--- title: Adobe AIR Reviews meta_title: 'Adobe AIR Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 44 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Adobe AIR works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 3.8 review_count: 44 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-07' parent_category: name: Mobile Development url: https://www.g2.com/categories/mobile-development --- # Adobe AIR Reviews **Vendor:** HARMAN International. **Category:** [Mobile Development Platforms](https://www.g2.com/categories/mobile-development-platforms) **Average Rating:** 3.8/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 44 ## About Adobe AIR Adobe AIR runtime enables developers to package the same code into native applications and games for Windows and Mac OS desktops and mobile devices ## Adobe AIR Reviews ### 1. Solid multiplatform application framework **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Leighton F. | Software Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 29, 2022 **What do you like best about Adobe AIR?** Adobe Air makes it simple to deploy rich apps and games to a wide variety of platforms using an identical code base. **What do you dislike about Adobe AIR?** Adobe dropped support for the Air SDK some time ago, leaving it up to the open-source community to maintain. This is not bad per se, but it means that the future development of the SDK and its cross-platform support is not completely certain. **Recommendations to others considering Adobe AIR:** As Adobe Air can be used at no cost, I would recommend trying it in addition to other multi-platform SDKs such as Flutter, although the number of platforms supported by Adobe Air is hard to beat. **What problems is Adobe AIR solving and how is that benefiting you?** Adobe Air allowed my company to develop apps for iOS, Mac, Android, and Windows from a nearly identical codebase, saving an immeasurable amount of resources in development. This also meant testing and deployment speed was increased exponentially, I am baffled as to why it isn't even more popular. ### 2. While a little buggy, it serves it's purpose. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ron Y. | DJ/KJ, Entertainment, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 26, 2018 **What do you like best about Adobe AIR?** It allows me to cross platform my flash ads fairly easily with little to no glitching. **What do you dislike about Adobe AIR?** I dislike the fact that at times there are hiccups in the software that casue certain aspects to freeze up while it's running in the background. **What problems is Adobe AIR solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm using it to produce cross platform ads. It seems to be fairly reliable for the most part. ### 3. Adobe AIR - fast cross platform app and game development **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Marcus S. | Freelance AIR for iOS & Android / HTML5 / After Effects / Developer / Producer, Internet, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 29, 2016 **What do you like best about Adobe AIR?** AIR is a really quick way to build apps (especially games - using the Starling Framework in particular) that work across different devices with minimal additional code for the adaption. Once the initial version (say iOS) is built the app can normally be adapted easily for Android in less than a day. Desktop apps for Mac and PC are just as easy to produce too. You can use different feature requirement ANEs (Air Native Extension) to easily access native feature on mobile devices using (usually) simple APIs. There is a very helpful and friendly community too. **What do you dislike about Adobe AIR?** The way Adobe took the foot of the gas when the whole 'Flash-gate' happened. It was up to the AIR community (particularly all the team at Starling Framework who really kept the wheels moving) to keep pushing it forward. Now Adobe has relaunched Animate CC there has been much more focus on the software and I think Adobe is now separating AIR as a stand alone product from the perceived Flash association. Hopefully they will be releasing more ANE's. We currently have to pay other ANE developers to use many of the good ones, (but in fairness the costs are comparatively minimal to buy). I also would like to see support for Windows Mobile. If they could get this box ticked it would be a no-brainer for clients when they need rapid cross platform development for a game or app. **Recommendations to others considering Adobe AIR:** Getting an app up and running even if its just for prototyping is very quick Cross platforming the app is easily done with minimal code. **What problems is Adobe AIR solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have used AIR for a number of different purposes including Games (distributed via iTunes, Google Play, Amazon app store and private corporate apps for employee use only), Augmented Reality Apps, Desktop apps (Mac and PC) for uses such as touch screen, games / info centres on corporate stands at trade shows ### 4. Fast way to generate an app for the desktop **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Karen P. | Dirección Creativa, Design, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 02, 2016 **What do you like best about Adobe AIR?** The usability and the idea to don't need to go open the software every time. The size of the software, and the interfase design. Mostly is a quick solution to any mobile and game development without having to spend so much time signing in or just leave it running while you are doing other work. **What do you dislike about Adobe AIR?** Maybe the excessive use of adobe related software for developers. **Recommendations to others considering Adobe AIR:** Search for related software and compared to software made with Adobe Air. Check the time lapse it took to switch to the Adobe Air software. **What problems is Adobe AIR solving and how is that benefiting you?