“Should we go native or cross-platform?” is the wrong question. The right one is: what does this app actually need? Get that straight and the technology picks itself.
What actually drives the decision
- Performance & hardware. Heavy graphics, AR, camera/ML, Bluetooth or tight 60fps interactions push you toward native (or a native core).
- Time-to-market & budget. One codebase for two platforms is faster and cheaper to ship and maintain.
- Your team. The stack your engineers already know well usually beats the “theoretically optimal” one.
- Lifespan. A flagship product you’ll invest in for years justifies native; an MVP or internal tool rarely does.
When each one wins
Native (Swift / Kotlin) when the app is the experience — performance-critical, deeply hardware-integrated, or a long-term flagship. Flutter when you want one expressive codebase, a custom-branded UI and near-native performance. React Native when you have a React/web team and want to share skills and logic across web and mobile.
The pattern we reach for most
For many products the pragmatic answer is a cross-platform shell with native modules for the few features that need them — you get one codebase for 90% of the app and native speed where it counts. Our AR and LiDAR apps, for example, are native where the sensors live and shared everywhere else.
The takeaway
Don’t start from the framework. Start from the app’s real requirements, your team and your timeline — then choose the stack that serves them. We’ll run that decision with you in an afternoon, not a month.
