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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
13th
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 July 2026, in the Mobile Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Appium is 2.6%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Xamarin Platform is 7.0%, up from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mobile Development Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Xamarin Platform7.0%
Appium2.6%
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

"Our clients have realized benefits by reducing their testing cycle from three days to three hours through Appium."
"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."
"Appium is a great tool, and I recommend it."
"It's an open-source solution with a very large community and available documentation."
"Appium's wide support of programming languages is valuable."
"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."
"It runs completely flawlessly and seamlessly every day."
"It can be used with different programming languages."
"Xamarin Platform is suitable for the developer who knows C#, the .NET framework, and is familiar with XAML, as they can easily do mobile app development in Xamarin.Forms."
"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."
"We are a 5-member team and Xamarin provides us with a tool kit that crossbreeds from hybrid applications, letting us write a single line of code that works both with Android and iOS, which is a main feature of Xamarin and makes the product very user-friendly."
"Cross-platform development saves time and provides consistencies."
"It significantly reduces development and test costs, and ensures that there is synergy between the platforms on product features and user experience."
"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 ability to share a platform-agnostic common core, or business logic, enables a mobile developer to write code for all targeted mobile platforms, independent of the individual developer's specialization in iOS, Android, or Windows. This helps not only during development but also enables easier maintenance of deployed apps, since bug fixes or feature additions can be often made in the platform-agnostic layer."
"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."
 

Cons

"They should add an in-built framework."
"I'm facing a lot of issues with my new juniors when they set up Appium for iOS."
"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."
"The tool needs to add a dependency manager."
"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."
"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."
"When doing mobile testing Appium is difficult as you can't use it for mobile testing in virtual machines."
"The setup and installation were a problem for us at first."
"Xamarin Platform can improve by making the enterprise documentation better. There's a lot of basic documentation of how to do many of the functions of the solution, but there's not much enterprise-level documentation."
"The architecture in the Xamarin Platform has to improve, there are some features missing."
"For those who use only XAML to design the UI, it would be better if there was a better XAML previewer or designer."
"Xamarin is reaching its end of life and they're moving it to .NET MAUI, combining it with other platforms and creating a centralized framework."
"They have to focus more on the Xamarin compiling features and tools and maybe test some options."
"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."
"Needs to improve the customization of its screens."
"Regarding improvements, there are still some limitations with Xamarin, particularly regarding access to core functionality in Android and iOS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's open source, so it's completely free."
"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."
"The pricing of Appium is fine."
"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."
"The solution is open-source."
"The price is good for people to be able to make a favorable decision for the value."
"There is no license for this solution because it is open-source."
"Xamarin Platform is open-source, but there are fees for deployment, the API Store and Play Store, and using third-party libraries."
"This is an open-source solution, but there is a subscription charge to use the App Center of around $100."
"Xamarin is free. There is no license unless you go for some high-end enterprise features. Other than that, everything's free."
"In most cases, it is sufficient to have free/community license. But if you plan to seriously develop production-level, highly polished apps, you need to use Xamarin.Profiler and the professional or enterprise license."
"This is a free product, so there is zero investment on licenses and IDE."
"The product is inexpensive."
"I think the solution is free."
"Xamarin Platform is a free open-source solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
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: June 2026.
903,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.