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Appium vs Xamarin Platform comparison

 

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
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Regression Testing Tools (7th)
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 August 2026, in the Mobile Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Appium is 2.7%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Xamarin Platform is 6.8%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mobile Development Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Xamarin Platform6.8%
Appium2.7%
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

"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."
"It can be used with different programming languages."
"The solution helps with test automation. We focus mostly on Java."
"Obviously because of automation, it reduces manual testing efforts."
"I like the app inspector; it's quite a good and useful tool for us, we can use it almost out of the box, it works well on Android, the solution is stable and very scalable, and it is free to use."
"Within a single command, we can easily connect to the device."
"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."
"Our clients have realized benefits by reducing their testing cycle from three days to three hours through Appium."
"On the market, compared to everyone else, they're the top solution. They're the best solution out there that I could see."
"My favorite feature of Xamarin platform is the Xamarin.Essentials package. I also like the changes seen in Xamarin's upgrade from Xamarin.Forms to .NET MAUI, because in the older Xamarin Platform, Xamarin.Forms gave you multiple libraries of a particular level for a single platform, whereas .NET MAUI comprises a single, organized library that contains everything needed for both Android and iOS."
"The solution is easy to understand and has banking integrated. The shorter development time, the bugging and as well as availability of a lot of documentation on the web. Also the native integration is easy."
"Their leadership is exceptional at both listening to the customer base and delivering innovative, best-in-class products."
"Xamarin.Forms reduced the effort and time to build and market our solution, market our features, and get our solution into production."
"The cross platform ability is a great asset."
"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."
"We were able to optimize the service organization for one of our clients."
 

Cons

"Support-wise, it could be better."
"It breaks down."
"They can improve test reporting, and more importantly on test scripts, by providing less constructs to automate more complex testing scenarios."
"One thing which can be really helpful is that there is some kind of a recorder made available rather than scripting everything."
"The challenging part with Appium is that installation can be a bit tricky. It can be challenging to set up in Android versus iOS environments."
"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."
"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 is common to find a problem that you would need to develop from the start since there are no third-party components to reuse."
"Xamarin Platform is missing the code renderer."
"Xamarin Platform's performance base could be improved."
"All Xamarin library issues which need to be taken care of should be top priority."
"The solution struggles a little bit with binding libraries."
"In Xamarin.Forms, we have the option to preview our UI designs, but the functionality can be limited. So, this is not fully functional. Since I have some knowledge of iOS, where when you write code or design in the storyboard, your design is immediately visible in the preview."
"The solution always has room for improvement with price, integration, stability, and documentation."
"For beginners, the entire setup can be overwhelming because it involves setting up development environments for iOS, Android, and Windows at the same time if you want to target all three."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of Appium is fine."
"The solution is open source so it is free."
"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"The solution is open source."
"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."
"It's open source, so it's completely free."
"Appium is open source; we can use it for free."
"I think the solution is free."
"The product is inexpensive."
"There is no license fee because the solution is open-source."
"This is a free product, so there is zero investment on licenses and IDE."
"Xamarin is free. There is no license unless you go for some high-end enterprise features. Other than that, everything's free."
"There's no licensing cost for Xamarin."
"Xamarin Platform is a free open-source solution."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Educational Organization
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

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.
910,956 professionals have used our research since 2012.