** Specific solution to any problem without bothering other applications and can be used aside. Using mostly for desktop activities with an easygoing software solution. ### 5. Cross Platform Development Made Easy **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jonathan K. | Unity Developer, Hardware & Software Installations and Support, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 11, 2016 **What do you like best about Adobe AIR?** The ability to take the same code-base and package to Windows, Mac, Android and iOS with minimum fuss is a very strong and valuable feature of Adobe AIR. With Stage3D and libraries like Starling that enable high performance on all devices. AS3 is a powerful and mature Object Oriented language that has an incredible number of features. With the addition of many community built libraries, almost anything you can imagine can be built with it. Development can be done at no cost by using the free IDE FlashDevelop. Though I prefer the paid option of using the Eclipse based FDT. **What do you dislike about Adobe AIR?** More and more AS3 libraries appear to becoming abandoned so innovation and progress within the technology appears to be slowing. Unfortunately clients' lack of knowledge of this technology, thinking it is just Flash, hurts its industry reputation. **Recommendations to others considering Adobe AIR:** Great technology for developing apps if you need to be doing cross platform development. Has many features that make development a pleasant experience. From my experience it is becoming a more niche technology and is not as widely used as I would hope. **What problems is Adobe AIR solving and how is that benefiting you?** Touchscreen apps, iOS apps, Android apps all from the same IDE (FDT is my choice). Massive advantage being when an app is developer for one platform and client asks for another it is not a complete rebuild. ### 6. Easy to prototype, build, test and deploy across multiple platforms **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Yadu R. | Faculty, Design, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 11, 2016 **What do you like best about Adobe AIR?** I use AIR for game development. I'm happy about hardware acclearation for games, the ability to prototype quickly and easily and to test and deploy on multiple devices. I'm also glad for the amount of open source tech available for it like Flixel, Starling and Feathers. **What do you dislike about Adobe AIR?** One of the biggest worries that I have about AIR is the uncertainty about its future. With HTML5 support becoming de facto and browsers getting more stable and capable, the need for AIR and the Flash player slowly disappears. It would be interesting to see how AIR will change and that uncertainty is annoying. **Recommendations to others considering Adobe AIR:** If you are making games and you want a quick start, I would highly reccomend flash. If you have any sort of scripting background - like javascript, picking up action script would be a breeze. Tools and libraries like Flixel, Starling and Feathers will be immensly useful. There are a huge number of AIR Native Extensions(or ANEs) that you can use to extend your application's capabilities or to access platform specific functions - like open Game Center or login via facebook etc. If you feel that Flash Builder is a bit expensive as an IDE, you can try out Flash Develop on windows, which is free and open source. **What problems is Adobe AIR solving and how is that benefiting you?** One of the biggest benefits I've had with AIR is the quick turn around times. The ability to prototype new ideas; to actually sit with clients and at times even work in tandem is really useful. The amount of IDEs available like Flash Builder(Win/Mac) and Flash Develop(Windows) and easy cross platform deployment and testing make a developers life easy as well. ### 7. Excellent cross platform runtime for mobile and desktop apps **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 14, 2016 **What do you like best about Adobe AIR?** Saving time and cost because Adobe AIR works on android, iOS, Windows and Mac OS X. It is really cost effective to develop apps that is needed to be cross platform in a short period of time since most of the code are reusable and it helps me to focus more on the user interface of the app instead of spending hours trying to tediously maintain different code base. **What do you dislike about Adobe AIR?** Performance can some how be an issue depending on how you develop the app. For example most of the things I have are built with Flex or some simple actionscript UI libraries where they are not using Stage3D api. It is ok because they are more business related application, however performance on this part should be more optimized even without fancy animations. **Recommendations to others considering Adobe AIR:** It is a awesome tool to build cross platform application that actually works without great hassle. You should try it. **What problems is Adobe AIR solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am developing cross platform trading tools for stock markets, forex and commodities where it is important that data is streamed seamlessly and UX should be smooth and responsive for users to get notified on strategies they have set. Using Adobe Air with Flex framework save me tremendous hours in developing the core front end application where I can focus more on algorithm and business logic which is more important to my business. Charts are especially useful as they are all ready made while we just have to customise a bit to display reports and data calculated with our algo. It is very useful that the app I develop can be used across different platform with a little changes in the code. Most importantly it is only one code base which i like a lot. Somehow it will be great if UI build without Stage3d can be faster and more responsive since charts are used a lot in trading apps. ### 8. Just another developer **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** haseeb a. | Associate Professor, Animation, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 11, 2016 **What do you like best about Adobe AIR?