If you’re building an application today, you’re facing a dilemma that didn’t exist a decade ago. The lines have blurred. Your users expect a seamless experience whether they’re on a Windows desktop, a MacBook, an iPhone, or in a web browser. Building a separate native app for each is a resource-draining nightmare.
For years, the answer was simple: Electron. It let us build desktop apps with the web technologies we already knew. It powers giants like Slack, VS Code, and Discord. But it came at a cost — hefty application sizes and a reputation for being a memory hog.
Today, the game has changed. A new generation of frameworks has risen, challenging the old guard and offering a tantalizing promise: build fast, lightweight, truly cross-platform apps without compromise. If you’re starting a project today, your choice will likely define your product’s future. So, where do you place your bet?
The Two Philosophies: Webview vs. Custom Rendering
The modern battlefield is split into two main camps, defined by how they draw your app’s user interface.
The WebView Revolutionaries: This group, including Tauri, Wails, and .NET MAUI Blazor, believes in using the operating system’s built-in web browser component (the “webview”). Your UI is still a web page (HTML, CSS, JS), but it’s powered by a lean, high-performance backend written in a language like Rust, Go, or C#. This gives you a tiny application size and a snappy feel.
The Custom Renderers: This camp is led by Flutter. It takes a radical approach: it ignores the webview entirely. Instead, it ships with its own graphics engine (Skia) and draws every single pixel on the screen itself. This gives it unparalleled control over the UI, resulting in buttery-smooth animations and a consistent look everywhere.
To help you see the landscape at a glance, here’s a quick cheat sheet comparing the top contenders.
Now, let’s dive into the top choices for a project starting in 2025.
The Top Tiers for 2025
If you need to target mobile, desktop, and web, your choice will almost certainly be between these two titans.
1. Flutter: The Custom UI Powerhouse
Backed by Google, Flutter has taken the mobile world by storm and is now a formidable desktop and web framework.
Its core strength is its custom rendering engine. This means you aren’t limited by what a web browser can do. You can create beautiful, brand-centric UIs with complex animations that run at a silky 60 or 120 frames per second. The trade-off? Your team needs to learn the Dart language and Flutter’s declarative widget system. It’s not web development; it’s a new, powerful paradigm.
Choose Flutter if:
- A highly custom, fluid user experience is your top priority.
- Mobile is a primary target.
- You want your app to look and feel exactly the same on every device.
2. .NET MAUI: The Enterprise-Ready Workhorse
Backed by Microsoft, .NET MAUI is the official evolution of a mature, enterprise-ready platform. It’s the flagship solution for the millions of C# developers in the .NET ecosystem.
.NET MAUI can use two approaches: building a UI with native OS controls or using the Blazor model to host a web UI. This flexibility, combined with its deep integration into Visual Studio and the vast .NET library ecosystem (NuGet), makes it an incredibly powerful and productive choice.
Choose .NET MAUI if:
- Your team is invested in the C# and .NET ecosystem.
- You need to share code with an existing ASP.NET backend.
- You’re building for the enterprise and need robust tooling and long-term support.
The Rising Star: The Desktop-First Champion
3. Tauri: The Lean, Mean, Secure Machine
Tauri has fundamentally changed the game for desktop apps. It offers the same developer experience as Electron — build your UI with React or Vue — but with a Rust backend. The result is a secure, blazing-fast application that is often less than 5MB in size.
While its mobile support is still experimental, it’s maturing quickly. By 2025, it will be a serious contender for projects that start on the desktop but have mobile ambitions.
Choose Tauri if:
- Your primary target is a lightweight, high-performance desktop application.
- Security is paramount; Tauri’s “secure-by-default” model is best-in-class.
- You believe in Rust’s promise of performance and reliability.
4. Wails: The Go Developer’s Best Friend
What if you love Tauri’s lean architecture but find Rust’s learning curve a bit steep? That’s where Wails comes in. It offers the same core promise — a native Go backend controlling a webview UI — but with the simplicity and world-class concurrency model that Go is famous for. This makes Wails incredibly fast to develop with.
Choose Wails if:
- You’re a Go developer, or you want to build a desktop app with a simple, powerful backend as quickly as possible.
The Incumbent Giant
5. Electron: The One That Started It All
We can’t have this conversation without paying respect to the giant in the room. Electron powers many of the apps you use every day. Its strength is its simplicity for web developers: the entire app is JavaScript/TypeScript, and you have the entire npm ecosystem at your fingertips. However, this convenience comes at the cost of bundling a full browser with your app, leading to the high memory usage and large file sizes it’s known for.
Choose Electron if:
- Your team is entirely web developers and you need to leverage a specific Node.js library that has no alternative. For most new projects, however, teams often look to Tauri for a similar developer experience with vastly better performance.
The Verdict
The days of one-size-fits-all are over. The framework you choose is a strategic decision that reflects your team’s skills and your product’s soul.
For a beautiful, custom UI that shines everywhere, especially on mobile, bet on Flutter.
For an enterprise-grade application built on a mature, powerful ecosystem, bet on .NET MAUI.
For a secure, lightweight desktop app with Rust’s power, bet on Tauri.
For rapidly building a desktop UI for a Go backend, bet on Wails.
And if you need to lean on the vast Node.js ecosystem, Electron is still there, the proven but heavy choice.
The best part? There’s no wrong answer here. The future of application development is fast, cross-platform, and more exciting than ever. Choose your path, and start building.