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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

MA
Software Developer Advisor at NTT DATA Services
OutSystems facilitates rapid application development and effective project management
What I find valuable about OutSystems is that it has a very good learning curve for developers. Within two weeks, we can gain knowledge in OutSystems, and it is very easy to learn. With my background being .NET, OutSystems is straightforward to learn, which is beneficial. Developing applications in OutSystems is good, and the flexibility allowed by OutSystems for application development is excellent compared to my experiences with other low-code technologies, where I've faced some challenges. The clean separation of concerns in the architecture provided by OutSystems is a key benefit compared to other platforms. OutSystems integrates with our existing tech infrastructure and provides flexible integration. If we want to integrate with third-party services, OutSystems has SOAP and RESTful services that allow us to consume external services, integrate with external databases such as SQL or Oracle, and includes integration studio for writing custom .NET code. After developing a .NET component, we can reference it in service studio, creating a reference file that makes integration easy. OutSystems officially supports various integrations and also includes an API discovery tool for consuming and exposing services, providing a lot of information about incoming URLs, similar to how we use Postman.
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

"We can do the validation before calling the API."
"I like the mobile features the most, and there are also various features around the portal we created that I enjoy."
"OutSystems' low-cost approach has positively impacted our productivity, because we were able to develop faster with OutSystems, enabling us to implement many changes during our sprint."
"OutSystems is easy to use."
"The product is mostly stable."
"Reduces the manual labor in compiling and deploying applications and generating procedural code (by reducing development bureaucracy/processes, resulting in real gains). The LifeTime Server approach, requiring just a few steps to publish applications in production environments, is fantastic."
"OutSystems has no issues so far, the drag and drop environment is quite dynamic, and we can create our own UI on top of it."
"I really like the one-click publish feature in OutSystems. In other development tools/languages, it's not as easy. I also like how easily I can manage all my projects in one place."
"I like Renderers in Xamarin. They allow us to use native-platform controls easily."
"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 native features and Xamarin Essentials package are highly valuable to us."
"We very much like the XAML design techniques, multiple layout and pages, MVVMCross support, and portability across different platforms."
"The Xamarin platform can reduce overhead significantly through code-share and reuse. The typical team size for a Xamarin project is significantly reduced compared to purely native projects."
"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."
"You can just write one XM channel core and it'll be used for both iOS and Android."
"This solution is a cross-form technology, meaning that we don't have to create separate code to deploy apps across different platforms."
 

Cons

"Mobile apps need improvement."
"The solution's testing framework needs to be improved, and the workflow should be slightly more mature."
"In the future with OutSystems, improvements could be made on the costing side rather than the feature side."
"While I can't speak to the market impact, as a developer, I've seen significant reductions in development time across different versions of our applications. One area for improvement would be the UI controls in Service Studio. Sometimes, controls don't appear in the IDE, requiring us to check them in the web browser instead. Overall, our experience with OutSystems has been positive, though improvements in UI development would be welcomed."
"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 cons involve delays in project timelines primarily due to the time taken in requirements refinement and challenges faced when adding new features, making it somewhat complex to manage and maintain applications as they grow in scale."
"There is room for improvement in technical support."
"I would like to see OutSystems improve its integration capabilities, especially with emerging technologies like AI and GPT."
"The solution always has room for improvement with price, integration, stability, and documentation."
"The worst build issue concerns are the caching process MSBuild uses to reduce the build time."
"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."
"There are compatibility issues between versions of various Xamarin components."
"It needs offline sync capabilities to store data on devices persistently."
"The problem that I faced was that the communication, the roles, and the responsibilities, weren't defined between Microsoft and Xamarin."
"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."
"From time to time, it is a bit harder to code some specific scenarios compared to the native approach."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's not cheap. It's pretty expensive."
"You should contact OutSystems for more details but my opinion is that it is not for small business budgets."
"The tool’s licensing is based on the user’s usage."
"The solution is expensive."
"Pricing could be a concern. You have to pay yearly, even after you have completed your development."
"It is too expensive for small companies."
"OutSystems is a very expensive solution, and it has to be cheaper."
"OutSystems is a good solution, but it's not cheap."
"Xamarin Platform is a free open-source solution."
"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."
"You can build in Xamarin without paying any money."
"Xamarin is free. There is no license unless you go for some high-end enterprise features. Other than that, everything's free."
"This is a free product, so there is zero investment on licenses and IDE."
"There is no license fee because the solution is open-source."
"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.
881,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.