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.NET implementations

A .NET app is developed for one or more implementations of .NET. Implementations of .NET include .NET Framework, .NET 5+ (and .NET Core), and Mono.

Each implementation of .NET includes the following components:

  • One or more runtimes—for example, .NET Framework CLR and .NET 8 CLR.
  • A class library—for example, .NET Framework Base Class Library and .NET 8 Base Class Library.
  • Optionally, one or more application frameworks—for example, ASP.NET, Windows Forms, and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) are included in .NET Framework and .NET 5+.
  • Optionally, development tools. Some development tools are shared among multiple implementations.

There are three main .NET implementations:

  • .NET (Core)
  • .NET Framework
  • Mono

.NET (Core)

.NET, previously referred to as .NET Core, is currently the primary implementation. .NET is built on a single code base that supports multiple platforms and many workloads, such as Windows desktop apps and cross-platform console apps, cloud services, and websites. Some workloads, such as .NET WebAssembly build tools, are available as optional installations.

.NET 9 is the latest version of this .NET implementation. It implements .NET Standard, so code that targets .NET Standard can run on .NET. ASP.NET Core, Windows Forms, and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) all run on .NET.

For more information, see the following resources:

.NET Framework

.NET Framework is the original .NET implementation that has existed since 2002. Versions 4.5 and later implement .NET Standard, so code that targets .NET Standard can run on those versions of .NET Framework. It contains additional Windows-specific APIs, such as APIs for Windows desktop development with Windows Forms and WPF. .NET Framework is optimized for building Windows desktop applications.

For more information, see the .NET Framework guide.

Mono

The original community and open source .NET. Mono is a cross-platform implementation of .NET Framework. It's the runtime that powered Xamarin applications (now unsupported) on Android, macOS, iOS, tvOS, and watchOS and is focused primarily on a small footprint. Mono also powers games built using the Unity engine.

It supports all of the currently published .NET Standard versions.

Historically, Mono implemented the larger API of .NET Framework and emulated some of the most popular capabilities on Unix. It is sometimes used to run .NET applications that rely on those capabilities on Unix.

For more information, see the Mono documentation.