** i used this toolset on almost 5 projects in my career and surely it was best time, where i learned decent development. actually at that time, there were less comparable choices. Still i beleive there are many, which provide that many features with few clicks. i mean, simple graphics, animations, transitions, sounds without being worried with small file sizes etc. more, i wasn't worried that it will work on mac or windows. super cool stuff was, application deployed was able to upgrade it self, as i put new build on server. i mean, that was awesome. **What do you dislike about Adobe AIR?** its really hard to find dislikings in a toolset which was precise in its thought and does exactly that. my choices primarily was due to FILE IO and i get that. from what i remember, using sockets was a bit tricky but it was my inability to understand that, other wise, it was good. adding upgradable features was fun. **Recommendations to others considering Adobe AIR:** if you have to create small desktop app, nothing comes closer in terms of all cool features, ease of use to integrate beautiful graphics etc due to integration with swf / swc files. **What problems is Adobe AIR solving and how is that benefiting you?** at that time, we used to develop simple desktop applications for our clients, weather they connect to internet or work locally. typically, making a mini photoshop like application where use can load image and tweak it with brushes, it wasn't possible for small agency like us in any other toolset. creating a mini dropbox like app, where our clients can download stuff. too many examples to realize ### 9. A great product that was greatly forgotten by Adobe, but there's still hope for it. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Pablo V. | CEO - Founder, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 09, 2016 **What do you like best about Adobe AIR?** AS/3, the language is very easy to learn and one can take it to the extremes, and even touch C code through the proper interfaces. Easy to use, multiplatform, fast IDE. Great for the web, PC and modern (fast) smartphones. **What do you dislike about Adobe AIR?** I don't like the fact that Adobe isn't supporting its own product as it should. Since a competitor stated that it was slow, AIR's public perception trembled and Adobe wasn't able to face it properly affecting the developers community (giving hints of a clear future path and encouraging our clients to adopt it (install the runtime). So, yes, it is a terrific product, with a marketing problem, something that Adobe can fix only if they decide to. **Recommendations to others considering Adobe AIR:** If you client doesn't know about mad marketing decisions, use it. It is easy and very powerful. Tasks that takes months for me were done in weeks thanks to AIR. **What problems is Adobe AIR solving and how is that benefiting you?** Multiplatform: Real-time sound generation and mixing, databases, animations, games... too many too mention, but you can get an idea of how versatile this platform is. ### 10. Mosty created for game. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 08, 2016 **What do you like best about Adobe AIR?** Actionscript 3. Drawing API. Stage3D. Easy to develop. Cross platform. **What do you dislike about Adobe AIR?** No official Adobe support. No flex update. **Recommendations to others considering Adobe AIR:** If you want to make 3D game, use Unity. For 2D game, Quick and Easy 2D game, use Adobe AIR. Especially if you don't have C++ knowledge. **What problems is Adobe AIR solving and how is that benefiting you?** Gaming. Can build to Android & iOS with one codebase. Stage3D is fast. ## Adobe AIR Discussions - [What is Adobe AIR used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-adobe-air-used-for) - [View Adobe AIR pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/adobe-air/reviews?filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=4§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-13+17%3A04%3A55+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=dcf91252-5737-42f5-bf1d-eb2af36319da&secure%5Btoken%5D=91ffc707a8673718a648a47fdeddcb4ef8593ba14d93647ee1e2694a5df0a7a3&format=llm_user) ## Adobe AIR Features **Additional Functionality** - Continuous Integration - Drag & Drop - Backup and Recovery - Multiple Programming Languages Supported - Continuous Deployment - Code Development - For No-Code Development - Version Control - Configurable Workflow - Graphical User Interface - For Low-Code Development - Activity Dashboard - Generative AI - UI Prototyping - Source Control - Software Development - API - Data Import/Export - Web App Development - Custom Development - Code Repository Integration - Data Security - Mobile Development - Access Controls/Permissions - Game Development - Collaboration Tools - Application Security - Alerts/Notifications - Automated Testing - Integrated Development Environment - Offline Access - Debugging - AI Copilot - Reporting/Analytics - Compatibility Testing - Pre-built Templates - Third-Party Integrations - Data Modeling - Customizable Branding - Data Visualization - Code Editing **Functionality** - Ease of Use - File Management - Multi-Language Support - Customization - Straight-Out-the-Box Functionality - Help Guides - Patching & Updates - Workflow Management - Change Management - Deployment Management - Performance Management - Compliance Management - Lifecycle Management - Task Management - Document Management - Database Support **Agentic AI - Mobile Development Platforms** - Adaptive Learning - Natural Language Interaction - Proactive Assistance ## Top Adobe AIR Alternatives - [.NET](https://www.g2.com/products/net-2023-06-12/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (158 reviews) - [Android Studio](https://www.g2.com/products/android-studio/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (628 reviews) - [Xcode](https://www.g2.com/products/xcode/reviews) - 4.2/5.0 (999 reviews)