Flutter has been around for a while now—what's its real market share? To get the actual data and show how Flutter is being used in major apps today, I downloaded hundreds of apps, taking up nearly 80GB of phone storage, just to answer one question: Is anyone actually using Flutter?
First, I downloaded all the apps from the software rankings on the vivo app store (as of April 11), totaling 230 apps, plus some frequently used ones—270 apps in total as our statistical base.
Detection Method
I used LibChecker to check whether an app includes Flutter-related .so files.
https://github.com/zhaobozhen/LibChecker
Besides LibChecker, there are other approaches, e.g., using the shell command zipinfo.
https://github.com/sugood/apkanalyser
An APK is essentially an archive, so running zipinfo and grep makes it easy to check. If combined with a crawler to fetch APK download links from app stores, it could become a fully automated script-based analysis tool. But since we don't need such a heavy setup, I won't go into detail.
App List
Let's take a look at how many apps I downloaded.
These apps basically cover the top apps in various app store rankings, so they should be fairly representative and convincing.
Now let's use LibChecker to see how many of these apps actually use Flutter.
Statistics
A total of 52 apps use Flutter, accounting for 19.2% of the sample. For reference, I also counted React Native (RN) apps: 45 apps, accounting for 16.6%. This shows that Flutter has already surpassed RN as the preferred cross-platform solution.
Among the 52 apps using Flutter:
- Tencent: QQ Mail, WeChat, QQ Sync Assistant, BlueDun (Tencent Security), Tencent Classroom, QQ Browser, WeSee, WeCom (Enterprise WeChat), Tencent Meeting
- Baidu: Baidu Netdisk, Baidu Input Method
- Alibaba: Youku Video, Hello (mobility), Taote, Kugou Live, Alibaba 1688, Xuexi Qiangguo, DingTalk, Taobao, Xianyu (Idle Fish)
- Other big names: Lianjia, Zhuanzhuan, Zhilian Recruitment, PPdai, Bilibili Comics, NetEase Youdao Dictionary, iQiyi, Kaola, Ctrip, Weibo, Soul, Yilong Travel, Vipshop, Fliggy
Based on the above, major companies are all using Flutter to some extent. The reason ByteDance is not listed is that it seems to have adopted a dynamic loading approach for Flutter on a large scale, so the original APK doesn't contain Flutter-related .so files (I'm guessing this—ByteDance friends can correct me; according to a recent share by ByteDance, over 90 apps internally use Flutter).
Note: This test is based on app store rankings, not commonly used apps. If we only tested commonly used apps, the proportion would likely be higher—roughly estimated at around 60%.
However, I was surprised that JD.com does not use Flutter. Looking at JD's apps, they still mainly use RN as their cross-platform solution. This is similar to other large companies—they not only use Flutter but also still have RN detectable. This indirectly shows that companies never stop exploring cross-platform solutions.
So, to summarize, teams currently using Flutter share several characteristics:
- Startups: Rapid trial and error, quick development—e.g., Blued, Kuaike
- Big companies: The eternal topic is efficiency—how to use cross-platform technology to improve development efficiency is the fundamental reason they adopt Flutter
- Innovative business lines: New business apps without too much legacy baggage—e.g., Bilibili Comics, Taote, Soul—can leverage Flutter for highly efficient development
So, what's the point of all the arguing on Zhihu about "Flutter is abandoned" or "Flutter is rising"? None of the arguments can beat real data.
People talk with their mouths, but their actions speak louder.
I hope this data can be helpful to you.
I recommend my website: https://xuyisheng.top/ – focused on Android, Kotlin, Flutter. Welcome to visit.
