Introduction
The mobile development industry is disrupting the markets in this tech-dominated economy. Every second, some new tool, application, software or technology is developed. The mobile industry is big, considering that nearly 85% of the world’s population uses smartphones. Hence, almost every company and startup is building apps and websites to connect with people and grow its brands. And apps built with Flutter give them an edge over their seers.
Mobile apps are divided among various platforms, the three most popular being Android, iOS, and Windows. Building apps for each one of them is a costly affair. You must create separate apps requiring more time, money, and individual developers and frameworks for each. However, with technological advancements, we have frameworks and tools that help in cross-platform app development. Flutter framework is the beast in them.
How? What apps can be built with Flutter? Flutter allows app development for multiple mobile, desktop and web platforms with a single codebase. That means you only require the time, money, developers and tools to build just one application which will then be used on different platforms. The cross-platform apps built with Flutter provide high interactivity, seamless UI and native-like performance. Flutter is the most popular cross-platform SDK in the world right now.
So, how many apps are using Flutter? Since 2018, over 700,000 Flutter apps have been on the play store. Three out of every ten Play Store apps are built with Flutter. That’s more than any other cross-platform development framework. Google, Alibaba, eBay, and BMW are some top companies using Flutter based apps. In this article, we will discuss some popular apps built with Flutter and why you should use them for your app development. Let’s get started.
What is Flutter?
Flutter is a Software Development Kit(SDK) developed by Google in 2018 as an alternative to React Native for cross-platform app development. Flutter uses Dart as its programming language, making cross-platform app development easier than ever. It is easy to learn and use, gives high-end app performance, and has a rapid development process. Features like Hot reloading and pre-built widgets allow developers to iterate their code quickly and efficiently while the application runs.
Some key features of apps built with Flutter are:
- They can work on Android, iOS, Windows, desktops, and the web.
- Developers use only one codebase to build apps; testing, debugging, and editing are easy.
- Moreover, companies can work on any device effortlessly and efficiently to reach their target market.
- Resources, such as Cost, time-to-market, and development team, are reduced.
- Ready-to-use components such as widgets help in rapid development and better interactivity.
- Apps built with Flutter are highly scalable, fast, robust, and interactive.
React Native, Xamarin, and Ionic are some of the top competitors of Flutter. Flutter is directly competing with Meta’s React Native as both are equally good at developing high-end applications. Some Popular apps built with React Native include Instagram, Facebook, Bloomberg, Walmart, and SoundCloud Pulse.
Popular Apps Built With Flutter
1. Dream 11
Dream 11 is a sports fantasy platform where users can play fantasy Football, Cricket, NBA, Hockey, and basketball. Players can make teams with real players, simulate matches and win cash prizes. It is a unicorn company from India with a user base of over 70 million people. It is one of the most popular Flutter apps on Play Store.
Over the years, Dream 11 has garnered a huge response from sports fraternity and enthusiasts who can predict match figures, such as , scores, goal points, etc.
The apps built with Flutter use custom widgets to build their UI. Dream 11 too has its UI built with Flutter. The widgets make the performance and interactivity work like magic. They are adjustable, editable and work well for all platforms. Apart from it, Dream 11 handles of hundred of transactions each day, has to manage a large user base, and the sports sector being dynamic and volatile, the app needs to be on its toes to give the optimal features and performance quickly.
Flutter fulfils every such needs. Its scalable language helped Dream 11 scale up from 300,000 users to over 50millions in just five years.
2. AliBaba
Alibaba is world’s biggest wholesale company & is among top three e-Commerce companies. They also preferred their apps built with Flutter framework. Xianyu, Alibaba’s mobile app has its own iOS and Android versions with a user base in millions. It is one of the most downloaded Flutter apps on Play Store with more than 10 million users using it daily.
As per the reports of Bing Sun, when the Alibaba’s developers find out about Flutter’s UI/UX abilities, they were excited about the high FPS rate and smooth interface. So they utilized Flutter in their app development process. It also saved them a lot of development time and eased in app maintenance.
On the backend, Flutter manages Alibaba’s massive user base. Being an e-Commerce platform, Alibaba’s business has a huge volume of 800 million people. With such a massive user base, Alibaba’s business is still growing worldwide and Flutter is taking all the credits. It reduced their development time by 50% and helped the company scale up their traffic and handle daily transactions.
3. Google Ads App
Flutter is the brainchild of Google, and Google utilizes its framework in all its major apps, including Google Ads app. Google Ads app allows users to improve their campaign(brand), edit keywords, SEO, and more. Flutter enhanced the flexibility and interactivity of their ads.
There can be no better advertisement for apps built with Flutter and their abilities then Google itself. The Google ads app is a huge money-spinning product of Google that helps users to create, manage and keep track of ad campaigns seamlessly. Users can view statistics, recieve real-time updates/notifications/alerts, automated suggestions for campaign, budgets and bids updates, and campaign optimizations.
Google ads is constantly updated to keep users in trend with current market conditions. It provides new features and stats to help with the competition in paid advertising. Even with such heavy demands, the app is user-friendly. It has great intuitive UI and widgets built by Flutter. Other Flutter apps on Play Store from Google are Google play console and Gpay.
4. Reflectly
Another one of the popular Flutter apps on Play Store, Reflectly is a lifestyle app used to create and maintain a journal. They combine various disciplines such as meditation, behavioural therapy, NLP and psychology to help users with anxiety, stress, overthinking, negative thoughts and develop a positive lifestyle. The app is powered by an AI that acts as a writing prompt and comes up with thoughtful questions everyday for users. This helps users reflect on their thoughts and align them in a structure. In short, it is an intelligent diary to keep.
