Cross-platform mobile development

Why React Native?

Why we'd pick React Native over Flutter, Kotlin Multiplatform, and the rest

Recent Clients

There are more ways than ever to build a cross-platform app: React Native, Flutter, Kotlin Multiplatform, .NET MAUI, and more. So why do we build with React Native?

On raw technical merits, the leading frameworks are remarkably close. Performance is strong and the tooling has matured fast. Pick almost any of them and a skilled team ships a great app.

The factors that should actually drive the decision aren't technical at all. They're about people, momentum, and risk. The tech is a wash. The team isn't.

Why React Native wins

The technical gaps between today's cross-platform frameworks are small. These five advantages aren't.

A talent pool you can actually hire from

Built on JavaScript and React, React Native draws from one of the largest developer communities in software, so you can staff and scale your team without training every hire.

Code and knowledge sharing

Share business logic and data models across your apps and the web, often the UI too. Move developers between them without retraining.

Two ecosystems, not one

All the mature JavaScript libraries, plus direct access to native APIs and any Swift or Kotlin library when you need it.

Real reach on the web

Through React and React Native for Web, the same code can power mobile and the web, where most other cross-platform frameworks fall short.

Faster iteration

Over-the-air updates ship fixes and improvements straight to users, without waiting on a full app store review cycle.

You can actually hire React Native developers

Every framework choice is also a hiring decision. JavaScript has topped Stack Overflow's most-used-language survey for over a decade, and React is the most widely adopted UI library built on top of it. The pool of engineers who can build your app is measured in millions, not thousands. We've built React Native apps from that pool since 2015, for clients like Mercari.

It also changes how fast you can ramp. A strong React or web developer becomes productive in React Native in days, because the language, the mental model, and most of the tooling carry straight over.

The alternatives carry a quieter hiring tax. Dart has a passionate but far smaller community, so Flutter teams tend to train nearly every hire. Kotlin Multiplatform shares logic but still expects native UIs in SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose. With React Native, one deep talent pool covers the whole app.

Photos of the Infinite Red team together

One language across your whole stack

Most companies don't build mobile in isolation. Your website, internal tools, and services very likely already run on JavaScript or TypeScript. React Native lets those worlds share the things that are expensive to write twice: validation rules, API clients, type definitions, analytics, and feature logic.

Because it's React, the sharing can reach the interface too. With React Native for Web, teams reuse components and design-system primitives across mobile and web, keeping behavior consistent and cutting duplicate work.

The payoff is organizational, not just technical. One language means shared code review, shared libraries, shared hiring profiles, and engineers who can move between web, backend, and mobile as priorities shift.

Ecosystem advantages compound over time

Picking a framework means inheriting its ecosystem, and React Native inherits one of the largest in software: TypeScript, mature testing and linting, battle-tested state management, networking, and animation libraries, plus Expo, which bundles builds, updates, and dozens of native modules into a single managed workflow. And because it renders real native UI and runs real native code, you also get the platform's own ecosystem: any native API, any Swift or Kotlin library, right when you need it.

Other ecosystems have real strengths. Flutter's widget library is excellent, and Kotlin and .NET bring polished tooling. But ecosystem advantages build on themselves: more libraries attract more developers, who write more libraries and answer more questions. That cycle keeps React Native projects cheaper to maintain over years, not just at launch. We help drive it too: we maintain Ignite and Reactotron, host React Native Radio, and run Chain React, the React Native conference.

Mockup of Infinite Red's open source React Native work

Your AI tools already speak React Native

There's a newer reason the community size matters: the models trained on it too. React and JavaScript are among the largest bodies of public code in existence, so assistants like Copilot, Claude, and Cursor are fluent in React Native out of the box and need less hand-holding to stay on track. We spend a lot of time on agentic coding workflows, and starting from the language the models know best is a real head start.

True multi-platform, including the web

For many products, cross-platform has to include the browser, whether that's a marketing site or a customer portal. This is where the frameworks diverge most sharply.

React Native is part of the React family, so it shares code directly with React.js and React Native for Web. The same business logic, and often the same components, can power your iOS app, your Android app, and your website, with the web treated as a first-class target rather than an afterthought.

The alternatives tell a different story. Flutter renders the web to a canvas, painting every pixel itself; that's clever right up until you need a text field that behaves like the platform's, and it brings accessibility and SEO tradeoffs. Kotlin Multiplatform's web support is still maturing.

Update your app without waiting on the app stores

Shipping a mobile app normally means waiting on App Store and Play Store review for every change. React Native loosens that constraint: with over-the-air updates through tools like Expo, you can push fixes and copy changes straight to users in minutes.

That turns risky, batched releases into a steady rhythm: hotfix a bug the day you find it, roll features out gradually, respond to feedback without a multi-day approval loop. It's a workflow most other cross-platform frameworks don't offer out of the box.

Performance and developer experience: the honest take

We won't pretend React Native wins every benchmark — it doesn't, and we'd be suspicious of anyone who claimed their framework did. Flutter posts excellent frame rates, and Kotlin Multiplatform produces lean, fast binaries. React Native more than holds its own. The New Architecture removed the old bridge. Hermes cut cold-start times, and Expo simplified the build pipeline.

For the vast majority of apps, all the leading frameworks are more than fast enough and pleasant to build with. Which is exactly the point: when the technology is a wash, the decision comes down to hiring, code sharing, ecosystem, and reach. That's where React Native wins.

React Native vs. other cross-platform frameworks

React Native isn't the only way to build cross-platform. Flutter, Kotlin Multiplatform, .NET MAUI, and others each have genuine strengths. We're a React Native shop and we're upfront about that, but we'd rather you make the right call than the convenient one, so we'll tell you when another framework is the better fit.

If you're a Java or Kotlin-heavy team that wants to share logic while keeping fully native UIs, Kotlin Multiplatform can be an excellent fit. If you need a tightly unified, custom-rendered UI across platforms and the web isn't a priority, Flutter is worth a look. But for most companies we work with, those same advantages are hard to beat. That's why it's our default recommendation.

Photo of Gant Laborde and Mark Rickert hugging at a retreat.

Photo of Todd Werth laughing during an online team game. Other members of the team are in the background.

Photo of team members Jed Bartausky and Carlin Isaacson at a team dinner.

Photo of Darin Wilson sitting at a table listening to a presentation

Tell us what you're building

We'll tell you straight whether React Native is the right call, or point you elsewhere if it isn't. A decade of shipping React Native apps stands behind the answer.

Schedule a call