--- title: Same CPU, Five Times the Memory: What Flutter Really Costs description: A peer-reviewed study by seven researchers compared Flutter (Dart, Riverpod) and native Android (Kotlin, Jetpack Compose) implementations of an on-device AI... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/same-cpu-five-times-the-memory-what-flutter-really-costs-mxl2xhlu1 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Same CPU, Five Times the Memory: What Flutter Really Costs | daily.dev og:description: A peer-reviewed study by seven researchers compared Flutter (Dart, Riverpod) and native Android (Kotlin, Jetpack Compose) implementations of an on-device AI... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/same-cpu-five-times-the-memory-what-flutter-really-costs-mxl2xhlu1 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/mxL2XHLu1.png og:image:alt: Same CPU, Five Times the Memory: What Flutter Really Costs og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Same CPU, Five Times the Memory: What Flutter Really Costs **[Medium](https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A peer-reviewed study by seven researchers compared Flutter (Dart, Riverpod) and native Android (Kotlin, Jetpack Compose) implementations of an on-device AI content moderation system. CPU usage and battery drain were nearly identical between the two frameworks. The major difference was memory: Flutter averaged 955 MB versus 184 MB for native Android, largely due to Flutter's bundled rendering engine, Dart VM, and GC heap. Latency also differed — Flutter averaged 764 ms per frame versus 645 ms for Android, with ONNX inference 1.43x slower on Flutter due to Dart FFI overhead compared to Kotlin's direct JNI calls. Tail latency was notably worse on Flutter, with 12.8% of frames exceeding 1,000 ms and one frame hitting 7,829 ms during a GC pause. The study recommends treating Flutter's memory footprint as a hard constraint on low-RAM devices and monitoring 95th/99th percentile frame times rather than averages. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [React Native vs Flutter for AI Chatbot Apps in 2026: Which One Should You Pick?](https://daily.dev/posts/react-native-vs-flutter-for-ai-chatbot-apps-in-2026-which-one-should-you-pick--vhb8srmxs) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [One Tap, Three Machines: How Android Views, Flutter, and Compose Actually Render Your UI](https://daily.dev/posts/one-tap-three-machines-how-android-views-flutter-and-compose-actually-render-your-ui-ruoe8zjtc) · ProAndroidDev · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Difference between native and cross platform app development](https://daily.dev/posts/difference-between-native-and-cross-platform-app-development-t1dq0p1kd) · C\# Corner · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#android](https://daily.dev/tags/android), [#flutter](https://daily.dev/tags/flutter), [#dart](https://daily.dev/tags/dart) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/same-cpu-five-times-the-memory-what-flutter-really-costs-mxl2xhlu1) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Same CPU, Five Times the Memory: What Flutter Really Costs","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/same-cpu-five-times-the-memory-what-flutter-really-costs-mxl2xhlu1","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/same-cpu-five-times-the-memory-what-flutter-really-costs-mxl2xhlu1"},"datePublished":"2026-07-14T19:29:59.177Z","dateModified":"2026-07-14T19:30:43.202Z","description":"A peer-reviewed study by seven researchers compared Flutter (Dart, Riverpod) and native Android (Kotlin, Jetpack Compose) implementations of an on-device AI...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/d6ab0a9a223ee01bc82d647f54feb2d2?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/d6ab0a9a223ee01bc82d647f54feb2d2?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Medium","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Medium","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/medium","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/same-cpu-five-times-the-memory-what-flutter-really-costs-mxl2xhlu1","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"android,flutter,dart","timeRequired":"PT4M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Medium","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Same CPU, Five Times the Memory: What Flutter Really Costs"}]} ```