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Popular apps using Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) in 2023 — and what you can learn from them

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Popular apps using Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP): 9GAG, McDonald's, Memrise, GetYourGuide, Meetup, Deezer, Cash App, VMware, Netflix Studio, Polarsteps and more

When comparing cross-platform technologies it’s interesting to see which apps you already know use what technology and what we can learn from their approaches. Here’s an overview of popular apps using Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) and resources they’ve shared about it.

The materials I’ve found particularly interesting I’ve marked with a star ⭐ emoji, so keep an eye out for those. Be aware that resources written before the introduction of KMP Beta (October 2022) may refer to outdated issues like coroutine «» async/await interoperability, areas which have been greatly improved by now. Resources marked with a ▶️ play emoji are videos.

If you search for 2021 or 2022 on this page, you’ll find that many companies were already using KMP in production before it reached even beta. With the promotion to stable planned for this year, there’s no doubt about Kotlin Multiplatform’s readiness for production use.

📃 There are many more apps & companies using KMP, this is just a hand-picked list of the ones I personally found the most interesting. I also excluded some companies that talked about their KMP efforts at events, but haven’t published anything about it online yet.

📈 All download numbers mentioned here are from Android only and captured in July, 2023. Usage numbers from iOS, web and possibly desktop are not included.

🗣️Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile (KMM) is an older name. It used to mean the Android & iOS specific parts of KMP, but JetBrains now says there’s no need to differentiate those front-ends from desktop, web and also back-end. It’s all called KMP from hereon!

🆕 See also: Apps using Compose Multiplatform on iOS (now beta!) in 2024 — developer insights.

50M-100M+ apps

Let’s start with some enormous apps. McDonald’s (300M+) and Deezer both obtained over a hundred million downloads on Android alone. Cash App and Careem are following their trail, having achieved more than 50 million downloads each.

There is one software name on this page that’s not currently using KMP, but is still migrating towards. That name is Google Workspace, which exists of Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Drive and Meet. The existing apps have billions of downloads and Google is in the process of migrating from their in-house J2ObjC transpiler to KMP.

Resources

10M+ apps

Next up we have Memrise, Quizlet, 9GAG, Kuaishou, VMware, Meetup, Todoist and FootballCo’s GOAL apps.

Resources

1M-5M+ apps

This category includes PowerSchool, Down Dog, Shopify (couldn’t find a resource online), GetYourGuide, Autodesk, Polarsteps (no resource available yet), TeamSnap and last but not least: my own app Notes for Android! I haven’t written much about it yet, but I’ve been sharing code between Android and web (JS) since the beginning of 2022. Expect more articles about that in the future.

Resources

More apps from big companies

Last but not least, here’s a bunch of apps that are either targeted at a limited audience or that I couldn’t find clear usage numbers for. These are: Meetup for Organizers, Netflix Studio, Worldline, Philips HealthSuite, Baidu Wonder, Leroy Merlin and Forbes.

Any big name you think should be added to this post? Feel free to let me know.

Changelog

  • 2023-08-01 added GetYourGuide’s Droidcon 2023 talk recording + FootballCo app and resources.
  • 2023-08-02 added TeamSnap’s blogpost + new Meetup video (thanks to Fred Porciúncula for suggesting!)
  • 2023-11-14 added Forbes