Mobile Apps
Should I build a native or cross-platform mobile app?
Short answer
Cross-platform with React Native suits most products: one codebase, both stores, roughly 30–40% cheaper than building twice. Go native when the app depends on heavy graphics, sustained background processing, or brand-new platform APIs. For typical business apps the user cannot tell the difference.
The honest version: for the overwhelming majority of business apps — accounts, lists, forms, payments, notifications, a camera — React Native produces an app users cannot distinguish from native, at meaningfully lower cost.
Native earns its cost in specific cases: real-time video processing, games, complex gestures, sustained background work, or when you need a platform API the day it ships.
Health and sensor work sits in the middle. We have shipped React Native apps integrating HealthKit and Google Fit with small native modules where needed — a hybrid that keeps most of the cost saving.
// last reviewed September 7, 2026
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