility

It refers to enhancing your application’s UI/UX for users who have disabilities. This aspect must be taken into account when creating an iOS application because it helps to ensure that the app is usable by everyone. The accessibility function in the UI Kit framework is included by default in Swift. Nevertheless, the UI Accessibility protocol requires developers to supply the appropriate accessibility information for each UI element.

Contrarily, Flutter lacks the built-in accessibility functionality. But according to the instructions, you may use Xcode’s Accessibility inspector tool to examine the iOS apps. In progress since 2018, it also has an open issue to add accessibility identifiers for testing. Thus, we can conclude that Swift is more accessible than Flutter.

Reusability

A large collection of reusable widgets and components is made available to developers by Flutter, allowing for quicker development and simpler maintenance of applications.

Swift, which enables code reuse across several Apple platforms, excels in creating mac OS and watch OS applications. Moreover, Swift provides access to a variety of frameworks and system APIs that make it easier to build reusable components for iOS applications, facilitating faster and more effective app development.

While Flutter has a large re-usability advantage than Swift thanks to its cross-platform features, Swift is still a useful tool for developers that are primarily focused on iOS development and want to create highly reusable components.

Hire Dedicated iOS Mobile App Developer for Your Business

Conclusion

Thus, the above parameters can help you determine the right technology for creating iOS apps without any hassle. Flutter and Swift both has their own advantages and drawbacks, but all you need is to select the best suited technology based on the size and complexity of the project, the reusability of the codes, and easy learning, implementation, and deployment of the iOS apps.

A reputed iOS app development company that houses Flutter Developer and Swift developer can help you to make the most of your development project. Thus, hire the right company that is dynamic and versatile to address your iOS app development needs.

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Jinal Shah

Mar 29 2023

The Managing Director of iFlair Web Technologies Pvt. Ltd. since 2004. He has spent 20+ years growing client businesses and assisting organisations ranging from Startups to Fortune 500 companies. Always shares cutting-edge topics on various technology platforms, Builds the prevailing concepts of the IT industry with interested readers.