.NET Standard

.NET Standard is a Microsoft-maintained set of specifications and standards that all .NET platforms must adhere to and implement. It formally specifies the APIs that are meant to be implemented by all variants of the .NET platform. There are currently three development platforms on the .NET platform—.NET Core, .NET Framework, and Xamarin. The .NET platform is needed to provide uniformity, and consistency, and makes it easier to share codes and reuse libraries on the three variants of .NET platform.

.NET platform provides the definition of a set of uniform Base Class Libraries APIs to be implemented by all .NET platforms, to allow developers to easily develop applications and reusable libraries across the .NET platforms. Currently in Version 2.0.7, .NET Standard provides new APIs that were not implemented in Version 1.0 of .NET Core but are now implemented in Version 2.0. More than 20,000 APIs have been added to the runtime components.

Additionally, .NET Standard is a target framework, which means that you can develop your application to target a specific version of .NET Standard, allowing the application to run on any .NET platform that implements the standard, and you can easily share codes, libraries, and binaries among the different .NET platforms. When building your application to target .NET Standard, you should know that higher versions of .NET Standard have more APIs available for use but are not implemented by many platforms. It is always recommended that you target a lower version of the standard, which will guarantee that it's implemented by many platforms: