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Avalonia VS Qt

Compare Avalonia VS Qt and see what are their differences

Avalonia logo Avalonia

A multi-platform .NET UI framework

Qt logo Qt

Powerful, flexible and easy to use, Qt will help you not only meet your tight deadline, but also reduce the maintainable code by an astonishing percentage.
  • Avalonia Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-05-01
  • Qt Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-22

Avalonia features and specs

  • Cross-Platform
    Avalonia supports Windows, macOS, and Linux, enabling developers to write a single codebase that runs on multiple platforms.
  • MVVM Support
    Avalonia has strong support for the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern, which can help developers create maintainable and scalable applications.
  • Rich Styling System
    Avalonia provides a powerful styling system similar to CSS, giving developers the ability to easily customize the appearance of their applications.
  • Open Source
    Being open-source, Avalonia allows developers to contribute to its development, inspect the codebase, and ensure long-term viability without vendor lock-in.
  • Community Support
    Avalonia has an active and growing community, which can be beneficial for troubleshooting issues, finding resources, and sharing knowledge.
  • ReactiveUI Integration
    It integrates seamlessly with ReactiveUI, a powerful reactive programming library, for building dynamic and responsive applications.

Possible disadvantages of Avalonia

  • Maturity
    Avalonia is relatively young compared to more established frameworks like WPF or WinForms, which might result in fewer features and stability issues.
  • Smaller Ecosystem
    Given its younger age, Avalonia has a smaller ecosystem with fewer third-party libraries, tools, and components available for developers.
  • Performance
    Depending on the complexity of the application, performance may not be on par with native frameworks, especially on resource-intensive tasks.
  • Learning Curve
    Developers new to Avalonia may face a learning curve, especially if they are not familiar with its MVVM pattern and reactive programming paradigms.
  • Documentation
    Although improving, the documentation for Avalonia might not be as comprehensive or as polished as that of more mature frameworks.
  • Platform-Specific Issues
    Cross-platform development can bring platform-specific issues and inconsistencies that developers need to handle, which can increase complexity.

Qt features and specs

  • Cross-Platform Development
    Qt allows developers to write applications that can run on multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS, without the need for significant code changes.
  • Rich Documentation
    Qt provides extensive and well-maintained documentation, making it easier for developers to learn and troubleshoot the framework.
  • Mature and Stable
    Being a mature framework, Qt has a long history of stability and a strong track record in producing robust applications.
  • Comprehensive UI Components
    Qt offers a wide range of built-in UI components, which can significantly speed up the development process and provide a native look and feel on different platforms.
  • Strong Community Support
    Qt has an active and helpful community, which can be beneficial for developers seeking support or looking to collaborate on projects.
  • Performance
    Applications built with Qt tend to be efficient and performant, due to close-to-the-metal coding options and optimizations available in the framework.
  • Tooling
    Qt Creator, the official IDE for Qt, offers powerful tools for designing, coding, testing, and debugging applications, enhancing productivity.

Possible disadvantages of Qt

  • Licensing Costs
    Though Qt offers an open-source option, commercial licenses can be expensive, which can be a significant constraint for smaller businesses or independent developers.
  • Learning Curve
    The framework can have a steep learning curve for beginners, especially for those unfamiliar with C++ or the specific paradigms Qt employs.
  • Large Executable Size
    Applications built with Qt can have larger executable sizes compared to those built with more lightweight frameworks, which might be a concern for some applications.
  • Dependency on C++
    While Qt has bindings for other languages like Python (PyQt, PySide), its core is based on C++, which might not be ideal for developers looking for a more modern or different programming language.
  • Complexity in Customization
    While Qt offers many features out-of-the-box, deep customization, especially for non-standard requirements, can become complex and time-consuming.
  • Build Times
    Due to its comprehensive nature, applications using Qt can have longer build times, which can slow down the development cycle.

Avalonia videos

A Cross Platform .NET UI Framework - Hello World in Avalonia UI

More videos:

  • Review - Nikita Tsukanov - AvaloniaUI - cross-platform XAML-oriented .NET UI framework
  • Review - Avalonia XAML debugging. Where is your WPF/UWP/Xamarin.Forms now?

