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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."
"It's one of the most stable solutions for mobile automation."
"Appium's wide support of programming languages is valuable."
"Appium has easy interaction with mobile."
"Obviously because of automation, it reduces manual testing efforts."
"It has great documentation and excellent community support."
"The solution provides one roof or framework for both iOS and Android code bases."
"The best feature of Appium is that it allows you to inspect the element. With the Appium Inspector, you don't have to install another application to do the inspection. I also like that Appium has Android device connectivity. Currently, most people use Appium as automation software, and I haven't found any other tool that's more powerful than Appium."
"The native features and Xamarin Essentials package are highly valuable to us."
"Their leadership is exceptional at both listening to the customer base and delivering innovative, best-in-class products."
"On the market, compared to everyone else, they're the top solution. They're the best solution out there that I could see."
"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 Xamarin platform can reduce overhead significantly through code-share and reuse. The typical team size for a Xamarin project is significantly reduced compared to purely native projects."
"We were able to optimize the service organization for one of our clients."
"Recently, Xamarin has added a lot of features such as Effects, Behaviors, Triggers, etc. This has made the UI user-friendly, lively, and attractive."
"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."
 

Cons

"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 product was a bit difficult to install. It wasn’t easy. We had issues."
"Support-wise, it could be better."
"It should provide reliable and promising executions every time without any interruptions and avoiding any synchronization issues."
"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."
"We need some bug fixes for nested elements."
"Stability is an area that needs some improvement."
"We have noticed that there have been stability-based performance issues with this product, which need to be improved."
"The problem that I faced was that the communication, the roles, and the responsibilities, weren't defined between Microsoft and Xamarin."
"There are compatibility issues between versions of various Xamarin components."
"It is common to find a problem that you would need to develop from the start since there are no third-party components to reuse."
"There is limited support for UX widgets."
"It would be better if they offered more certifications. They offer a number of certifications for Azure but none for Xamarin. This is something that could be provided for developers to show off their competency. Technical support could be better."
"Xamarin Platform's performance base could be improved."
"The solution does not include Hot Reload which is painful because it causes us to wait quite some time for huge builds."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open source solution so it does not cost anything for licensing or otherwise."
"It's open source, so it's completely free."
"The price is good for people to be able to make a favorable decision for the value."
"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"There is no license for this solution because it is open-source."
"The solution is free."
"Appian is open-source, which is not licensed."
"The solution is open source so it is free."
"The price of the Xamarin Platform is not expensive. However, the price of the solution depends on the application that is made. For example, if you have small applications, it's different from large or enterprise applications."
"Xamarin Platform is open-source, but there are fees for deployment, the API Store and Play Store, and using third-party libraries."
"Xamarin is free. There is no license unless you go for some high-end enterprise features. Other than that, everything's free."
"This is a free product, so there is zero investment on licenses and IDE."
"Xamarin Platform is a free open-source solution."
"My company provided all the licenses that we need to support our use of Xamarin Platform."
"Xamarin is free, or comes with Visual Studio. Therefore, it is very profitable."
"For personal use, the Community Edition is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
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 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...
What is your primary use case for Xamarin Platform?
I have been doing mobile development using Xamarin Platform for which I have already shared my feedback earlier, and I am focused on utilizing Xamarin Platform for my projects.
 

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.
894,807 professionals have used our research since 2012.