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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
7th
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
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Mobile Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Appium is 4.0%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Xamarin Platform is 7.0%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mobile Development Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Luis Gerardo Meneses Hernandez - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows for direct interaction with an application's DOM but complex configuration
What I like about Appium right now is that it's like Cypress in the sense that I can get to the new DOM of the application and select the components and create the functions to test the components in the way I want them to be tested. That's why I like it right now.
Prince Tiwari - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates UI development with XAML, enabling shared UI code across platforms and reducing platform-specific work
I like its simplicity. As someone who didn't start my career as a dedicated developer, I was used to building websites or Windows applications. Transitioning to mobile app development meant learning new languages like Swift or Java. With C# and Xamarin, though, I could leverage my existing skillset. Xamarin, and specifically Xamarin.Forms, let me write my code once and deploy it natively to both Android and iOS. Xamarin.Forms are very useful. Essentially, it's a framework that allows me to create the UI mostly in XAML. This XAML code is then translated into the native UI elements for each respective platform. The advantage is that roughly 90% of my UI code can be shared. This significantly reduces the amount of platform-specific UI work compared to having to write separate UIs for each platform. For the most part, Xamarin's integration with Visual Studio improved the workflow, whether I'm on Windows or Mac. Since I'm familiar with Visual Studio, it provides a comfortable development environment. Additionally, features like Hot Reload and the integration of tools like Copilot help streamline the development process. Overall, it offers a positive development experience.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution is stable."
"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 provides a record-and-play option, and the commands are the same as those that Selenium uses. So a person who has some exposure to Selenium will be able to write a piece of code in Appium."
"Appium's best feature is that it supports multiple frameworks."
"The library is extensive so the driver interacts with most functions or actions on mobile devices."
"Appium's wide support of programming languages is valuable."
"Obviously because of automation, it reduces manual testing efforts."
"The interface is user-friendly, which is beneficial for users, even for those who are new to it."
"Because of the C# programming language, we can train our .NET developers to learn Xamarin and develop mobile apps easily."
"It significantly reduces development and test costs, and ensures that there is synergy between the platforms on product features and user experience."
"The most important impact is the reduction in product lifecycle costs."
"You can just write one XM channel core and it'll be used for both iOS and Android."
"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 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."
"The platform is easy to learn as many tutorials are available on YouTube."
 

Cons

"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."
"The installation part of Appium is somewhat clumsy, requiring numerous dependencies and configurations."
"It needs to accommodate applications that use React.js and AngularJS."
"If it had more facility for configuration it would be a spectacular solution."
"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."
"There is always a concern about the amount of code that is required to enhance the automation process. The idea of having less code or no code is what we would like to see in future updates."
"I rarely use Appium nowadays because I'm now at the managerial level, but the last time I used it, whenever I selected and clicked on an element, Appium was very slow. I tried to debug it, but I still couldn't find the problem, so this is an area for improvement in the solution. Another area for improvement lies with the connector and server. For example, the effort to get into the local machine sometimes causes the emulator to become slow, which then leads to failure in testing, and this is the usual issue I've encountered from Appium. An additional feature I'd like added to Appium in its next release is being able to do automation in iOS without using XPath and the name of the element. In Xcode, you can use previous UI tests for detecting elements, but in Appium, you have to use Xpath and the element name instead of being able to directly put the X-UiPath, which is what you can do in Xcode. In iOS as well, sometimes the element doesn't have a name or a path. Sometimes, there's also no element."
"Support-wise, it could be better."
"The solution always has room for improvement with price, integration, stability, and documentation."
"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."
"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."
"The debugging functionality could be improved in Xamarin Platform because sometimes it takes very long to move through the stages of setting up the application build to the final deployment on a mobile app that resides in a physical device."
"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."
"The solution struggles a little bit with binding libraries."
"I feel that the Android AppCompat library creates a lot of issues. A lot of development time is often wasted solving these issues."
"We'd like to have some chat support functionality."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"The solution is open source."
"Appium is free and 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."
"The pricing of Appium is fine."
"Appium is open source; we can use it for free."
"There is no license for this solution because it is open-source."
"As far as I know, Appium is a free solution. It's not for commercial use."
"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."
"My company provided all the licenses that we need to support our use of Xamarin Platform."
"It saved a lot of time and resources needed to develop a cross platform mobile app."
"Xamarin is free, or comes with Visual Studio. Therefore, it is very profitable."
"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."
"There's no licensing cost for Xamarin."
"I think the solution is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Educational Organization
27%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about Appium?
Appium helps me to do as much as much as I want to.
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 do you like most about Xamarin Platform?
Xamarin.Forms are very useful. Essentially, it's a framework that allows me to create the UI mostly in XAML. This XAML code is then translated into the native UI elements for each respective platform.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Xamarin Platform?
Xamarin Platform is free, and we use an Azure subscription at a relatively low cost for our builds. It offers a good value for money, although it requires time to make it work effectively.
What needs improvement with Xamarin Platform?
The primary area for improvement is the support for third-party libraries, especially for major providers like Microsoft and Google. The lack of robust documentation and support for third-party bin...
 

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: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.