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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

"The most valuable feature is that it's easy to launch applications. Appium has everything that Selenium has. So many good tools support Appium. We can take some Excel sheets and use them to fill out the text box that's in there. We can also take screenshots of failures."
"It has great documentation and excellent community support."
"It's an open-source solution with a very large community and available documentation."
"The best feature of Appium is that it allows you to inspect the element. With the Appium Inspector, you don't have to install another application to do the inspection. I also like that Appium has Android device connectivity. Currently, most people use Appium as automation software, and I haven't found any other tool that's more powerful than Appium."
"Overall, Appium is the best; it has the flexibility, simplicity, and it is elegant, technically more advanced, and even a beginner can start using Appium very quickly and master it in less time."
"Within a single command, we can easily connect to the device."
"Appium's best feature is that it supports multiple frameworks."
"For our company, Appium's similarity with Selenium is important as we use Selenium."
"It usually saves time for application development. We write once and the code works everywhere."
"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."
"The cross platform ability is a great asset."
"It significantly reduces development and test costs, and ensures that there is synergy between the platforms on product features and user experience."
"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."
"You can create one solution in C Sharp."
"On the market, compared to everyone else, they're the top solution. They're the best solution out there that I could see."
"Xamarin Platform enables you to use a single code language. This is beneficial for Android, iOS, and Windows platforms, so they can be developed over application or built over application."
 

Cons

"They can improve test reporting, and more importantly on test scripts, by providing less constructs to automate more complex testing scenarios."
"We need some bug fixes for nested elements."
"Support-wise, it could be better."
"The initial setup is straightforward if you have previous experience with the solution, but it can be complicated for a novice user."
"Installation of this particular tool is tedious, and it gives you a good number of challenges at times."
"I'm facing a lot of issues with my new juniors when they set up Appium for iOS."
"Image recognition could be improved. We have some images in our mobile applications. It should be able to run from the cloud, so we can automate the catcher."
"What needs improvement in Appium is its documentation. It needs to give more context on the libraries that Appium is using under the hood. For example, my team is using Appium for Android automation, and a lot of times, I feel that there's functionality that's available through the Appium interface, that exists within the UIAutomator, but there aren't a lot of useful or helpful resources on the internet to find that information, so it would be good to have some linkage with the underlying platform itself. Another room for improvement in Appium is that it's buggy sometimes. For example, at times, there's a bug in the inspector application that doesn't allow me to save my desired capability set, so it would be nice to get that bug fixed, but overall, Appium is a good tool. The Touch Actions functionality in Appium also needs improvement. For example, if I want to initiate a scroll on the device that I'm running Appium on, sometimes Swipe works, but in other situations, I have to explicitly use action chains, so I'm not too sure what's the better approach. What I'd like to see in the next version of Appium is a more intelligent and more intuitive AppiumLibrary, in terms of identifying menus and scroll bars, etc., because right now, I'm unsure if I have to do a lot of export reversals to get to the elements I'm looking for. It would be nice to have some functionality built in, which would allow me to easily get those exports."
"Creating an application works like a native application, but the file size is a bit big, so you have to make certain layers."
"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."
"Technical support could be better. We often get support from the community and only sometimes from the Xamarin team."
"It is common to find a problem that you would need to develop from the start since there are no third-party components to reuse."
"The problem that I faced was that the communication, the roles, and the responsibilities, weren't defined between Microsoft and Xamarin, that's really where the problem was in my opinion."
"We need to think about partnering with IBM because there is a need for a big data partner; someone who has machine learning and can help us connect the app to big data."
"It would be better if they offered more certifications. They offer a number of certifications for Azure but none for Xamarin. This is something that could be provided for developers to show off their competency. Technical support could be better."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Appian is open-source, which is not licensed."
"It's open source, so it's completely free."
"The solution is free."
"As far as I know, Appium is a free solution. It's not for commercial use."
"This is an open source solution so it does not cost anything for licensing or otherwise."
"The pricing of Appium is fine."
"Appium is open source; we can use it for free."
"The solution is open source so it is free."
"This is a free product, so there is zero investment on licenses and IDE."
"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."
"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."
"Xamarin Platform is open-source, but there are fees for deployment, the API Store and Play Store, and using third-party libraries."
"You can build in Xamarin without paying any money."
"Xamarin Platform is a free open-source solution."
"There is no requirement for a license. It is available for free as an open-source product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
15%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
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.
912,565 professionals have used our research since 2012.