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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
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Regression Testing Tools (7th)
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 August 2026, in the Mobile Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Appium is 2.7%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Xamarin Platform is 6.8%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mobile Development Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Xamarin Platform6.8%
Appium2.7%
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

"We chose Appium for the scalability and the ease of automation for both Android and iOS."
"The most valuable feature of Appium is it supports iOS and AOS and is open-source."
"It has flaws, but is still much better than any other cross-platform mobile automation tool."
"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."
"The automation part is extremely helpful in streamlining our processes."
"The solution helps with test automation. We focus mostly on Java."
"The library is extensive so the driver interacts with most functions or actions on mobile devices."
"For our company, Appium's similarity with Selenium is important as we use Selenium."
"A single line of code works with android and iOS."
"The most important impact is the reduction in product lifecycle costs."
"Plugins like MvvmCross make a developer’s life easy."
"Because of the C# programming language, we can train our .NET developers to learn Xamarin and develop mobile apps easily."
"The best part of this solution is that you can create one solution in C Sharp and it works for both Android and iOS."
"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."
"It usually saves time for application development. We write once and the code works everywhere."
"The most valuable feature of the Xamarin Platform is the deployment."
 

Cons

"Appium has problems with automated validations following iOS updates, causing us to have to validate manually. Its execution speed is also very slow."
"Stability is an area that needs some improvement."
"Installation of this particular tool is tedious, and it gives you a good number of challenges at times."
"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."
"When doing mobile testing Appium is difficult as you can't use it for mobile testing in virtual machines."
"The installation part of Appium is somewhat clumsy, requiring numerous dependencies and configurations."
"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."
"They should add an in-built framework."
"Xamarin is reaching its end of life and they're moving it to .NET MAUI, combining it with other platforms and creating a centralized framework."
"Generally, when iOS products get updates, some issues can happen with Xamarin. Crashes happen from time to 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."
"There is limited support for UX widgets."
"They have to focus more on the Xamarin compiling features and tools and maybe test some options."
"The Xamarin.Forms could improve."
"Regarding improvements, there are still some limitations with Xamarin, particularly regarding access to core functionality in Android and iOS."
"We'd like to have some chat support functionality."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Appian is open-source, which is not licensed."
"Appium is free and open-source."
"The pricing of Appium is fine."
"This is an open source solution so it does not cost anything for licensing or otherwise."
"The solution is free."
"It's open source, so it's completely free."
"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"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."
"Xamarin Platform is a free open-source solution."
"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."
"It saved a lot of time and resources needed to develop a cross platform mobile app."
"My company provided all the licenses that we need to support our use of Xamarin Platform."
"I think the solution is free."
"This is a free product, so there is zero investment on licenses and IDE."
"The product is inexpensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Educational Organization
9%
Outsourcing Company
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 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.
911,436 professionals have used our research since 2012.