Ionic or Flutter: Which App Development Framework should you choose for App Project?
Tags: ionic, flutter, appdevelopment
Published: 2021-06-10 09:03:08

In recent years, most organizations have switched from desktop websites to mobile apps as a fast-track way to reach a global audience. Due to this rapid popularity, many companies are creating their own versions of mobile applications for specific purposes.

If you are starting a company and want to spend on a mobile app, finding the right solution for your needs is the only problem. Businesses prefer hybrid frameworks for mobile app development because they follow the one-time coding principle and deploy it everywhere. 

It dramatically reduces costs while also cutting down on development time. The two most popular options are Ionic vs. Flutter. Both Ionic and Flutter share a joint mission of creating beautiful applications with interactive UIs. 

And according to a recent [app development](https://www.standardfirms.com/top-app-development-companies/) stat, **86%** of developers prefer Ionic for mobile development while Flutter is preferred by **68.8%** of the developing community.
![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/px9z03t4qwpwbed3m0iv.png)
[Source](https://www.simform.com/flutter-vs-ionic/)
In this article, I will be discussing the general vital points and conducting a detailed comparison of the two most popular mobile development frameworks, Ionic and Flutter.

Here we go…

## **Ionic vs. Flutter – Market Usage Statistics**


#### **Ionic Stats:** 

• **86%** of developers prefer Ionic for mobile development
• About **5 million apps** have been built using the Ionic framework

#### **Flutter Stats:**

• **39%** of the world's population uses Flutter to build cross-platform mobile applications.
• **7.2%** of the community choose Flutter for the popularity of their libraries and tools.

## **Flutter: A Brief Introduction**
![flutter app development](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/rdv9fkuxp50d0rysrxqx.png)
Created by Google in 2018, **Flutter is scalable and fast**, with a UX platform that plugs directly into your backend code. And it uses Dart as its code. As a result, it works well with JavaScript for backend functions and similarly with Objective C and Swift in iOS. This is a significant difference between ionic vs. Flutter.

Flutter is made up of two core components:

• SDK (Software Development Kit): This is a set of tools that will help you build your applications.
• Framework (Widget-Based User Interface Library): This is a set of standard user interface elements that you can customize to meet your requirements.

## **Flutter Pros And Cons**
![flutter app development](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/vfkyn0jv88y377oi2iyd.jpg)
[Source](https://radixweb.com/blog/flutter-vs-ionic)
## **What’s Flutter used for?**
To really understand the Ionic vs. Flutter frameworks, you should see them in an actual use case environment. You are most likely to see Flutter use in:

• Apps using Material Design Language
• Minimum Viable Product (MVP), which can use Flutter's light construction to build first version or proof of concept apps rapidly
• Skia is used for high speed, high-performance rendering
• Simple Logic OS Plugins
• UX with hefty data integration & user interaction
• User interfaces that use code-intensive widgets


## **What is Ionic?**
![ionic apps](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/x2cssxuppc81a2bb4pj5.png)
The first stable version of the Ionic framework was launched in March 2014. **Ionic is an open-source UI toolkit** that uses web technologies such as JavaScript, CSS, and HTML; to architect top-notch desktop, mobile, and advanced web applications.

Ionic majorly focuses on the front-end UX & UI interaction. And, therefore plays a significant role in handling the look and feel of an application. 

It is not only capable of integrating with other frameworks and libraries such as Angular, Cordova, etc., but it can also be used independently without the support of a front-end framework.

#### **Some of the Ionic advantages are:** 

• One version does it all - Ionic operates on a singular code base anchored to a whole array of JS libraries. This eliminates duplication of code to sync with other platforms.
• Works to scale - there is no strict limit on the number of users. Keep scaling uo. Ionic can handle this.

## **What is Ionic Used for?**

• Cross-platform mobile application development
• Hybrid mobile app development
• Hardware functionality enabled app
• MVC mobile apps
• Develop high-performance UX/UI applications
• Native wrapper

## **Ionic vs. Flutter: Know the Major Differences**


### **1. Ionic vs. Flutter – Performance**
![ionic vs flutter development](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/l40nc69fkg5izmf76vzt.gif)
It may be the most important metric for most developers out there. Ionic may lag you behind the standard level on a performance basis by using Cordova for running JavaScript. It is the inclusion of web technologies that causes a significant negative impact on its performance.

