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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
3rd
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 March 2026, in the Mobile Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Appium is 2.7%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Xamarin Platform is 6.6%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mobile Development Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Xamarin Platform6.6%
Appium2.7%
Other90.7%
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

"The solution is stable."
"Obviously because of automation, it reduces manual testing efforts."
"The solution is easy to use."
"Appium helps me to do as much as much as I want to."
"Appium's wide support of programming languages is valuable."
"Appium has easy interaction with mobile."
"We do not need to pay for the solution. It’s free."
"Appium's best feature is that it supports multiple frameworks."
"I think the best part about Xamarin is that you can create apps for both platforms using one source code. That's the most powerful feature. When you develop something for Android, it also builds for iVerse as well. The cross-platform aspect of Xamarin is unique. The ability to develop both apps with a single code base is something very unique."
"Test Cloud, Calabash, SpecFlow, and Xamarin.UITest are the features which can’t be ignored because just writing code doesn’t mean your app will run flawlessly. You need to test your app on each possible device and configuration, which you can do easily."
"It has significantly reduced the skill barrier for development and testers."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of the Xamarin Platform is the deployment."
"It significantly reduces development and test costs, and ensures that there is synergy between the platforms on product features and user experience."
"The technical support is very good and it's close to native."
"It is a true native solution, and we can use the cross-platform framework."
 

Cons

"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."
"Configuration-wise, there is a lot of room for improvement."
"Configuring the project to be used in Appium is a little bit tedious."
"We need some bug fixes for nested elements."
"Support-wise, it could be better."
"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."
"Appium could improve by enabling record and run techniques similar to what they have in other licensing tools, such as Micro Focus. We have to all write the code, and then we can proceed."
"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."
"We have noticed that there have been stability-based performance issues with this product, which need to be improved."
"The solution does not include Hot Reload which is painful because it causes us to wait quite some time for huge builds."
"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's profiling tools are only available for the highest tier of MSDN subscription and compatibility with platform-native profiling tools is rather lacking. This causes friction when working on performance-related issues."
"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."
"Regarding improvements, there are still some limitations with Xamarin, particularly regarding access to core functionality in Android and iOS."
"From time to time, it is a bit harder to code some specific scenarios compared to the native approach."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Appium is free and open-source."
"There is no license for this solution because it is open-source."
"As far as I know, Appium is a free solution. It's not for commercial use."
"The solution is open-source."
"The solution is open source so it is free."
"This is an open source solution so it does not cost anything for licensing or otherwise."
"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."
"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"This is a free product, so there is zero investment on licenses and IDE."
"For personal use, the Community Edition is free."
"There is no requirement for a license. It is available for free as an open-source product."
"There is no license fee because the solution is open-source."
"You can build in Xamarin without paying any money."
"I think the solution is free."
"This is an open-source solution, but there is a subscription charge to use the App Center of around $100."
"My company provided all the licenses that we need to support our use of Xamarin Platform."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Educational Organization
16%
Marketing Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Manufacturing Company
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 do you like most about Xamarin Platform?
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.
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...
 

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: February 2026.
883,692 professionals have used our research since 2012.