Survey: Top Swift Frameworks in Production — What Developers Choose

Survey: Which Swift (iOS/macOS) Frameworks Are Used in Production

In the world of iOS and macOS development, choosing frameworks is not just a matter of convenience, but often the key to a successful release and stable application performance. Which tools are actually used in battle, and not just in educational projects? We conducted a survey among professional Swift developers and are sharing the results.

Survey Methodology

More than 500 developers from Russia and the CIS, working on commercial projects for iOS and macOS, took part in the survey. Respondents represented both startups and large product companies. We asked one key question: "Which Swift frameworks do you use in your current production project?" (multiple choices were allowed).

Results: Top 10 Swift Frameworks in Production

• SwiftUI (84%) — the undisputed leader. Apple is actively promoting SwiftUI, and developers are increasingly abandoning UIKit in new projects. However, many note that for complex custom interfaces, UIKit still has to be used in conjunction.
• UIKit (71%) — still very popular, especially in maintaining legacy projects and applications targeting iOS 14 and older.
• Combine (63%) — reactive programming has become the standard for working with asynchronous data streams. Many use Combine together with SwiftUI.
• Alamofire (58%) — the most popular third-party HTTP client. Despite the advent of URLSession, Alamofire remains the number one choice for network requests in production.
• Realm (47%) — a database for mobile applications. It outperforms CoreData in convenience and speed in real-world projects.
• CoreData (39%) — still in use, but is losing ground to Realm and new solutions like SwiftData.
• SnapKit (36%) — a library for auto-layout in code. Especially popular in projects where UIKit remains the main framework.
• Firebase (34%) — a comprehensive solution for analytics, authentication, and push notifications. Indispensable in MVPs and small projects.
• RxSwift (28%) — "old school" reactive programming. Used in large projects where switching to Combine is too late or too expensive.
• SwiftLint (22%) — a tool for maintaining code style. The presence of SwiftLint in a project is a sign of a mature team.

Interesting Observations

Beyond the obvious leaders, the survey revealed several trends:

• SwiftData — is just gaining momentum (8%), but developers are actively interested in it as a replacement for CoreData.
• TCA (The Composable Architecture) — an architectural framework from Point-Free, used in 12% of projects. Especially popular among those writing in SwiftUI.
• Vapor — server-side Swift, used in 6% of projects. Most often for the backend of iOS applications.
• XCTest + Quick/Nimble — testing remains a mandatory practice for 44% of respondents.

Conclusions for Developers

If you are just starting out or planning to update your tech stack, we recommend paying attention to the SwiftUI +