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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

"It can be used with different programming languages."
"Our clients have realized benefits by reducing their testing cycle from three days to three hours through Appium."
"I haven't explored other solutions in this particular area, but what I like best about Appium is the fact that it shares functions with Selenium. The extension of Selenium functions allows me to use all of the methods that exist in that domain, and it just makes it simpler for me. I've been using Selenium for some time as well, so using Appium just seems like a natural fit for me."
"The most valuable feature of Appium is it supports iOS and AOS and is open-source."
"The latest versions of the solution are stable."
"This is the best test automation tool for any mobile test automation engineer."
"It is an indispensable tool for mobile automation helps much in converting manual test cases to automated scripts."
"Appium is a great tool, and I recommend it."
"It will save time, cost, and money."
"The platform is easy to learn as many tutorials are available on YouTube."
"This is a Microsoft-supported source platform so the technical support is very good and it's close to native."
"The solution saves us time by containing all the development work in one application instead of two and it's well-documented."
"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."
"The cross platform ability is a great asset."
"Their leadership is exceptional at both listening to the customer base and delivering innovative, best-in-class products."
"This solution is a cross-form technology, meaning that we don't have to create separate code to deploy apps across different platforms."
 

Cons

"It breaks down."
"One thing which can be really helpful is that there is some kind of a recorder made available rather than scripting everything."
"The initial setup is straightforward if you have previous experience with the solution, but it can be complicated for a novice user."
"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."
"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."
"It should provide reliable and promising executions every time without any interruptions and avoiding any synchronization issues."
"Configuration-wise, there is a lot of room for improvement."
"I would like to see hot reload, similar to what Flutter has out-of-the-box. There is "Live Reload" but it’s still in preview and was only recently announced."
"Xamarin Platform is missing the code renderer."
"The application platform could be improved."
"Xamarin Platform's performance base could be improved."
"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."
"It needs offline sync capabilities to store data on devices persistently."
"We have noticed that there have been stability-based performance issues with this product, which need to be improved."
"Needs to improve the customization of its screens."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"There is no license for this solution because it is open-source."
"The price is good for people to be able to make a favorable decision for the value."
"The solution is open-source."
"The solution is open source so it is free."
"It's open source, so it's completely free."
"Appium is open source; we can use it for free."
"This is an open source solution so it does not cost anything for licensing or otherwise."
"There is no license fee because the solution is open-source."
"My company provided all the licenses that we need to support our use of Xamarin Platform."
"Xamarin is free, or comes with Visual Studio. Therefore, it is very profitable."
"There is no requirement for a license. It is available for free as an open-source product."
"It saved a lot of time and resources needed to develop a cross platform mobile app."
"Xamarin Platform is a free open-source solution."
"I think the solution is free."
"This is a free product, so there is zero investment on licenses and IDE."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
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.
911,839 professionals have used our research since 2012.