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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
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
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 June 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 6.8%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mobile Development Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Xamarin Platform6.8%
Appium2.6%
Other90.6%
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 provides one roof or framework for both iOS and Android code bases."
"Within a single command, we can easily connect to the device."
"We chose Appium for the scalability and the ease of automation for both Android and iOS."
"This is the best test automation tool for any mobile test automation engineer."
"It runs completely flawlessly and seamlessly every day."
"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."
"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."
"It's one of the most stable solutions for mobile automation."
"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."
"By the third year, we got a solid ROI."
"The best part of this solution is that you can create one solution in C Sharp and it works for both Android and iOS."
"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."
"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."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"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."
"However, the overall experience is really positive."
 

Cons

"The tool needs to add a dependency manager."
"Support-wise, it could be better. Whenever we get some issues, it may take some time."
"The product was a bit difficult to install. It wasn’t easy. We had issues."
"Installation of this particular tool is tedious, and it gives you a good number of challenges at times."
"It breaks down."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"There are compatibility issues between versions of various Xamarin components."
"Xamarin Platform's performance base could be improved."
"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."
"The application platform could be improved."
"The solution struggles a little bit with binding libraries."
"There is limited support for UX widgets."
"For those who use only XAML to design the UI, it would be better if there was a better XAML previewer or designer."
"We have noticed that there have been stability-based performance issues with this product, which need to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's open source, so it's completely free."
"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."
"As far as I know, Appium is a free solution. It's not for commercial use."
"There is no license for this solution because it is open-source."
"Appium is open source; we can use it for free."
"Appium is free and open-source."
"The pricing of Appium is fine."
"The product is inexpensive."
"Xamarin is free. There is no license unless you go for some high-end enterprise features. Other than that, everything's free."
"Xamarin is free, or comes with Visual Studio. Therefore, it is very profitable."
"For personal use, the Community Edition is 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."
"There is no requirement for a license. It is available for free as an open-source product."
"It saved a lot of time and resources needed to develop a cross platform mobile app."
"This is an open-source solution, but there is a subscription charge to use the App Center of around $100."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
14%
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.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.