But when it comes to Flutter, it provides better performance by skipping the interactive bridge with native components. So if performance is an essential metric for your project or you need to access advanced features, you should consult a [flutter development company](https://www.pixelcrayons.com/mobile-app-development/flutter-app-development-company-india?utm_source=devto-ionicflutterarticlejune10&utm_medium=kr-Rukh&utm_campaign=traffic).

The main performance difference of Flutter vs. Ionic has always been about the code. Furthermore, their **performance also depends on the size of the application**.

If the bundle size is less, the runtime will be faster. In the case of Flutter, it requires heavy code to build a basic app, whereas Ionic uses the standard browser runtime.

### **2. Ionic vs. Flutter – Code Maintainability** 

Ionic has one of the largest communities, yet there may be some issues that you may encounter when maintaining the code for your application. In fact, **Flutter is more convenient to carry than Ionic**.

**Flutter application is easy to maintain**. The code's simplicity helps you source issues, external tools and support third-party libraries.

In addition, the stateful **hot reloading feature** resolves urgent issues. As a result, the time taken to issue quality updates and make immediate changes to the application is considered better.

With Ionic, programmers often find themselves rewriting code to maintain consistency across their applications, making code maintenance a major challenge. What's worse is that backward compatibility breaks down most of the time, making it a more frustrating experience.

### **3. Ionic vs. Flutter – Native Look and Feel**

As far as users are concerned, both Flutter and Ionic will appear native for the most part. Although no single framework uses native UI elements from each platform, **Flutter and Ionic automatically update the design of their UI elements** to match the platform the app is running on.

Both solutions allow you to access platform services and native APIs **through a library of pre-built plugins**, along with a set of tools to create your own custom plugins as needed.


### **4. Ionic vs. Flutter – Sustainability**

Sustainability is an ingenious factor in this battle of Ionic vs. Flutter. Here sustainability means shelf-life and flexibility of the project.
**Ionic-powered projects tend to be more durable than flutter ones**.

The reason behind this is simple. When you go with the Ionic, you're choosing a more comprehensive platform than Flutter. When it comes to cross-platform application development, the broad platform helps developers get a stable and uniform script.

Moreover, you may also opt to hire [ionic app developers](https://www.pixelcrayons.com/hire-ionic-developers?utm_source=devto-ionicflutterarticlejune10&utm_medium=kr-Rukh&utm_campaign=traffic) in India to build a customized application on Ionic. Whatever you create on Ionic, you adopt open web standards. 

This allows you to follow the same standard and **create a uniform script for developing cross-platform applications**. And above all, you can use the app with any JavaScript framework.

### **5. Ionic vs. Flutter – Popularity and Real-world Usage**

You could say that Flutter should be number one in this category, **with 95k stars on Github** and a significantly trending nature. 

Despite being relatively new, **Flutter already has some exciting apps** built with it. And also, Flutter is heavily advertised by Google, and they want to make it a big thing. 

Ionic is also very popular, although it is either not as popular or not used as Flutter. If we take Github stars as an indicator, we can see that it **has about 41k stars** at the moment. Ionic doesn't have any reputed mobile apps built with it, but many apps are still being built using it.

### **Popular Applications Built with Flutter:**

• Alibaba 
• Google Ads 
• Tencent 
• eBay 
• Reflect 
• BMW 

### **Popular Apps Built with Ionic:**

• MarketWatch 
• TD Ameritrade Mobile 
• Diesel
• Microsoft Flow 
• Sworkit



## **Bottom Lines** 
I hope the blog has given you an idea about which app development framework you should choose for your next project. Both these cross-platform app development frameworks are unique in their own way.

So, choosing an appropriate framework depends on the requirement of your app development project. If you want to develop an app based on any of the two frameworks, you can reach out to the [top mobile app development companies in India](https://www.pixelcrayons.com/mobile-app-development/?utm_source=devto-ionicflutterarticlejune10&utm_medium=kr-Rukh&utm_campaign=traffic) with expertise in both frameworks.

They will help you execute your next Flutter or Ionic projects on time and within the budget constraint. If you have any further query, do let me know in the comment section below. 

Good Luck!