The Setup
We've shipped apps with over 50K MAU in both React Native and Flutter. This isn't a benchmark post — it's a practitioner's guide.
Developer Experience
React Native wins for teams already in the JavaScript/TypeScript ecosystem. You share logic, types, and even some components with your web codebase. The tooling is mature and the community enormous.
Flutter wins for team velocity when starting fresh. Hot reload is genuinely magic. The widget system is opinionated but consistent.
Performance
Flutter's Skia/Impeller renderer draws everything itself, bypassing the native component bridge. This produces deterministically 60fps UI, but results in apps that can feel subtly "off" on platform.
React Native's New Architecture (Fabric + JSI) has largely closed the gap, especially on Android where the bridge overhead was most noticeable.
The Verdict
Choose React Native when:
- Your team is JavaScript-first
- You want to share code with a web app
- You need deep native module integrations
Choose Flutter when:
- UI fidelity and animation performance are paramount
- You're targeting platforms beyond iOS/Android (web, desktop, embedded)
- You want strong compile-time safety
Our Take
For most client work, React Native with Expo is the pragmatic choice. For consumer apps where UI is the core product? Flutter is worth the Dart learning curve.