# Flutter 171 Hacker News commenters recommended Flutter and 106 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 3 years (11 owners). **Verdict:** Recommended as the most practical way for a small team to ship one app across mobile, web and desktop; critics find its UI non-native and fear Google abandonment. ## Why people recommend it - Best cross-platform framework available (6 comments): "I'm a heavy user of Flutter especially in the age of AI because even if you could have the AI rewrite 6 different version for 6 different platforms" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50149343)) "since then the framework has improved a whole lot, together with its build chain, and is the best way to do crossplatform nowadays" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49286857)) "Flutter does cross platform + web and is as close to native as you'll get without writing code directly in Swift, C#, etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46989721)) - Ship fast with small teams (4 comments): "Flutter is quite good for shipping quickly and a set of decent same/similar apps. You lose some "quality" and a lot of "native performance"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49294091)) "React Native and Flutter as cross platform frameworks are best for Startups which can't handle 2 mobile developers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49655952)) "It's helped us move extremely fast with a small team and get to this stage of our business journey." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47984011)) - Near-native performance and feel (5 comments): "Flutter does cross platform + web and is as close to native as you'll get without writing code directly in Swift, C#, etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46989721)) "Flutter for desktop on Linux is actually quite solid now, and the performance difference from Electron is noticeable." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47668817)) "Flutter is solid enough to implement apps which are near native ones in terms of performance and "look & feel"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49512717)) - Strong docs and developer tooling (4 comments): "Flutter itself has been a pretty first class citizen then it comes to documentation and developer tooling/experience." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45837360)) "VSCode or neovim with Flutter and really most every other UI framework like React (and Native) work great" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46484749)) "its good at mobile, developer experience simply just better compared to java,kotlin xml UI declaration" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49287498)) ## What people warn about - Reimplemented widgets feel non-native (5 comments): "Flutter is quite good for shipping quickly and a set of decent same/similar apps. You lose some "quality" and a lot of "native performance"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49294091)) "there's plenty of HN threads about Flutter where you will see this sentiment, not only about performance, also about UX" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48527390)) "Flutter still doesn't support liquid glass on iOS so it doesn't seem like a serious contender to me at this point" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46710815)) - Fear Google will abandon it (3 comments): "It's just so hard to commit to anything like this Google makes without a full expectation of getting rug pulled." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49285051)) "Flutter has potential but just like any other Google tech it's just shitty over time due to lack of TLC." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46409692)) "it's a matter of time before they kill it like they did with so many UI libraries and frameworks already" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49281034)) - Desktop support is half-baked (2 comments): "it's okay and good for mobile cross, when it comes to desktop, I'd have to struggle to support linux with quick hangs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49284069)) "it was conceived primarily as mobile-oriented, and so on desktop you're stuck with half-baked third party components" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48883186)) - Dart verbosity and ergonomics (3 comments): "I think a lot of ergonomics issues of the Flutter are because of Dart language lacking in some areas." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45835087)) "In my brief experiments with Flutter, I must admit I didn't enjoy the experience of using the autoformatting" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45787406)) "Why would I write Flutter UIs in Dart, fighting the widget-tree ceremony and endless build() boilerplate" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48951468)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [React Native](https://hackerapproved.com/p/react-native.md): 98 recommend - [Kotlin Multiplatform](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kotlin-multiplatform.md): 27 recommend - [Expo](https://hackerapproved.com/p/expo.md): 21 recommend - [.NET MAUI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/net-maui.md): 21 recommend - [Skip](https://hackerapproved.com/p/skip.md): 19 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Flutter", https://hackerapproved.com/p/flutter/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).