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Appium vs Xamarin Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

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 May 2026, in the Mobile Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Appium is 2.7%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Xamarin Platform is 6.9%, up from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mobile Development Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Xamarin Platform6.9%
Appium2.7%
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."
"The automation part is extremely helpful in streamlining our processes."
"We get a list that shows all devices that are connected to the system."
"Within a single command, we can easily connect to the device."
"It has great documentation and excellent community support."
"We do not need to pay for the solution. It’s free."
"The solution is easy to use."
"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."
"The best part while using the Xamarin Platform is a cross-platform application. We could execute iOS and Android while writing a single line of code."
"The most valuable feature of the Xamarin Platform is that both the UI are the same in Android and iOS, in one project and Android and iOS, are applications for developing PCL projects. Additionally, the dashboard is good."
"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."
"This solution is a cross-form technology, meaning that we don't have to create separate code to deploy apps across different platforms."
"Recently, Xamarin has added a lot of features such as Effects, Behaviors, Triggers, etc. This has made the UI user-friendly, lively, and attractive."
"I like Renderers in Xamarin. They allow us to use native-platform controls easily."
"All of our mobile developers can easily substitute for each other on different projects and platforms."
"It has significantly reduced the skill barrier for development and testers."
 

Cons

"We haven't been able to fully leverage Appium for multiple reasons. I think number one is just that the tests take a long time to run. We have had some issues around just the results themselves and how predictable they are, but those are not issues with Appium directly."
"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."
"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."
"Appium has problems with automated validations following iOS updates, causing us to have to validate manually. Its execution speed is also very slow."
"One thing which can be really helpful is that there is some kind of a recorder made available rather than scripting everything."
"Appium can improve when the case fails, there should be a feature where you can generate the report from Appium. Once you're on a test case, automatically the screenshot should be captured which would avoid manual intervention. These features would be beneficial to migrate to Appium."
"They should add an in-built framework."
"One thing which can be really helpful is that there is some kind of a recorder made available rather than scripting everything."
"I feel that the Android AppCompat library creates a lot of issues. A lot of development time is often wasted solving these issues."
"The architecture in the Xamarin Platform has to improve, there are some features missing."
"They need to take a step towards independence from the UI platform. It takes a lot of time to adapt the native controls."
"We'd like to have some chat support functionality."
"The stability of the Xamarin Platform could improve."
"The Xamarin.Forms could improve."
"Needs to improve the customization of its screens."
"Xamarin's profiling tools are only available for the highest tier of MSDN subscription and compatibility with platform-native profiling tools is rather lacking."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The pricing of Appium is fine."
"It's open source, so it's completely free."
"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."
"The solution is open source so it is free."
"Appium is open source; we can use it for free."
"Appium is free and open-source."
"Xamarin Platform is open-source, so it is free to use."
"There is no license fee because the solution is open-source."
"My company provided all the licenses that we need to support our use of Xamarin Platform."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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
10%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Educational Organization
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: April 2026.
895,990 professionals have used our research since 2012.