Swift developers chose UIKit and SwiftUI: survey results

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UIKit vs SwiftUI: what are developers choosing in 2024?

The Swift developer community has long been divided into two camps: conservatives loyal to UIKit, and enthusiasts mastering SwiftUI. But what is actually used in real projects? A recent survey among iOS/macOS engineers at major conferences and in professional chats showed unexpected results.

Survey methodology

The survey involved more than 850 engineers from Russia, the CIS, and Europe, working on production projects (apps in the App Store, corporate solutions, SaaS products). Respondents were asked to indicate the main UI framework, as well as additional tools: Combine, Async/Await, Core Data, Realm, and others.

Key figures

UIKit — 58% of respondents use it as the main framework for iOS/macOS in production.
SwiftUI — 32% of developers have already implemented it in production projects, but more often in a hybrid mode with UIKit.
Pure SwiftUI (without UIKit) — only 10% of respondents have decided on a full transition.
Combine is used in 45% of projects, most often together with UIKit.
Async/await (structured concurrency) — 67% of developers already use it in production, regardless of the UI framework choice.

Why is UIKit still leading?

Despite Apple's active promotion of SwiftUI, UIKit remains the "workhorse" of the industry. The main reasons:

Maturity and stability — UIKit has existed for over 10 years, its behavior is predictable.
Compatibility — a huge amount of legacy code and third-party libraries are tied to UIKit.
Flexibility — UIKit allows implementing complex custom UI elements that require workarounds in SwiftUI.
macOS Catalyst — many port iPad apps to Mac precisely through UIKit.

SwiftUI: breakthrough or experiment?

SwiftUI is actively gaining momentum, especially in startups and new projects. However, production experience shows that SwiftUI still suffers from:

Limited support for complex animations and custom layouts.
Performance issues on large lists (LazyVStack vs UICollectionView).
Incomplete backward compatibility (SwiftUI requires iOS 13+, while many companies support iOS 15+).

Nevertheless, 32% of respondents already use SwiftUI in production — this is a 12% increase compared to 2023. The trend is obvious: in the next 2-3 years, SwiftUI may surpass UIKit in the number of new projects.