Qt videos

Review of Qt 5.4

More videos:

  • Review - QT.HAIR Wet & Wavy/ Dream Straight Review |Which is Better?
  • Review - QT HAIR REVIEW| Affordable Brazilian Bundles

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Avalonia and Qt)
Development Tools
56 56%
44% 44
Rapid Application Development
Cross-Platform Development
.Net
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Avalonia and Qt

Avalonia Reviews

We have no reviews of Avalonia yet.
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Qt Reviews

Top 5 Flutter Alternatives for Cross-Platform Development
Qt is a versatile C++ framework known for its efficiency and flexibility. With Qt, developers can create cross-platform applications with native-like performance.
Source: www.miquido.com
Exploring 15 Powerful Flutter Alternatives
Qt is a mature, cross-platform native framework for building apps and devices using C++. Qt sees extensive use in embedded systems requiring slick UIs on low-power devices with limited memory. It compiles nearly identically to straight C++ while adding conveniences like signals and slots that feel akin to JavaScript event handling. But apps targeting desktops, servers, and...
Best GUI frameworks for Go
Qt is a cross-platform application development framework widely used for developing desktop, mobile, and embedded systems. Qt provides a powerful, easy-to-use, and flexible C++ class library for building GUIs and other types of applications. Qt has a wide range of built-in widgets, including buttons, labels, list boxes, and more.
10 Best Tools to Develop Cross-Platform Desktop Apps 
Written in C++, this cross-platform framework is used for native embedded, desktop, and mobile applications using GUI widgets and quick modules using QML language. C++ is a backend and QML (QtQuick 2) is a frontend side. Its meta-object compiler runs before the build. Qt can be used in several programming languages like Python, JavaScript, and others due to language...
Top Cross-Platform App Development Frameworks
Qt is a pretty mature GUI and cross-platform app development framework that dates back to 1995. Developers can use Qt for crafting applications for mobiles, embedded platforms, or desktops. As Qt is based on C++, any developer with a decent C++ experience (pretty easily found) can help you craft a cross-platform app using Qt with a single codebase.
Source: www.pangea.ai

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Avalonia seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 133 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Avalonia mentions (133)

  • Uno Platform Studio: GUI Designer for Cross-Platform .NET Applications
    C# and Uno, C# and Avalonia (https://avaloniaui.net/), Dart and Flutter (https://flutter.dev/) are all interesting options for WebAssembly application development. It's nice to be able to do cross platform desktop applications that can also be compiled for web delivery. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • Visual Basic 6 IDE recreated in C#
    Slightly off topic, but this was built using Avalonia, which I have never heard of. Has anyone used it? The promise sounds impressive (beautiful, cross-platform applications from a single .NET codebase), just wondering whether it actually delivers? https://avaloniaui.net/. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • Visual Basic 6 rebuilt in C# – complete with form designer and IDE in browser
    It's written in Avalonia so you could easily compile a desktop version if you wanted, although the author doesn't package one explicitly https://avaloniaui.net/ https://github.com/BAndysc/AvaloniaVisualBasic6. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • A comparison of Rust's borrow checker to the one in C#
    You should checkout AvalonuiaUI[0] or unoPlatform[1] if wanting to target web/mobile/window/linux/macOS if building for the web online, asp.net core runs on Linux servers as well as windows and there's MAUI [2] ( not a fan of this), you are better-off with with the others. In summary c# and .NET is cross-platform, third party developers build better frameworks and tools for other platform while Microsoft prefers... - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • Should JavaScript be split into two languages? Google proposal divides opinion
    > And even if it were accomplished in a central open source library like Flutter, that adds a considerable amount to the package size of any application. The download really isn't much different to a typical website. That Flutter demo in wasm is 2 megabytes. Avalonia UI's WebAssembly uses canvas in C#: https://avaloniaui.net/ Uno Platform's WebAssembly implementation uses the DOM rather than drawing to... - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
View more

Qt mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Qt yet. Tracking of Qt recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Avalonia and Qt, you can also consider the following products

Uno Platform - Build Mobile, Desktop and WebAssembly apps with C# and XAML.

wxWidgets - wxWidgets: Cross-Platform GUI Library

GTK - GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces.

Flutter - Build beautiful native apps in record time 🚀

Electron - Build cross platform desktop apps with web technologies

PyQt - Riverbank | Software | PyQt | What is PyQt?