Native vs Cross-Platform — React Native, Flutter, SwiftUI/Kotlin
Compare mobile development approaches and understand when to use native, React Native, or Flutter
The first decision in mobile development is the most consequential: how will you build your app? This isn't a trivial choice. It determines your tech stack, your hiring pool, your deployment pipeline, your performance ceiling, and how fast you can ship.
There are three fundamental approaches, each with legitimate reasons to choose it. The right answer depends on your team, your timeline, your performance requirements, and what you're actually building. Let's cut through the marketing and look at the real tradeoffs.
The Three Approaches
Native Development
Build separate apps for iOS (Swift/SwiftUI) and Android (Kotlin/Jetpack Compose). Each app is written in the platform's preferred language, using the platform's native UI framework.
Cross-Platform with React Native
Write
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