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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

"We do not need to pay for the solution. It’s free."
"We get a list that shows all devices that are connected to the system."
"When it comes to mobile automation, I recommend this solution because of its performance, and scalability over the competition."
"The automation part is extremely helpful in streamlining our processes."
"The most valuable feature is that it's easy to launch applications. Appium has everything that Selenium has. So many good tools support Appium. We can take some Excel sheets and use them to fill out the text box that's in there. We can also take screenshots of failures."
"For the particular use case we used Appium for, we felt that it served our purpose completely, and we haven't had any issues with the Python Client for Appium."
"It's an open-source solution with a very large community and available documentation."
"Appium's best feature is that it supports multiple frameworks."
"Xamarin is an excellent platform that I could definitely recommend to others, despite the occasional issues we have had in the past."
"The most valuable features of the Xamarin Platform are that it has cross-platform development, one code base serves a purpose on both, and the grid layout is a lifesaver."
"This solution is a cross-form technology, meaning that we don't have to create separate code to deploy apps across different platforms."
"Because of the C# programming language, we can train our .NET developers to learn Xamarin and develop mobile apps easily."
"The cross platform ability is a great asset."
"The solution saves us time by containing all the development work in one application instead of two and it's well-documented."
"Being able to use the .NET framework and platform have me creating applications better than anyone who develops on Windows."
"The most valuable feature of the Xamarin Platform is the deployment."
 

Cons

"It needs to accommodate applications that use React.js and AngularJS."
"Configuring the project to be used in Appium is a little bit tedious."
"Image recognition could be improved. We have some images in our mobile applications. It should be able to run from the cloud, so we can automate the catcher."
"Appium has problems with automated validations following iOS updates, causing us to have to validate manually."
"The setup and installation were a problem for us at first."
"When doing mobile testing Appium is difficult as you can't use it for mobile testing in virtual machines."
"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."
"Appium can improve when the case fails, there should be a feature where you can generate the report from Appium."
"All Xamarin library issues need to be taken care of as a top priority."
"It needs offline sync capabilities to store data on devices persistently."
"Xamarin's profiling tools are only available for the highest tier of MSDN subscription and compatibility with platform-native profiling tools is rather lacking."
"The debugging functionality could be improved in Xamarin Platform because sometimes it takes very long to move through the stages of setting up the application build to the final deployment on a mobile app that resides in a physical device."
"Needs to improve the customization of its screens."
"The solution always has room for improvement with price, integration, stability, and documentation."
"All Xamarin library issues which need to be taken care of should be top priority."
"Creating an application works like a native application, but the file size is a bit big, so you have to make certain layers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is free."
"The solution is open source so it is free."
"It's open source, so it's completely free."
"There is no license for this solution because it is open-source."
"Appium is open source; we can use it for free."
"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."
"The pricing of Appium is fine."
"As far as I know, Appium is a free solution. It's not for commercial use."
"You can build in Xamarin without paying any money."
"The product is inexpensive."
"There is no requirement for a license. It is available for free as an open-source product."
"This is a free product, so there is zero investment on licenses and IDE."
"For personal use, the Community Edition is free."
"In most cases, it is sufficient to have free/community license. But if you plan to seriously develop production-level, highly polished apps, you need to use Xamarin.Profiler and the professional or enterprise license."
"There is no license fee because the solution is open-source."
"I think the solution is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Educational Organization
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.
896,099 professionals have used our research since 2012.