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Appium vs Xamarin Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Appium
Ranking in Mobile Development Platforms
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Regression Testing Tools (6th)
Xamarin Platform
Ranking in Mobile Development Platforms
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Mobile Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Appium is 2.7%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Xamarin Platform is 6.9%, up from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mobile Development Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Xamarin Platform6.9%
Appium2.7%
Other90.4%
Mobile Development Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

AS
Independent consultant, at OpenText
Efficient mobile testing with intuitive emulation capabilities and a user-friendly interface
Initial setup for Appium (especially for iOS) is not beginner-friendly.Consumes too much of your host machine's resources, potentially slowing down the machine.Appium Inspector often lacks deep insight or crashes with certain app builds. Improve test flakiness by intelligently selecting robust self-healing locators,simplified installers, better documentation, GUI-based config management,smart wait mechanisms and better failure logs.
Anubrata Ghosh - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Manager at Landmark Group
Unified codebase has reduced mobile development effort but now faces SDK and support limits
You can still develop public-facing apps with Xamarin Platform, but there are restrictions on Xamarin Platform App Store and Google Play that prevent you from publishing your apps because they require you to use their latest SDKs and their latest libraries. Xamarin Platform, having been discontinued a couple of years ago, is no longer compatible with the latest libraries and SDKs offered by Google and Apple. So you have to use obsolete libraries and obsolete packages, which means that when you try to publish them, your Google Play or Apple App Store will prevent you from doing that because you have not used the latest libraries. Right now, Xamarin Platform has been discontinued. Xamarin Platform had its flaws, and there were known issues. Xamarin Platform has a big community of developers, so even though there are known issues and flaws, there are known workarounds. In terms of stability, I would rank it at 7.5, but I believe 7 would be a more accurate rating, so 7 out of 10.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I like the app inspector; it's quite a good and useful tool for us, we can use it almost out of the box, it works well on Android, the solution is stable and very scalable, and it is free to use."
"Appium's wide support of programming languages is valuable."
"The solution is stable."
"It runs completely flawlessly and seamlessly every day."
"Appium helps me to do as much as much as I want to."
"The solution helps with test automation. We focus mostly on Java."
"Appium's best feature is that it supports multiple frameworks."
"It has flaws, but is still much better than any other cross-platform mobile automation tool."
"The most valuable feature of the Xamarin Platform is that both the UI are the same in Android and iOS, in one project and Android and iOS, are applications for developing PCL projects."
"Because of the C# programming language, we can train our .NET developers to learn Xamarin and develop mobile apps easily."
"It allows us to reuse our knowledge of C# and .NET Framework."
"The ability to share a platform-agnostic common core, or business logic, enables a mobile developer to write code for all targeted mobile platforms, independent of the individual developer's specialization in iOS, Android, or Windows. This helps not only during development but also enables easier maintenance of deployed apps, since bug fixes or feature additions can be often made in the platform-agnostic layer."
"The best part while using the Xamarin Platform is a cross-platform application; we could execute iOS and Android while writing a single line of code."
"The solution saves us time by containing all the development work in one application instead of two and it's well-documented."
"I would advise others to use the Xamarin Platform because it's the technology that is most stable in the market."
"It has significantly reduced the skill barrier for development and testers."
 

Cons

"The product was a bit difficult to install. It wasn’t easy. We had issues."
"One thing which can be really helpful is that there is some kind of a recorder made available rather than scripting everything."
"We haven't been able to fully leverage Appium for multiple reasons. I think number one is just that the tests take a long time to run."
"Configuration-wise, there is a lot of room for improvement."
"Appium can improve when the case fails, there should be a feature where you can generate the report from Appium. Once you're on a test case, automatically the screenshot should be captured which would avoid manual intervention. These features would be beneficial to migrate to Appium."
"The deployment process and configuration are quite complex and require improvement."
"Appium doesn't recognize IDs placed by our developers on nested elements when we use React Native for iOS; it just sees the whole page and one element."
"They can improve test reporting, and more importantly on test scripts, by providing less constructs to automate more complex testing scenarios."
"There is room for increasing the scale a little bit further with the designer in the Visual Studio, more specifically, Xamarin.Android Designer in Visual Studio."
"They have to focus more on the Xamarin compiling features and tools and maybe test some options."
"Needs to improve the customization of its screens."
"We have noticed that there have been stability-based performance issues with this product, which need to be improved."
"They need to take a step towards independence from the UI platform. It takes a lot of time to adapt the native controls."
"Xamarin Platform, having been discontinued a couple of years ago, is no longer compatible with the latest libraries and SDKs offered by Google and Apple, so you have to use obsolete libraries and obsolete packages, which means that when you try to publish them, your Google Play or Apple App Store will prevent you from doing that because you have not used the latest libraries."
"The file size is a bit big, so you have to make certain layers."
"Generally, when iOS products get updates, some issues can happen with Xamarin. Crashes happen from time to time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"Appium is free and open-source."
"There is no license for this solution because it is open-source."
"The price is good for people to be able to make a favorable decision for the value."
"Appian is open-source, which is not licensed."
"The pricing of Appium is fine."
"This is an open source solution so it does not cost anything for licensing or otherwise."
"We found out that we could explore features of the solution for 30 days trial. We can switch to a permanent license later if we want."
"There is no requirement for a license. It is available for free as an open-source product."
"I think the solution is free."
"Xamarin Platform is a free open-source solution."
"Xamarin Platform is open-source, but there are fees for deployment, the API Store and Play Store, and using third-party libraries."
"This is a free product, so there is zero investment on licenses and IDE."
"The product is inexpensive."
"You can build in Xamarin without paying any money."
"My company provided all the licenses that we need to support our use of Xamarin Platform."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Educational Organization
12%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

Do you recommend Appium?
I do recommend Appium. It is an open-source solution and completely free of charge. We use Appium and Appium Studio as our base for any type of mobile automation for testing. It has a great interfa...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Appium?
My experience with Appium from a pricing perspective is favorable due to it being open source, making it a cost-effective option.
What needs improvement with Appium?
The deployment process and configuration are quite complex and require improvement. Additionally, the wait time functionality could be enhanced as I experienced failures with longer wait times.
What do you like most about Xamarin Platform?
Xamarin.Forms are very useful. Essentially, it's a framework that allows me to create the UI mostly in XAML. This XAML code is then translated into the native UI elements for each respective platform.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Xamarin Platform?
It is free to use Xamarin Platform as we utilize the community edition. Xamarin Platform was acquired by Microsoft and then made free, which happened way back in 2015, I believe, or 2014. After it ...
What needs improvement with Xamarin Platform?
You can still develop public-facing apps with Xamarin Platform, but there are restrictions on Xamarin Platform App Store and Google Play that prevent you from publishing your apps because they requ...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nuvizz, Coupa Software, Eventbrite, Evernote
Cinemark, MixRadio, Sqor Sports, Storyo, JetBlue, The World Bank, Cr_dito Agrcola, Applied Research Associates
Find out what your peers are saying about Appium vs. Xamarin Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,868 professionals have used our research since 2012.