Native or cross platform
Native apps or cross platformfor your product
This decision is usually made on opinion and defended on principle. It should be made on what your app has to do on the device, and how many teams you can afford to keep.
The verdict
The short answer
For most business apps, cross platform is the better commercial decision: one team, one codebase, both stores, and performance that users cannot tell apart from native. Native earns its extra cost when the app leans hard on the device itself, sustained camera work, heavy graphics, background processing, or platform features on the day they ship rather than months later.
Native
Separate apps written in Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android.
Where it wins
- Full access to every device capability the day the platform ships it
- The best possible performance for graphics and sustained processing
- Each app feels exactly like the platform it runs on
- The largest pool of documentation, tooling and hiring for each platform
Where it stops
- Two codebases, so most work is done twice and can drift apart
- Higher cost and a longer timeline for the same feature set
- Two specialists to hire and keep, rather than one team
Cross platform
One codebase for both stores, usually React Native or Flutter.
Where it wins
- One team ships to both stores, so cost and timeline drop sharply
- Features stay identical on both platforms without extra effort
- Fast to change, which matters most while you are still learning
- Shares skills and often code with your web application
Where it stops
- Brand new platform features can arrive late or need native code
- Very heavy graphics and sustained processing still favour native
- Some device work still needs somebody who knows the native side
Side by side
Native against Cross platform
| Native | Cross platform | |
|---|---|---|
| Codebases to maintain | Two | One |
| Relative build cost | Highest | Considerably lower |
| Time to both stores | Longest | Roughly half |
| Everyday performance | Excellent | Excellent, and indistinguishable to users |
| Heavy graphics or games | Clearly better | Workable, rarely ideal |
| New OS features | Available immediately | Often a wait, or a native module |
| Team you need | iOS and Android specialists | One mobile team |
| Shipping a change to both | Two pieces of work | One piece of work |
Which one is yours
Tick what sounds like you, and watch it decide
Same statements as any comparison list, except this one answers back. Nothing is sent anywhere and nothing is stored.
Tick whichever statements sound like you
Nothing selected yet. The meter moves as you go.
Choose native when
0/4Choose cross platform when
0/4Zyfrr
Where we come in
We build cross platform by default because it is the right commercial answer for most of what we are asked to build, and we say so plainly when your app is one of the ones that should be native.
- Both stores from one codebase, with native modules where they genuinely help
- Store submission, signing and release handled rather than handed back to you
- You own the code, the store listings and the signing keys from day one
Questions
Questions people actually ask
Tell us what the app has to do
Describe the product rather than the technology, and we will tell you which of the two it needs and what each would cost.