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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

"Appium has easy interaction with mobile."
"This is the best test automation tool for any mobile test automation engineer."
"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."
"Appium helps me to do as much as much as I want to."
"Appium's wide support of programming languages is valuable."
"It is an indispensable tool for mobile automation helps much in converting manual test cases to automated scripts."
"The solution is stable."
"We get a list that shows all devices that are connected to the system."
"By the third year, we got a solid ROI."
"The ability to reuse significant amounts of code between platforms, have a single code repository, and a single development team for all platforms has massive advantages."
"It brings about good code sharing strategies, which bring down cost and maintenance efforts."
"I've never had the Xamarin platform cause a project to fail."
"Xamarin Platform's best features are its single codebase, the support from Microsoft, and the free libraries."
"On the market, compared to everyone else, they're the top solution. They're the best solution out there that I could see."
"It brings about good code sharing strategies, which bring down cost and maintenance efforts."
"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."
 

Cons

"The initial setup is straightforward if you have previous experience with the solution, but it can be complicated for a novice user."
"Appium can improve when the case fails, there should be a feature where you can generate the report from Appium."
"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."
"The setup and installation were a problem for us at first."
"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."
"It needs to accommodate applications that use React.js and AngularJS."
"Support-wise, it could be better. Whenever we get some issues, it may take some time."
"Appium has problems with automated validations following iOS updates, causing us to have to validate manually. Its execution speed is also very slow."
"They need to improve performance, especially for the Android platform. Also, some controls are missing in the Xamarin framework when compared to native controls; for example, the checkbox control."
"The solution does not include Hot Reload which is painful because it causes us to wait quite some time for huge builds."
"We have noticed that there have been stability-based performance issues with this product, which need to be improved."
"There is limited support for UX widgets."
"There is limited support for UX widgets."
"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."
"The worst build issue concerns are the caching process MSBuild uses to reduce the build time."
"The primary area for improvement is the support for third-party libraries, especially for major providers like Microsoft and Google."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is open-source."
"This is an open source solution so it does not cost anything for licensing or otherwise."
"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"The solution is open source so it is free."
"Appium is free and open-source."
"Appian is open-source, which is not licensed."
"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."
"Xamarin Platform is open-source, but there are fees for deployment, the API Store and Play Store, and using third-party libraries."
"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 free. There is no license unless you go for some high-end enterprise features. Other than that, everything's 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."
"There is no requirement for a license. It is available for free as an open-source product."
"You can build in Xamarin without paying any money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Educational Organization
12%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
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.
894,668 professionals have used our research since 2012.