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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 October 2026, in the Mobile Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Appium is 2.8%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Xamarin Platform is 6.8%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mobile Development Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Xamarin Platform6.8%
Appium2.8%
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

"The most valuable feature of Appium is it supports iOS and AOS and is open-source."
"Our clients have realized benefits by reducing their testing cycle from three days to three hours through Appium."
"Within a single command, we can easily connect to the device."
"This is the best test automation tool for any mobile test automation engineer."
"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."
"It's an open-source solution with a very large community and available documentation."
"We do not need to pay for the solution. It’s free."
"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."
"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."
"With the help of Xamarin.Forms, we can effectively realize a cross-platform app with a very small team of 1-2 developers, targeting both iOS and Android platforms."
"The unique USP of Xamarin Platform is that you can have a single codebase and target all supported platforms, primarily Android and iOS, which saves development cost and improves maintainability."
"Xamarin.Forms reduced the effort and time to build and market our solution, market our features, and get our solution into production."
"Xamarin is an excellent platform that I could definitely recommend to others, despite the occasional issues we have had in the past."
"The most important impact is the reduction in product lifecycle costs."
"In Xamarin.Forms, it is valuable that one and the same code (including UI) works on all platforms, which is very convenient for cross-platform development."
"I've never had the Xamarin platform cause a project to fail."
 

Cons

"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."
"The installation part of Appium is somewhat clumsy, requiring numerous dependencies and configurations."
"Another room for improvement in Appium is that it's buggy sometimes."
"Stability is an area that needs some improvement."
"When doing mobile testing Appium is difficult as you can't use it for mobile testing in virtual machines."
"It needs to accommodate applications that use React.js and AngularJS."
"One thing which can be really helpful is that there is some kind of a recorder made available rather than scripting everything."
"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."
"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."
"They need to take a step towards independence from the UI platform. It takes a lot of time to adapt the native controls."
"From time to time, it is a bit harder to code some specific scenarios compared to the native approach."
"For those who use only XAML to design the UI, it would be better if there was a better XAML previewer or designer."
"The recent move to .NET MAUI is a big change that's affecting a lot of the good features."
"The application platform could be improved."
"The solution struggles a little bit with binding libraries."
"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

"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."
"Appium is free and open-source."
"The solution is open source."
"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."
"Appian is open-source, which is not licensed."
"I'm unsure if there's any cost associated with Appium. I got the free package which includes the server GUI application and the inspector application, and it was free to download, and that's all I need to get my work done. I'm not aware of any additional costs associated with the tool."
"As far as I know, Appium is a free solution. It's not for commercial use."
"There is no license fee because the solution is open-source."
"This is an open-source solution, but there is a subscription charge to use the App Center of around $100."
"Xamarin Platform is open-source, so it is free to use."
"Xamarin is free. There is no license unless you go for some high-end enterprise features. Other than that, everything's free."
"For personal use, the Community Edition is free."
"Xamarin Platform is open-source, but there are fees for deployment, the API Store and Play Store, and using third-party libraries."
"Xamarin Platform is a free open-source solution."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
10%
Construction Company
15%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
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: September 2026.
914,938 professionals have used our research since 2012.