No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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

"It's one of the most stable solutions for mobile automation."
"The automation part is extremely helpful in streamlining our processes."
"Many reference areas on the web can help you understand the product quite well."
"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."
"The best feature of Appium is that it allows you to inspect the element. With the Appium Inspector, you don't have to install another application to do the inspection. I also like that Appium has Android device connectivity. Currently, most people use Appium as automation software, and I haven't found any other tool that's more powerful than Appium."
"The solution is easy to use."
"Our clients have realized benefits by reducing their testing cycle from three days to three hours through Appium."
"Appium has easy interaction with mobile."
"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."
"However, the overall experience is really positive."
"All of our mobile developers can easily substitute for each other on different projects and platforms."
"Xamarin Platform's best features are its single codebase, the support from Microsoft, and the free libraries."
"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."
"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."
"For me, developing apps for iOS and Android is a dream came true, without migrating to Objective-C or Java. Xamarin enables me to do so."
"Xamarin makes it easy to create white label applications for all platforms."
 

Cons

"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."
"The setup and installation were a problem for us at first."
"Another room for improvement in Appium is that it's buggy sometimes."
"It should provide reliable and promising executions every time without any interruptions and avoiding any synchronization issues."
"If it had more facility for configuration it would be a spectacular solution."
"I'm facing a lot of issues with my new juniors when they set up Appium for iOS."
"The user interface needs improvement because there are issues when setting up environment variables."
"The challenging part with Appium is that installation can be a bit tricky."
"The application platform could be improved."
"It is common to find a problem that you would need to develop from the start since there are no third-party components to reuse."
"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."
"Creating an application works like a native application, but the file size is a bit big, so you have to make certain layers."
"I feel that the Android AppCompat library creates a lot of issues. A lot of development time is often wasted solving these issues."
"They need to take a step towards independence from the UI platform. It takes a lot of time to adapt the native controls."
"The problem that I faced was that the communication, the roles, and the responsibilities, weren't defined between Microsoft and Xamarin, that's really where the problem was in my opinion."
"The android application compilation time needs to be reduced."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"As far as I know, Appium is a free solution. It's not for commercial use."
"It's open source, so it's completely free."
"The solution is open-source."
"There is no license for this solution because it is open-source."
"The solution is open source so it is free."
"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."
"There's no licensing cost for Xamarin."
"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."
"There is no requirement for a license. It is available for free as an open-source product."
"I think the solution is free."
"My company provided all the licenses that we need to support our use of Xamarin Platform."
"Xamarin Platform is a free open-source solution."
"This is a free product, so there is zero investment on licenses and IDE."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Mobile Development Platforms solutions are best for your needs.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Educational Organization
12%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
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.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.