What is the difference between a Flutter Plugin and a Package?

A Package contains only pure Dart code — no platform-specific implementations. Examples include provider, dio, and intl. A Plugin is a special type of package that contains Dart code plus platform-specific implementations (Java/Kotlin for Android, Swift/Objective-C for iOS) that communicate through platform channels. Examples include camera, geolocator, and firebase_core. Plugins are necessary when you need to access device hardware or native OS APIs that are not available in pure Dart.