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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

"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 is an indispensable tool for mobile automation helps much in converting manual test cases to automated scripts."
"The solution is easy to use."
"It has great documentation and excellent community support."
"Appium provides a record-and-play option, and the commands are the same as those that Selenium uses. So a person who has some exposure to Selenium will be able to write a piece of code in Appium."
"It's an open-source solution with a very large community and available documentation."
"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."
"The latest versions of the solution are stable."
"By the third year, we got a solid ROI."
"The combination of forms for cross-platform UI and C-Sharp for the programming language are my two favorite features."
"The unique USP of Xamarin Platform is that you can have a single codebase and target all supported platforms, primarily Android and iOS, which saves development cost and improves maintainability."
"With the help of Xamarin.Forms, we can effectively realize a cross-platform app with a very small team of 1-2 developers, targeting both iOS and Android platforms."
"It helped to automate iOS and Android apps for our client within short time which helped them for regression testing on a daily basis so manual effort reduced."
"The solution saves us time by containing all the development work in one application instead of two and it's well-documented."
"The technical support is very good and it's close to native."
"The most valuable features are: One language for all platforms: C#; XAML for UI in Xamarin.Forms; provides 100 percent coverage of APIs on each platform."
 

Cons

"One thing which can be really helpful is that there is some kind of a recorder made available rather than scripting everything."
"I'm facing a lot of issues with my new juniors when they set up Appium for iOS."
"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."
"It should provide reliable and promising executions every time without any interruptions and avoiding any synchronization issues."
"The challenging part with Appium is that installation can be a bit tricky."
"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."
"Stability is an area that needs some improvement."
"One area where I think Appium could improve is in addressing security concerns for our data. Currently, we're unable to use cloud solutions like CloudForm due to security restrictions on our servers. We also face challenges in updating packages for the same reason. It would be beneficial if the solution could provide better support for auto-reporting and easier connections to mobile device farms."
"It needs offline sync capabilities to store data on devices persistently."
"I would like to see hot reload, similar to what Flutter has out-of-the-box."
"The primary area for improvement is the support for third-party libraries, especially for major providers like Microsoft and Google."
"We need to think about partnering with IBM because there is a need for a big data partner; someone who has machine learning and can help us connect the app to big data."
"We'd like to have some chat support functionality."
"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 is limited support for UX widgets."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is no license for this solution because it is open-source."
"The solution is open source so it is free."
"Appium is open source; we can use it for free."
"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"The pricing of Appium is fine."
"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 free."
"Appian is open-source, which is not licensed."
"Xamarin is free. There is no license unless you go for some high-end enterprise features. Other than that, everything's free."
"Xamarin Platform is open-source, so it is free to use."
"I think the solution is free."
"For personal use, the Community Edition is free."
"You can build in Xamarin without paying any money."
"Xamarin Platform is a free open-source solution."
"Xamarin Platform is open-source, but there are fees for deployment, the API Store and Play Store, and using third-party libraries."
"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."
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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.