In 2024, mobile developers seem to be trendy once again. The mobile application market is expected to grow by almost 12% in revenue in 2024 alone. For your reference, that’s even above what the renewable energy sector hopes to increase in earnings this year — so, yes, mobile apps are secretly pulling in more cash than windmills by the North Sea will in the next year.

We don’t know if that’s good or bad for our planet, but it does mean there are opportunities for mobile developers who want to get some piece of that cake. With Android and iOS more established than ever before — sorry if you feel old when you read this, but Google’s signature mobile operating system will turn a sweet 16 this year — and with niche mobile sales not planning to slow down anytime soon, there seems to be plenty of prospects for developers who want to pivot to mobile and earn a living with it. The key is: Should these developers learn to code in Android or iOS?

Fortunately for developers, mobile development has been around for so long that companies have sprung up with cross-platform frameworks that allow developers to code in a single codebase — and then quickly ship their apps to iOS and Android alike.

But a mature market also means plenty of frameworks. We’re picking the best cross-platform mobile development frameworks for developers to work with in 2024.

Wait — what is a cross-platform app development framework again?

Yes, it seems contrived, but the term is still self-explanatory. You can always develop apps natively, either on Android or iOS. This is more expensive because it takes more time and it requires experts in two languages, not one. Specific companies that are very, very insistent about an insane user experience™ will certainly develop apps for Android and iOS from scratch using two separate codebases. Some banks in regions where the two operating systems are prevalent do indeed invest resources in making two native apps.

Read our Guide on Mobile Development →

Cross-platform app development, instead, allows developers to ship two separate apps — one for iOS, and one for Android — from a single codebase. The tools that allow devs to enjoy this advantage are what we know as frameworks.

One understated aspect of cross-platform mobile development is that frameworks have been around for a long while. That’s why many of these choices could have been featured in an article from 2018, for example. Still, our info is up-to-date for your convenience, and we’ve certainly included updates from the firms developing these frameworks. Let's review the 5 main options.

React Native

Developed by Meta (previously Facebook) and launched in 2015, React Native is an open-source UI software framework. Based on Facebook's JavaScript library React.js, this tool allows you to build mobile apps that render natively across different platforms like iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and web browsers. When Meta launched their Ads Manager app, they instantly released it on the Apple Store and Play Store because it’s on React Native.

Key features: React Native has considerable facilities for generating responsive and faster UIs and updating them, as it employs APIs and native platform UI components. It also has plenty of third-party libraries.

Mobile apps: Meta Ads Manager, Walmart, Facebook

Xamarin

Xamarin is an open-source cross-platform app development framework that allows you to share up to 90% of your code across major platforms such as Android, iOS, Windows, and Linux. Created in 2011 by engineers behind Mono and acquired by Microsoft in 2016, it uses the C# language and is based on the .NET framework.

Key features: Xamarin benefits from leveraging several valuable .NET capabilities, including Lambdas, LINQ, and Asynchronous Programming. With Xamarin you get full support to access native APIs and tools for all three platforms, Android, iOS, and Windows.

Xamarin benefits from full-and-solid corporate support as it is managed by Microsoft and is particularly well-liked among developers of mobile applications using C, C++, and C#. 

Mobile apps: Microsoft Office Suite for mobile devices

Flutter 

Flutter is the open-source cross-platform app development framework introduced by Google in 2017. You will need to use Dart, Google's programming language, to build apps with Flutter from a single codebase. Still, Dart's syntax is similar to C# and Java, making it easy to learn.

Key features: With Flutter's hot-reload capability, you can observe real-time improvements on your app after making code changes. Consequently, you can readily debug and test your app on the fly. A wide variety of pre-built widgets are included in the Flutter framework, which may be readily customised to create UIs that are both responsive and pleasing to the eye.

Flutter is linked to a sizable developer community that updates the open-source framework and provides assistance via various online resources such as forums, tutorials, and documentation. 

Mobile apps: Alibaba

Ionic 

Released in 2013 by Drifty Co., Ionic is an open-source UI toolkit for building modern, high-performance hybrid apps from a single codebase. It combines web and native technologies, including JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, and incorporates the Angular, React, and Vue frameworks.

Key features: Ionic provides a rich library of UI components, enabling devs to create visually attractive interfaces. As we told before, Ionic works with JavaScript frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue — the big three frontend frameworks. You'll fit in perfectly if you're familiar with any of these. Furthermore, it offers extensions and plugins to access built-in features like camera, geolocation, and push notifications on devices.

The Ionic framework provides a command-line interface with immediate reload, debugging instruments, and app deployment.

Mobile apps: Target

Kotlin Multiplatform

Kotlin Multiplatform is an open-source SDK created by JetBrains. It is the younger contender on our list of cross-platform development frameworks, and it’s gradually getting more popular. 

Key features: Kotlin Multiplatform enables devs to write shareable code among different platforms, such as Android and iOS, while simultaneously maintaining the option to use platform-specific code for more sophisticated functions. This guarantees an optimal user experience on iOS, Android, and other platforms. A use-case scenario for this feature could involve using native resources from each phone, such as accessing specs from a camera’s iris recognition for authentication. The example might be a bit contrived, but it’s a good explanation of how Kotlin can still use native resources — even if those are yet to be released by vendors.

So, yes, — you can effectively use Kotlin Multiplatform to add new features to existing Android and iOS applications. 

Mobile apps: Various sources claim that TikTok is built on Kotlin

How do you decide on your next cross-platform development framework?

You’ll notice every framework we listed has at least one big company using it. This is a sign of trust. If these companies, which need scaling up all the time, are using it, then it means the framework’s built to last. Moreover, as we said before, most of these featured stacks could’ve shown up in a list from 2018, which means their foundations are very solid.

The easiest path to picking a framework might be to check how much the interfaces or coding practices resemble frontend frameworks. Then, you can start with the one that looks the most similar to React, for example.

Read About the Best JavaScript Framework to Learn →

What’s the difference between hybrid development and cross-platform development?

It is a common misconception — fired up by the non-technical crowd — to consider cross-platform frameworks and hybrid development the same thing. They’re separate strategies. The only similarity between these two app development methods is the benefit of sharing code among various platforms. 

This is not a negligible overlap, especially if we compare it against native app development, but you should be aware of more fundamental distinctions to make the right choice. Hybrid app development uses web-based technology — HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — to run code and then embed it into a native app using plugins like Ionic's Capacitor or Cordova. It is the easiest, fastest, and most affordable option to develop apps for several operating systems, and it was pretty widespread in SDKs during the last decade. Of course, the quality of the app and the UX will be less polished than apps developed with cross-platform technologies, let alone native ones.

Get a job as a mobile developer

Mobile development is not slowing down, and in Europe, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of mobile development jobs available all year round. We offer some fantastic opportunities for mobile developers seeking new mobile positions in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, the UK, and more. Have a look at our job board for the latest mobile developer positions. In addition, if your organisation needs to bring on mobile developers, we can assist you in finding the best candidates from our developer community.