No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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

"Many reference areas on the web can help you understand the product quite well."
"It has flaws, but is still much better than any other cross-platform mobile automation tool."
"We get a list that shows all devices that are connected to the system."
"The most valuable features of Appium are the in-built functionality, which we can use in our code. For example, move back, move front, navigate one page before, and navigate one page ahead. You can do this by using the in-built functions from Appium."
"Appium's best feature is that it supports multiple frameworks."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Appium is it supports iOS and AOS and is open-source."
"You can create one solution in C Sharp."
"You can just write one XM channel core and it'll be used for both iOS and Android."
"It usually saves time for application development. We write once and the code works everywhere."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"All of our mobile developers can easily substitute for each other on different projects and platforms."
"Xamarin.Forms are very useful. Essentially, it's a framework that allows me to create the UI mostly in XAML. This XAML code is then translated into the native UI elements for each respective platform."
"I like Renderers in Xamarin; they allow us to use native-platform controls easily."
"Recently, Xamarin has added a lot of features such as Effects, Behaviors, Triggers, etc. This has made the UI user-friendly, lively, and attractive."
 

Cons

"The tool needs to add a dependency manager."
"The user interface needs improvement because there are issues when setting up environment variables."
"Configuring the project to be used in Appium is a little bit tedious."
"Configuration-wise, there is a lot of room for improvement."
"Installation of this particular tool is tedious, and it gives you a good number of challenges at times."
"Sometimes, the Appium server won't connect with the mobile application because of some socket issues, so network connectivity between applications and the Appium server could be improved."
"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."
"Support-wise, it could be better. Whenever we get some issues, it may take some time."
"The android application compilation time needs to be reduced."
"I feel that the Android AppCompat library creates a lot of issues. A lot of development time is often wasted solving these issues."
"The android application compilation time needs to be reduced."
"The monitoring of the remote devices is not good as it should be extended along. It would be useful if the log is more integrated with the central console. I am not sure it can be accessed but it would be better."
"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."
"Xamarin Platform's performance base could be improved."
"The worst build issue concerns are the caching process MSBuild uses to reduce the build time."
"Xamarin Platform's performance base could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Appian is open-source, which is not licensed."
"This is an open source solution so it does not cost anything for licensing or otherwise."
"The solution is open-source."
"The solution is open source."
"As far as I know, Appium is a free solution. It's not for commercial use."
"It's open source, so it's completely free."
"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"The solution is open source so it is free."
"It saved a lot of time and resources needed to develop a cross platform mobile app."
"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."
"This is an open-source solution, but there is a subscription charge to use the App Center of around $100."
"I think the solution is free."
"My company provided all the licenses that we need to support our use of Xamarin Platform."
"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."
"Xamarin Platform is a free open-source solution."
"For personal use, the Community Edition is free."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Mobile Development Platforms solutions are best for your needs.
894,830 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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.
894,830 professionals have used our research since 2012.