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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
3rd
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 March 2026, in the Mobile Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Appium is 2.7%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Xamarin Platform is 6.6%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mobile Development Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Xamarin Platform6.6%
Appium2.7%
Other90.7%
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

"It has flaws, but is still much better than any other cross-platform mobile automation tool."
"The most valuable feature of Appium is it supports iOS and AOS and is open-source."
"We develop apps using the React Native framework, and Appium integrates well for testing those apps. The Appium automation framework also has good integration with GitHub Actions and plenty of other tools and frameworks, including BrowserStack."
"Appium helps me to do as much as much as I want to."
"It's an open-source solution with a very large community and available documentation."
"The solution is easy to use."
"The latest versions of the solution are stable."
"The way Appium server interacts with mobile apps is fantastic. It provides all the information about the elements inside the app, Android as well as iOS. I can interact with the element quickly, just type some text or get some text values from the element - whether it's a drop-down, or web text, or a native element."
"For me, developing apps for iOS and Android is a dream came true, without migrating to Objective-C or Java."
"Their leadership is exceptional at both listening to the customer base and delivering innovative, best-in-class products."
"The solution is easy to understand and has banking integrated. The shorter development time, the bugging and as well as availability of a lot of documentation on the web. Also the native integration is easy."
"Because of the C# programming language, we can train our .NET developers to learn Xamarin and develop mobile apps easily."
"We were able to optimize the service organization for one of our clients."
"It allows us to reuse our knowledge of C# and .NET Framework."
"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."
"It significantly reduces development and test costs, and ensures that there is synergy between the platforms on product features and user experience."
 

Cons

"It should provide reliable and promising executions every time without any interruptions and avoiding any synchronization issues."
"We previously worked with native applications, and there weren't any good mobile app testing tools. We started working with React Native, which works well with Appium, but it would be good to see better integration; the way elements are displayed can be messy. React Native is very popular nowadays, so it's essential to have that compatibility."
"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."
"Configuration-wise, there is a lot of room for improvement."
"Appium is not that scalable, if you're using real devices locally."
"One thing which can be really helpful is that there is some kind of a recorder made available rather than scripting everything."
"The tool needs to add a dependency manager."
"Appium could improve by enabling record and run techniques similar to what they have in other licensing tools, such as Micro Focus. We have to all write the code, and then we can proceed."
"I feel that the Android AppCompat library creates a lot of issues. A lot of development time is often wasted solving these issues."
"The worst build issue concerns are the caching process MSBuild uses to reduce the build time."
"Xamarin Platform can improve if there was a virtual test environment so we did not have to have a Mac system for the iOS testing. At this time You must have a Mac to deploy or generate IBA profiles."
"Regarding improvements, there are still some limitations with Xamarin, particularly regarding access to core functionality in Android and iOS."
"The recent move to .NET MAUI is a big change that's affecting a lot of the good features."
"Generally, when iOS products get updates, some issues can happen with Xamarin. Crashes happen from time to time."
"It needs offline sync capabilities to store data on devices persistently."
"There is limited support for UX widgets."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"The solution is open source."
"It's open source, so it's completely 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."
"Appium is open source; we can use it for free."
"Appium is free and open-source."
"This is an open source solution so it does not cost anything for licensing or otherwise."
"The solution is open-source."
"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, so it is free to use."
"Xamarin is free, or comes with Visual Studio. Therefore, it is very profitable."
"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."
"Xamarin Platform is open-source, but there are fees for deployment, the API Store and Play Store, and using third-party libraries."
"For personal use, the Community Edition is free."
"It saved a lot of time and resources needed to develop a cross platform mobile app."
"Xamarin is free. There is no license unless you go for some high-end enterprise features. Other than that, everything's free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Educational Organization
16%
Marketing Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

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: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.