It can be a tough choice to select the optimal reporting engine for your development platform to get the features, performance and compatibility you need. If you build either WinForms, WPF applications or directly wrap the avalonia components to your solution, you need to consider a few key aspects: Framework support, ease of use, Deployment options, and extensibility. In this post, we will lead you through the requirements for comparing reporting engines, illustrating them using structured examples, tables and practical guidance for a general public. An expert team from Fast Reports helped build this article to assist .NET application developers and analysts in their work.

Why Compatibility Matters

Reporting is fundamental to many applications, whether financial dashboards or supply chain systems. A reporting engine that integrates easily with your platform means:

• Fast Integration – Less Hacks, More Deploying Faster
• Consistent UX - native looks and feels
• Maintenance simplicity – unified codebase

Here’s what to look for in a variety of development environments:

Standout Libraries

FastReport

• Native WinForms and WPF components included
• Can work in Avalonia using .NET Core compatibility layers
• Rich design-time tools

Stimulsoft Reports

• Extensive framework support including Avalonia
• Strong web support: ASP. NET and Blazor
• Features abound — if you can justify the cost of the license

Telerik & Syncfusion

• Deep WinForms and WPF integration
• Strong SaaS and web reporting
• Avalonia is not supported by Telerik out of the box, Syncfusion requires a few more steps to set up

RDLC (Microsoft)

• Great for WinForms, WPF, ASP. NET
• Doesn't Support Avalonia, Blazor; Limited Cross-Platform Capabilities

Factors to be taken into account when deciding on a reporting engine

Native UI Support

WinForms/WPF: Native controls, preview windows and design-time support is a necessity for an excellent experience.

Avalonia: Forego a baseline and explicitly use engines that have been desiged to support XAML and avalonia components as we think this will allow you to deploy easily cross the platform.

Web Application Compatibility

For ASP.NET MVC or Blazor:

• Search for exporters (PDF, Excel, HTML)
• Embed via WebViewer or generation of reports by API supported
• How easy is it to deploy back-end services or embed in front-end UIs

Licensing & Cost

• Open source (such as Fastreport OpenSource) vs commercial (Stimulsoft, Telerik)
• Compare licenses: per-developer, per-server, subscription
• Look at total cost of ownership of support and upgrades etc

Designer & Customization Tools

• Human-friendly visual report builders for faster development
• Dynamic calculated custom scripts support
• Extensibility of API to create customized features

Delivery Options

• Supported export file types: PDF, Excel, Word, HTML, images
• Scheduling and emailing capabilities
• Cloud services and server setup integration

Performance & Scalability

• Make sure to test memory and CPU use under load
• Thread-safety for multi-user environments
• Cloud-friendliness for container deployments

Practical Tips for Developers

• Prototype early: Try the engine directly in your WinForms, WPF, or Avalonia solution early on.
• Look for Web UI: If your app also has an ASP. NET or Blazor frontend, make embedding and rendering simple.
• Evaluate documentation: An engine with solid online docs and active user groups will lower the barrier to entry.

Recommended Workflow:

• Choose … 2–3 game engines according to Platform and OS support
• Create a simple sample report in each
• Choose the integration time, visualize the fidelity and export the result
• Pick the one with the best trade-off between ease of use, performance and how it fits into your licensing scheme

Advantages of Avalonia Support

More and more developers now instead are looking into cross‑platform toolkits such as Avalonia. In such cases, an avalonia component supporting engine allows you to create an application that runs on Windows, macOS and/or Linux with the same codebase. A few benefits:

• Uniform UX across platforms
• Less development work than multiple UIs
• Future‑proof architecture as cross‑platform spreads

Examples Projects using Avalonia

• AvaloniaDashboard: An Avalonia styled UserControl
• TheWorm: An Avalonia worm game
• StbTextEdit For Avalonia VSCode: A basic editing control for Avalonia
• Protobuild: A cross-platform utility for managing platform-specific code in C# files
• FarManager: A newer version of Far Manager, a clone of the linux version of FAR, a console file and archive manager for windows
• Heron: An open source Lisp-like interpreted language implemented in C#
• PIAConv: Another Shared Project for Piapro Studio by osahaas (Note: no longer supported)
• Microsoft Web Template Studio: C# Avalonia project generator
• Try it in-browser File-New-Project-Avalonia
• CSHipster: A C# project generator that creates clean C# project similar to what you find in hipster developer projects

Checklist Before Finalizing

• Supports your main UI: WinForms, WPF, Avalonia
• Integrates cleanly with web: ASP. NET or Blazor
• Provides the design-time and runtime tools you need
• Meets your performance expectations
• Falls within your budget and licensing method
• Comes with great technical support, documentation and much more

FAQs

What is the quickest way to test compatibility with your reporting engine?

It could be write a small proof-of-concept app in each UI framework (WinForms, WPF, Avalonia) and web variant (ASP. NET/Blazor). Log the duration it takes to create, execute, and export the report.

Is there a free engine for Avalonia?

As for FastReport OpenSource, .NET wrappers. But for those who value commercial solutions such as Stimulsoft or Syncfusion, are supported to a higher degree "out of the box".

Is it possible to integrate reports within a Blazor WebAssembly app?

Yes—when the engine supports a client-side or server-side viewer based on Blazor (like Stimulsoft or Syncfusion). Others might provide only exports based on their APIs.

What are the disadvantages to RDLC?

RDLC (does not support Avalonia and Blazor) and does not have a designer as flexible as many of today's commercial libraries.

How crucial is the availability of export formats?

Key—unless users require PDF, Excel, Word, or web reports. Consideration of the engine’s export capabilities for your audience’s requirements.

And how about performance under heavy load?

"Bench test" each engine at high load similar condition.

Are Stimulsoft and Syncfusion good in handling large volume of data?

Yes, Stimulsoft and Syncfusion engines are good at handling large database size. Depending upon cloud deployment and memory optimization it can affect performance.

Conclusion

Deciding how to choose the best reporting engine for your development platform; the answer is to make sure that the reporting engine you choose fits your technical stack in terms of compatibility, performance, tooling support. There are a lot of great options for WinForms and WPF development, and as Avalonia and hybrid web solutions like react-native take off, libraries that can be used across multiple platforms are going to be a necessity.

Begin with a shortlist for UI fit, test early in your dev cycle, compare performance, and ensure licensing fits your budget. Stimulsoft, Syncfusion and others are offering multi-platform interface consistency while FastReport has a convenient and flexible way for custom solutions.

By following this guide, you are ready to make the smart choice and use reporting solutions that benefit the way your users and recipients of your reports work.