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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 September 2026, in the Mobile Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Appium is 2.9%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Xamarin Platform is 6.6%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mobile Development Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Xamarin Platform6.6%
Appium2.9%
Other90.5%
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

"When it comes to mobile automation, I recommend this solution because of its performance, and scalability over the competition."
"The most valuable feature of Appium is it supports iOS and AOS and is open-source."
"It can be used with different programming languages."
"Appium's wide support of programming languages is valuable."
"The solution is stable."
"The library is extensive so the driver interacts with most functions or actions on mobile devices."
"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."
"For our company, Appium's similarity with Selenium is important as we use Selenium."
"We were able to optimize the service organization for one of our clients."
"The native features and Xamarin Essentials package are highly valuable to us."
"Xamarin is an excellent platform that I could definitely recommend to others, despite the occasional issues we have had in the past."
"Xamarin.Forms reduced the effort and time to build and market our solution, market our features, and get our solution into production."
"Plugins like MvvmCross make a developer’s life easy."
"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."
"The ability to share a platform-agnostic common core, or business logic, enables a mobile developer to write code for all targeted mobile platforms, independent of the individual developer's specialization in iOS, Android, or Windows. This helps not only during development but also enables easier maintenance of deployed apps, since bug fixes or feature additions can be often made in the platform-agnostic layer."
"In a nutshell, I would say that for those who love C# and mobile, this platform is a blessing."
 

Cons

"The tool needs to add a dependency manager."
"The setup and installation were a problem for us at first."
"It needs to accommodate applications that use React.js and AngularJS."
"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."
"I'm facing a lot of issues with my new juniors when they set up Appium for iOS."
"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."
"Support-wise, it could be better."
"Configuration-wise, there is a lot of room for improvement."
"The application platform could be improved."
"From time to time, it is a bit harder to code some specific scenarios compared to the native approach."
"The stability of the Xamarin Platform could improve."
"The architecture in the Xamarin Platform has to improve, there are some features missing."
"However, Xamarin Platform lacks in app size."
"Xamarin is reaching its end of life and they're moving it to .NET MAUI, combining it with other platforms and creating a centralized framework."
"For those who use only XAML to design the UI, it would be better if there was a better XAML previewer or designer."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The solution is open source so it is free."
"As far as I know, Appium is a free solution. It's not for commercial use."
"The solution is open-source."
"It's completely 100% free, and there are no hidden fees."
"The price is good for people to be able to make a favorable decision for the value."
"Appian is open-source, which is not licensed."
"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 Platform is a free open-source solution."
"You can build in Xamarin without paying any money."
"It saved a lot of time and resources needed to develop a cross platform mobile app."
"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."
"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."
"The product is inexpensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
10%
Construction Company
15%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Educational Organization
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: September 2026.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.