What framework to choose for a cross-platform .NET GUI application continues to be awkward, with multiple good-ish options but no obvious first choice.
The three leading contenders are Microsoft’s MAUI (multi-platform app UI), third-party Avalonia UI, and third-party Uno Platform.
Joseph Tomkinson, head of software engineering at the British Heart Foundation, has an excellent post on the pros and cons of MAUI vs Avalonia UI, noting the fundamental difference that MAUI wraps native controls while Avalonia UI does all its own rendering. Tomkinson argues that MAUI has stronger mobile support (since this has only come recently to Avalonia) but that Avalonia has advantages in consistency, desktop performance, and Linux support.
A concern with Avalonia UI has been the drift towards important features becoming commercial-only, not unreasonable but a barrier to adoption for some developers. That has improved though since a sponsor appeared to fund Avalonia open-source development. CEO Mike James (formerly at Xamarin and then Microsoft) has posted about the difference this has made.
According to James, the Avalonia UI team has more than doubled, to 20 people, and now includes a QA lead. He says usage is growing:
“In the whole of 2025, Avalonia projects were built over 122 million times. In the first six months of 2026 alone, that figure has already passed 410 million.”
I am not sure exactly what this metric is counting – telemetry every time a developer builds a project? – but presuming it is like with like, that is impressive.
On the MAUI side though, one thing Tomkinson notes is that third-party components are more widely available, because it is an official Microsoft framework, and that quality is much better now than it was early on.
The BigCorp factor is not entirely in MAUI’s favour though. Microsoft might change direction and decide MAUI is no longer important, particularly as its own internal usage of the framework still seems minimal.
I am inclined to try building an example project in both frameworks to get my own feel for which would work best.