Difference between Swift and Objective-C: key business considerations
Swift and Objective-C each have their place in iOS development, but which one is better for your business? While Swift was designed to overcome some of Objective-C’s limitations, both languages bring unique advantages to the table. Let’s break it down.
Cost of development and maintenance
Objective-C isn’t inherently costly, but the ecosystem around it makes it less efficient. Hiring Objective-C developers is getting harder (and more expensive) as the industry shifts toward Swift. Debugging and maintaining legacy Objective-C apps also take more time due to their verbose syntax and reliance on complicated memory management.
Swift, in contrast, is designed to be fast. The clean syntax and developer-friendly tools, like Swift Playgrounds, help catch bugs early and speed up updates. This ultimately cuts down maintenance costs.
Time-to-market and development speed
Swift is built for faster performance. Apple reports that it runs up to 2.6 times faster than Objective-C. In Objective-C, when you call a method on an object, the system doesn’t directly execute the function. Instead, it sends a message to the object at runtime, asking it to find and execute the right method.
In contrast, Swift avoids this extra step whenever possible. It directly calls the function, which makes code execution faster. Moreover, tools like Swift Playgrounds allow developers to test and prototype code in a live environment without compiling an entire project. This speeds up debugging and experimentation, something that Objective-C lacks natively.
Faster execution means better app responsiveness, lower resource consumption, and an improved user experience — critical for performance-sensitive applications like fintech or gaming, where even small delays can impact customer engagement and business outcomes.
Long-term scalability and future-proofing
Apple is all in on Swift development. They continuously update and improve it, adding new features, better performance, and tighter security. Many of Apple’s latest frameworks, such as SwiftUI and Combine, are built specifically for Swift. While still supported, Objective-C is no longer Apple’s focus, making it a less future-proof choice for new projects.
With the 5.9 update, Swift strengthened its position as the long-term strategic choice, even for projects that previously depended on Objective-C. While Objective-C still offers strong C++ support, Swift’s growing interoperability makes it an even more compelling option for modern development.
Risk management and security
Swift is built with safety in mind, reducing the risk of common coding mistakes that could crash an app. Swift includes built-in safety features like optional (prevents unexpected null values) and error handling (makes it easier to catch and fix issues).
Before Apple rolled out automatic reference counting (ARC) in Objective-C, developers had to keep a close eye on memory management, manually allocating and freeing up memory to avoid leaks and crashes. Then ARC came along, which was a huge improvement, but it didn’t cover everything — developers still had to handle some manual memory allocations, especially when working with legacy C code.
Both Swift and Objective-C use ARC to manage memory. However, Swift’s implementation is easier and reduces the chance of memory leaks, all while keeping the app’s performance high.
For businesses, the choice between Swift and Objective-C impacts development speed, costs, security, and long-term viability. My colleagues and I break down the key risks to help you make the smartest decision.
