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Appium vs Xamarin Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Regression Testing Tools (8th)
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 September 2026, in the Mobile Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Appium is 2.9%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Xamarin Platform is 6.6%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mobile Development Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Xamarin Platform6.6%
Appium2.9%
Other90.5%
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

"Within a single command, we can easily connect to the device."
"Appium helps me to do as much as much as I want to."
"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."
"What I like about Appium right now is that it's like Cypress in the sense that............. to test the components in the way I want them to be tested."
"This is the best test automation tool for any mobile test automation engineer."
"This solution has improved our organization in terms of efficiency."
"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."
"For our company, Appium's similarity with Selenium is important as we use Selenium."
"Plugins like MvvmCross make a developer’s life easy."
"Xamarin.Forms exposes a complete cross-platform UI toolkit for .NET developers, and the advantage is that a single team can target multiple platforms (Android, iOS, and Windows) on a shared C# codebase."
"We are a 5-member team and Xamarin provides us with a tool kit that crossbreeds from hybrid applications, letting us write a single line of code that works both with Android and iOS, which is a main feature of Xamarin and makes the product very user-friendly."
"It will save time, cost, and money."
"The platform is easy to learn as many tutorials are available on YouTube."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"Xamarin Platform enables you to use a single code language. This is beneficial for Android, iOS, and Windows platforms, so they can be developed over application or built over application."
"The combination of forms for cross-platform UI and C-Sharp for the programming language are my two favorite features."
 

Cons

"One thing which can be really helpful is that there is some kind of a recorder made available rather than scripting everything."
"It needs to accommodate applications that use React.js and AngularJS."
"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."
"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."
"The tool needs to add a dependency manager."
"It breaks down."
"The initial setup is straightforward if you have previous experience with the solution, but it can be complicated for a novice user."
"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."
"Technical support could be better. We often get support from the community and only sometimes from the Xamarin team."
"However, Xamarin Platform lacks in app size."
"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."
"There are compatibility issues between versions of various Xamarin components."
"Xamarin Platform can improve by making the enterprise documentation better. There's a lot of basic documentation of how to do many of the functions of the solution, but there's not much enterprise-level documentation."
"Xamarin Platform's performance base could be improved."
"Needs to improve the customization of its screens."
"The application platform could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"Appium is open source; we can use it for free."
"The price is good for people to be able to make a favorable decision for the value."
"I'm unsure if there's any cost associated with Appium. I got the free package which includes the server GUI application and the inspector application, and it was free to download, and that's all I need to get my work done. I'm not aware of any additional costs associated with the tool."
"The solution is open source so it is free."
"Appium is free and open-source."
"The solution is open-source."
"The pricing of Appium is fine."
"This is a free product, so there is zero investment on licenses and IDE."
"Xamarin Platform is a free open-source solution."
"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."
"For personal use, the Community Edition is free."
"I think the solution is free."
"My company provided all the licenses that we need to support our use of Xamarin Platform."
"Xamarin Platform is open-source, so it is free to use."
"You can build in Xamarin without paying any money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Educational Organization
9%
 

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: August 2026.
912,069 professionals have used our research since 2012.