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OutSystems 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

OutSystems
Ranking in Mobile Development Platforms
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Rapid Application Development Software (4th), Low-Code Development Platforms (2nd), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (6th)
Xamarin Platform
Ranking in Mobile Development Platforms
5th
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 February 2026, in the Mobile Development Platforms category, the mindshare of OutSystems is 10.7%, down from 21.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Xamarin Platform is 6.3%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mobile Development Platforms Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OutSystems10.7%
Xamarin Platform6.3%
Other83.0%
Mobile Development Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Aditya Bhatt - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Lead at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Rapid delivery has transformed complex enterprise apps and supports faster cross-domain projects
Every platform or low-code platform tool is quite good in its own area, but there is always space to groom or enhance or improve. The same is with OutSystems as well. A couple of things from the integration point of view can be enhanced. If your application or the enterprise organization is tackling a huge data application where you have bulk amounts of data, it becomes a challenge for all the technologies and the same with OutSystems. You have to design your architecture in a very magnificent and decent way so that how you process your data so that load can be easily balanced. Data handling and huge data handling is a kind of challenge you may need to face. Then we have some vendor lock-in. If you are trying to migrate your application from OutSystems, then you probably get into this vendor lock-in system. Some organization may face challenges if some organization is on a small scale size. The small scale businesses may find OutSystems costly because of its high cost and pricing due to the licensing cost. Apart from that, OutSystems really plays well, and it needs a learning curve. If a traditional application or programming is there which your developers are skilled into and they are directly deployed into OutSystems, it may take some significant amount of time for them to get comfortable with OutSystems. There is a learning curve. OutSystems community is already in place, but it can more be enhanced regarding some aspects. They did organize lots of bootcamps and other user groups as well, but those can also be improved from the documentation point of view and having some integration guidebook as well. A couple of things which can be improved into OutSystems include the licensing cost, the vendor lock-in side, the learning curve, couple of integration aspects and customizations.
Prince Tiwari - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at AAPC
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 scratch coding is useful. The solution is easy to understand."
"We've used features like batch processing timers, components, and integrations with other systems like SAP, which have accelerated our development process.In terms of productivity, we've seen a 30 percent reduction in screen design time and an additional 10 percent improvement when implementing client requirements. OutSystems' integration capabilities have significantly enhanced our app's functionality, making it quicker and easier to connect with other systems."
"In terms of user support and community engagement, I rate the tool a ten out of ten."
"The scalability of OutSystems is very good, it scales automatically very useful for us."
"We used almost all of the features, themes, styling guide, and approach components. They are useful in our applications."
"There is literally a ton of stuff it can do. It's very flexible."
"The solution helps to build mobile and web applications on SOAP and REST. You can integrate it with backend systems by submitting a code."
"Speed of delivery: We were able to reduce development time by 30%."
"The most valuable feature of the Xamarin Platform is the deployment."
"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."
"It has significantly reduced the skill barrier for development and testers."
"Plugins like MvvmCross make a developer’s life easy."
"The cross platform ability is a great asset."
"I like Renderers in Xamarin. They allow us to use native-platform controls easily."
"Xamarin.Forms reduced the effort and time to build and market our solution, market our features, and get our solution into production."
"You can just write one XM channel core and it'll be used for both iOS and Android."
 

Cons

"The product could be improved if there was a shortcut, or predefined, predictable templates provided."
"The asynchronous processing and multithreading tasks for which the current resources of the platform are very generic and not built for the end-user. Any asynchronous jobs have to be constructed with an end-user dashboard to allow inspection of the status of the activities."
"The product's high price is an area of concern, where improvements are required."
"The customer service and support are maintaining a two-day SLA for everything. 48 hours is very high."
"The dashboards in OutSystems could improve. There are a lot of tabs in the service center that can be confusing."
"The resource availability needs to be increased."
"It's difficult to do the component version control. I would like them to add more studying materials."
"We had some lagging issues under high data loads, and the solution needed to be customized to improve this."
"The Xamarin.Forms could improve."
"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."
"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."
"All Xamarin library issues need to be taken care of as a top priority."
"I feel that the Android AppCompat library creates a lot of issues. A lot of development time is often wasted solving these issues."
"We need to think about partnering with IBM because there is a need for a big data partner; someone who has machine learning and can help us connect the app to big data."
"We'd like to have some chat support functionality."
"There is room for increasing the scale a little bit further with the designer in the Visual Studio, more specifically, Xamarin.Android Designer in Visual Studio."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"OutSystems is an expensive product. My company has to make monthly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution."
"I think the pricing for OutSystems is comparable with similar solutions. I would place it somewhere in the middle. We pay for the bundle and don't pay anything extra in terms of licensing and other fees."
"I believe they have two pricing options. One is approximately $4000 USD a year and the other is approximately $10,000 USD a year."
"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to OutSystems. It is an expensive product."
"I would rate it five to six out of ten."
"OutSystems is a good solution, but it's not cheap."
"The product is expensive and I would rate its pricing a seven out of ten. You need to pay a yearly subscription to use the product."
"The solution is expensive. The platform is not suitable for all of my clients. I work with labor unions and other smaller organizations that would not be able to afford the platform's current pricing model. It would be beneficial if there were a scaled-down version or a tiered pricing option that would allow me to build an app or a web app that is more cost-effective for my clients. Currently, the platform's pricing is too high for many of my clients, who would not be able to afford something in the $50,000 to $100,000 range."
"For personal use, the Community Edition is free."
"There is no license fee because the solution is open-source."
"Xamarin is free. There is no license unless you go for some high-end enterprise features. Other than that, everything's free."
"I think the solution is free."
"There's no licensing cost for Xamarin."
"My company provided all the licenses that we need to support our use of Xamarin Platform."
"Xamarin Platform is open-source, so it is free to use."
"The product is inexpensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
18%
Marketing Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

Which solution is better for developing non-ITSM applications: OutSystems or Service Now?
The short answer is that OutSystems is far better for 2 main reasons. Firstly, with Service Now you are locked into that platform for good. The business model is to lock in and then keep pumping th...
What industries do you think OutSystems is most useful for?
I cannot really name an industry in which OutSystems cannot be beneficial. Who does not want to make top-notch applications that work in no time? And OutsyStems does exactly that. The low-code plat...
How did you decide which OutSystems edition was the best one for you?
We started using OutSystems fairly recently, so we are still on the free version of it. My company is still testing how we like the platform, but so far, we have been satisfied with it and will li...
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...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Randstad, Warner Brothers, HP, Intel, ING, Banco Popular, Thrivent Financial, Bacardi, Kent State University, Bacardi, FICO, ING, Vodafone, AbbVie, Estafeta, Siemens, Vopak
Cinemark, MixRadio, Sqor Sports, Storyo, JetBlue, The World Bank, Cr_dito Agrcola, Applied Research Associates
Find out what your peers are saying about OutSystems vs. Xamarin Platform and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.