Expo
Ranked 4 of 9 cross-platform UI frameworks by recommenders
Free open-source framework for building cross-platform mobile and web apps from the command line, quick for beginners. Critics say dependency churn, breaking upgrades and paid build credits.
19 people recommended Expo in Hacker News comments, 2 had mixed feelings and 10 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026.
Summary written by Claude from 39 comments. It was written before the November 2026 recount, and 36 of those comments still count.
31 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 19
- mixed feelings
- 2
- warn against or regret it
- 10
The record
Recommended in 10 of 12 months
In 15 different threads.
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 19 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.9 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 10 of 12 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
- Recommended in 15 threadsNeeds 5 or more, met.
- The biggest thread supplies 26% of its recommendersNeeds half or less, met.
The same rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. Mixed feelings count toward neither side. How the badge works
What people say about it
Reasons grouped from a sample of 35 of the 39 opinions about it, picked in proportion to how many people recommend it, have mixed feelings and criticize it. Each mark is one comment in the sample. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Fast development without native tooling
“Expo honestly makes it so trivial to build stuff from the CLI without ever needing to open that abomination of an app.”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Building and Shipping Mac and iOS Apps Without Ever Opening Xcode” “you can make a cross-platform react native app with expo in a day without any AI”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Android CLI: Build Android apps 3x faster using any agent” “I used Expo recently and loved the development experience.”
Comment from 21 Jan 2026 in “Skip Is Now Free and Open Source” One codebase across platforms
“I love that testing is only (almost) only thing now, instead of 3 platforms.”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin” “Expo exported to a web target is the same or better than Capacitor.”
Comment from 8 Nov 2025 in “Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance” Free and open source
“Expo is a free open source framework that costs absolutely no money to use.”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Swift on Android: Full Native App Development Now Possible” “Even free-er with Expo and React Native.”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “Phone is about to stop being yours” Easy start for beginners
“Expo was a great way to get started with zero mobile experience”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “Digs: Offline-first iOS app to browse your Discogs vinyl collection” “Expo lowered the barrier enough for me to actually ship it”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “Digs: Offline-first iOS app to browse your Discogs vinyl collection”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Dependency hell and build complexity
“I do not prefer Expo due to it's highly annoying build system and dependency hell”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “What's New in Flutter 3.47” “you save yourself from the dependency hell that is expo”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “What's New in Flutter 3.47” “a thousand dependencies later, it was running”
Comment from 1 Apr 2026 in “Axios Compromised on NPM – Malicious Versions Drop Remote Access Trojan” Vendor lock-in concerns
“Expo seems better but it's 1) another vendor lock-in”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “How we built the v0 iOS app” “I don't want to rely on an external service just to build my app.”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Swift on Android: Full Native App Development Now Possible” Breaking SDK upgrades
“came back to have to do big updates with expo to make it work again”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin” “the SDK upgrades kept including unlisted breaking changes”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “What's New in Flutter 3.47” Paid build credits and metered usage
“a paid tool with metered usage”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Swift on Android: Full Native App Development Now Possible”
Other cross-platform UI frameworks people recommend
The four most recommended other cross-platform UI frameworks, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Mixed | Criticize | Approval | Months | Had for | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flutter | 111 | 45 | 93 | 54% | 12 | — | — |
| React Native | 61 | 30 | 120 | 34% | 11 | — | — |
| Kotlin Multiplatform | 20 | 5 | 12 | 63% | 8 | — | — |
| ExpoThis page | 19 | 2 | 10 | 66% | 10 | — | — |
| Skip | 16 | 2 | 6 | 73% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
35 of the 39 opinions about it, picked in proportion to the three counts, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I love that testing is only (almost) only thing now, instead of 3 platforms.”
“came back to have to do big updates with expo to make it work again”
“Don't even start me on Expo.”
“their libraries are unstable”
“surprisingly the performance of the app is pretty good”
“you save yourself from the dependency hell that is expo”
“one is a legacy addon to a framework”
“the SDK upgrades kept including unlisted breaking changes”
“I do not prefer Expo due to it's highly annoying build system and dependency hell”
“Something like Expo, for example.”
“expo seems solid; the uptime of expo.dev won't affect an app built with it”
“Its basis is React, so the code output quality is much higher than Swift”
“Expo seems to shield you from a lot of issues, without really taking any power away from you either.”
“Expo honestly makes it so trivial to build stuff from the CLI without ever needing to open that abomination of an app.”
“Standard Expo boilerplate.”
“I got most of this done with Claude and expo.dev”
“Even free-er with Expo and React Native.”
“you can make a cross-platform react native app with expo in a day without any AI”
“a thousand dependencies later, it was running”
“Expo lowered the barrier enough for me to actually ship it”
“Expo was a great way to get started with zero mobile experience”
“you can package it through Expo and rely on the Reader app exception”
“it's much rougher than zustand and expo”
“I used Expo recently and loved the development experience.”
“Expo has always been there to pick up the slack”
“storing keys in the keychain (thanks expo!”
“I have years of experience building react-native apps that use Expo in CircleCI”
“all the work offloaded to Expo”
“Expo is a free open source framework that costs absolutely no money to use.”
“I don't want to rely on an external service just to build my app.”
“a paid tool with metered usage”
“Expo and the library quality is day and night compared to flutter.”
“Expo seems better but it's 1) another vendor lock-in”
“your only option at the moment is RN/Expo”
“Expo exported to a web target is the same or better than Capacitor.”
Counts come from 1,791,911 Hacker News comments labeled by Claude, November 2025 to October 2026, with data through October 31, 2026. Counts updated 2 Nov 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.