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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 June 2026, in the Mobile Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Appium is 2.6%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Xamarin Platform is 6.8%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mobile Development Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Xamarin Platform6.8%
Appium2.6%
Other90.6%
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

"The solution helps with test automation. We focus mostly on Java."
"It has flaws, but is still much better than any other cross-platform mobile automation tool."
"For our company, Appium's similarity with Selenium is important as we use Selenium."
"Our clients have realized benefits by reducing their testing cycle from three days to three hours through Appium."
"Overall, Appium is the best; it has the flexibility, simplicity, and it is elegant, technically more advanced, and even a beginner can start using Appium very quickly and master it in less time."
"It has great documentation and excellent community support."
"When it comes to mobile automation, I recommend this solution because of its performance, and scalability over the competition."
"The most valuable feature of Appium is it supports iOS and AOS and is open-source."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of the Xamarin Platform is the deployment."
"The cross platform ability is a great asset."
"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."
"You can create one solution in C Sharp."
"I like Renderers in Xamarin. They allow us to use native-platform controls easily."
"Xamarin Platform is suitable for the developer who knows C#, the .NET framework, and is familiar with XAML, as they can easily do mobile app development in Xamarin.Forms."
"Xamarin is an excellent platform that I could definitely recommend to others, despite the occasional issues we have had in the past."
 

Cons

"There is always a concern about the amount of code that is required to enhance the automation process. The idea of having less code or no code is what we would like to see in future updates."
"We need some bug fixes for nested elements."
"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. We have had some issues around just the results themselves and how predictable they are, but those are not issues with Appium directly."
"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."
"Appium has problems with automated validations following iOS updates, causing us to have to validate manually. Its execution speed is also very slow."
"The product was a bit difficult to install. It wasn’t easy. We had issues."
"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 rarely use Appium nowadays because I'm now at the managerial level, but the last time I used it, whenever I selected and clicked on an element, Appium was very slow. I tried to debug it, but I still couldn't find the problem, so this is an area for improvement in the solution. Another area for improvement lies with the connector and server. For example, the effort to get into the local machine sometimes causes the emulator to become slow, which then leads to failure in testing, and this is the usual issue I've encountered from Appium. An additional feature I'd like added to Appium in its next release is being able to do automation in iOS without using XPath and the name of the element. In Xcode, you can use previous UI tests for detecting elements, but in Appium, you have to use Xpath and the element name instead of being able to directly put the X-UiPath, which is what you can do in Xcode. In iOS as well, sometimes the element doesn't have a name or a path. Sometimes, there's also no element."
"It needs offline sync capabilities to store data on devices persistently."
"The solution does not include Hot Reload which is painful because it causes us to wait quite some time for huge builds."
"There are compatibility issues between versions of various Xamarin components."
"I feel that the Android AppCompat library creates a lot of issues. A lot of development time is often wasted solving these issues."
"Xamarin Platform's performance base could be improved."
"The worst build issue concerns are the caching process MSBuild uses to reduce the build time."
"Needs to improve the customization of its screens."
"I feel that the Android AppCompat library creates a lot of issues. A lot of development time is often wasted solving these issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is good for people to be able to make a favorable decision for the value."
"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."
"As far as I know, Appium is a free solution. It's not for commercial use."
"The solution is free."
"It's open source, so it's completely free."
"Appian is open-source, which is not licensed."
"The solution is open source."
"Appium is free and open-source."
"Xamarin Platform is open-source, but there are fees for deployment, the API Store and Play Store, and using third-party libraries."
"I think the solution is free."
"Xamarin Platform is open-source, so it is free to use."
"The product is inexpensive."
"It saved a lot of time and resources needed to develop a cross platform mobile app."
"For personal use, the Community Edition is free."
"Xamarin is available under several licensing arrangements. Each developer needs one license at least. All features, especially the Profiler, unlock only with the highest tier."
"There's no licensing cost for Xamarin."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
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.
896,563 professionals have used our research since 2012.