Currently I explore the Visual Studio 2015 RC and realized that Xamarin Studio is integrated into Visual Studio and its installer. My Question is: Is Xamarin from now on free in Visual Studio?
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10 Answers
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Updated March 31st, 2016:
We have announced that Visual Studio now includes Xamarin at no extra cost, including Community Edition, which is free for individual developers, open source projects, academic research, education, and small professional teams. There is no size restriction on the Community Edition and offers the same features as the Pro & Enterprise editions. Read more about the update here: https://blog.xamarin.com/xamarin-for-all/
Be sure to browse the store on how to download and get started: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/pricing/ and there is a nice FAQ section: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/support/
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I asked the same question to Xamarin support team, they replied with following:
You can develop an app with Xamarin for commercial usage - there is no extra charge! We only require you to comply with Visual Studio's licensing terms,
which means that in companies of less than 250 employees with less than $1million USD annual revenue, you may use Visual Studio completely free (including Xamarin) for up to 5 developers.
However after you pass those barriers, you would need a Visual Studio license (which includes Xamarin).
Refer the screenshot below.
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Visual Studio 2015 does include Xamarin Starter edition https://xamarin.com/starter
Xamarin Starter is free and allows developers to build and publish simple apps with the following limitations:
- Contain no more than 128k of compiled user code (IL)
- Do NOT call out to native third party libraries (i.e., developers may not P/Invoke into C/C++/Objective-C/Java)
- Built using Xamarin.iOS / Xamarin.Android (NOT Xamarin.Forms)
Xamarin Starter installs automatically with Visual Studio 2015, and works with VS 2012, 2013, and 2015 (including Community Editions). When your app outgrows Starter, you will be offered the opportunity to upgrade to a paid subscription, which you can learn more about here: https://store.xamarin.com/
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Seems like now it's free for small teams and students, according to Scott Hanselman post https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/715568774418595840
https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/pricing/
Visual Studio Community
FREEA free, full-featured and extensible IDE for Windows users to create Android and iOS apps with Xamarin, as well as Windows apps, web apps, and cloud services.
- Students
- OSS development
- Small teams
and
Xamarin Studio Community FREE
A free, full-featured IDE for Mac users to create Android and iOS apps using Xamarin.
- Students
- OSS development
- Small teams
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If you go to the visualstudio.com Visual Studio 2015 RC cross-platform and mobile apps page, then read and scroll to the bottom, it appears that Microsoft is including Xamarin, and upon installing it you do have, as James said, the Xamarin Starter edition. In 2015 RC go to Tools, Xamarin Account to see your Xamarin license. I do not know the limitations, or any expiration date, of this Starter Xamarin Account.
Still, I don't know about you, but the Visual Studio 2015 RC "Community" edition I installed expires in less than 180 days. (Check the Help menu, go to "About...", and click on your license status to check.)
Let's say Xamarin Starter edition is free, but Visual Studio 2015 "Community" has an expiration date. So the bigger question might be whether Visual Studio 2015 "Community" will be free.
Without Xamarin though, Microsoft is offering C++ tools for cross-platform development, but scroll down to the bottom of the page and you might be surprised or confused at the download link description.
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