Google's UI toolkit vs Meta's JS framework.
"Building native mobile apps is expensive. Cross-platform is the dream. React Native uses native components via a bridge, while Flutter draws its own pixels. Which approach delivers the best app?"
Flutter compiles to native ARM code. No JavaScript bridge. We draw every pixel with Skia. Animations are silky smooth 60fps (or 120fps) on every device. It looks the same everywhere.
But it doesn't *feel* native. An iOS user knows when a scroll bounce is fake. React Native uses actual platform UI components. When Apple updates iOS design, my app updates automatically. Yours looks stuck in the past.
Hot Reload in Flutter is stateful and instant. Dart is a strongly typed, sound language that catches bugs early. And our widget library is exhaustive. You don't need 50 dependencies to build a UI.
JavaScript. That's it. I have the entire npm ecosystem. I can share code with my web app (React). Finding a React developer is easy. Finding a Dart developer? Good luck.
Google is all in. Flutter isn't just for mobile anymore; it's for Web, Desktop, and Embedded. It's the most portable UI framework in history.
React Native has 'New Architecture' (Fabric/TurboModules) now, removing the bridge bottleneck. We are getting as fast as native, but keeping the massive JS ecosystem advantage.
Choose React Native if you already have a web team (React/JS), need OTA updates (CodePush), or prioritize using platform-native UI components. Choose Flutter if you want absolute design consistency across platforms, superior raw performance for complex animations, or are starting a mobile team from scratch.