Reflectly also has a detailed dashboard that shows stats and insights with respect to the user’s input that further helps the user in being organized with his thoughts. Reflectly’s popularity is a proof that apps built with Flutter can effectively work with and incorporate AI, ML and NLP techniques. With AI being the torch bearer of modern technology, choosing Flutter will be a preferred option for businesses.
Flutter helped Reflectly with fast development and rapid interface. The huge power and productivity of the framework along with functions like Hot Reload blew the developers’ minds. They were mostly excited about Flutter’s abilities to iterate the code and see those changes instantly.
5. TopLine
Topline is another one of the cool apps built with Flutter. It is a music recorder that helps artists to save and record their ideas, organize projects, organize lyrics and music, tags, and pictures. You can later convert your files to mp3 and export. The app became famous because many music distribution platforms such as Ditto and Spinnup used it.
The app is fully developed with Flutter. The head of the company said that initially they were a little cautious as the platform was new for them, but, with lots of iterations, long working hours, and intellectual and creative efforts, they built the final product. It was exquisite. The customizable widgets and plugins of Flutter made their UI seamless and highly interactive.
Websites Built With Flutter
Although Flutter is specifically used for mobile apps, it has made significant iterations for web development. Flutter web is the result of it. Google announced its web based framework- Flutter web on 2019. It was made available for general public on March 2021. Flutter web uses the same technology as Flutter SDK along with all the features and Dart language.
Flutter web is available on Chrome OS and Chromium browsers.
Why build Web Apps with Flutter?
Flutter Web is designed to make it easier for web developers to create beautiful, performant, and interactive experiences across desktop, mobile, and the web.
You can use Flutter Web to build single-page applications (SPAs) that look great on any device, including desktops and mobiles. You can use Flutters HTML widgets to easily add rich content to your sites, such as images, videos, maps, charts, and forms.
Flutter Web lets you build complex web applications that run on both desktop and mobile devices. You can use Flitter Web to build Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), which combine the best of traditional websites and mobile apps.
Flutter Web automatically optimizes your code for speed and memory usage. You can use Fluttering Web to build highly performant web applications that load quickly and don’t crash.
Moreover, Flutter Web includes security features that help protect users’ data and prevent malicious attacks. You can use Flutter’s WebView widget to display secure web pages inside your app.
In addition, at this year’s Google I/O, several updates were announced to Flutter Web including automatic detection of the ImageDecoder API in browsers and a new lifecycle API to control the bootstrap process of your Flutter app from the hosting HTML page.
Having said that, let’s take a look at some top Web apps built using Flutter:
1. CatGPT-3
CatGPT3 is a Flutter app that integrates the ChatGPT API, allowing users to chat with a powerful language model trained by OpenAI.
To power the app’s chat functionality, CatGPT3 uses the riverpod generator, which provides a simple way to manage state in Flutter. This allows the app to keep track of user input and responses from the ChatGPT API in a streamlined and efficient way.
In addition, CatGPT3 also utilizes two popular networking libraries for Flutter: Retrofit and Dio. These libraries enable the app to communicate with the ChatGPT API over the internet, sending and receiving data quickly and reliably.
2. Supernova
Supernova is a design system web application built using Dart and Flutter. It is one of the early adopters of Flutter web and built the platform in 2019.
Supernova manages the entire design system lifecycle in one place, without making your team change tools or maintains self-built workflows and integrations. Automate everything to fit the way you work already.
Supernova displays project details including its name, description, owner’s username, creation date, last update date, number of followers, number of following, number of comments, number of likes, number of dislikes, number of followers, and number of following.
3. Rive
Rive is a Flutter web application that helps people create animated videos using their images and text. You can use Rive to make short animations, explain complex concepts, or share stories about your business.
Developers can create and ship beautiful, interactive animations to any platform. Their open-source runtimes make it possible for creators to animate once, then launch on any platform they want.
4. DevWidgets
DevWidgets is a handy toolkit for developers, directly inspired by DevToys. It includes various tools like generators, formatters, and converters.
The main difference between the two is that DevWidgets is exclusively for Flutter development, while DevToys supports multiple programming languages. Nevertheless, both tools are equally useful for developers looking to save time and improve their workflow.
You can find many useful tools like an HTML Encoder, JSON tools, Markdown Editor, SQL tools, text tools, and more. Whether you need to quickly generate some code or format some text, DevWidgets has you covered. And if you ever need to convert some code from one format to another, the conversion tool will come in handy.
5. iRobot
The iRobot Coding App is a free web application that helps users learn how to program their robot using a visual programming language. Users can create programs using drag-and-drop blocks to control the movement of the bot.
Once programmed, the user can test out their code by running it on the robot. The app was built on Swift initially and was thus only available for iOS devices. They later deployed the app to Android and Web by migrating the codebase to Flutter.
Why Flutter App Development is Good for You?
The list of apps built with Flutter is getting longer by the day. As evident from the names featured above, Flutter is gaining traction not only among enterprises but also young startups that prefer the framework’s flexibility and resource efficiency. Flutter’s popularity is only set to increase further in the immediate future as its libraries and tools get better, which will further reduce development times/cost while helping create even more awesome apps.
That makes Flutter app development an excellent choice if you have a new business idea or want to give a fresh lease of life to an existing app. Its versatility also makes it suitable for industries as diverse as education, fashion, entertainment, lifestyle, finance, business, health, and fitness.
You can also bounce off your idea with our Flutter app developer to understand the cost, time, and business implications involved in either building a new app altogether or recreating it with Flutter.
Conclusion
The number of apps built with Flutter is increasing day by day. Big enterprises and startups prefer to build their apps into a flutter. It has a set of libraries and tools that will decrease production time as well as produce awesome applications. If you are looking for a piece of the pie, you can book a consultation session with us. We provide top 3% of the best Flutter developers. Hire now.