React Native
Ranked 2 of 13 cross-platform UI frameworks by recommenders
Recommended for building iOS, Android and other apps from one codebase with native UI, fast iteration and over-the-air hotfixes; critics cite dependency churn, painful upgrades and long-term technical debt.
Recommended for building iOS, Android and other apps from one codebase with native UI, fast iteration and over-the-air hotfixes; critics cite dependency churn, painful upgrades and long-term technical debt.
226 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 98
- criticize it
- 128
- approval share
- 43%
Recommended in 12 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 8 years
Median of the 7 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 98 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 12 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
One codebase for many platforms
“React Native and Flutter as cross platform frameworks are best for Startups which can't handle 2 mobile developers.”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin” “React Native got me out of a jam when I had to build identical apps for AppleTV and Android/Amazon TV.”
Comment from 20 Oct 2026 in “Facebook Pages require paid subscription to post more than two links per month” “React Native's advantage of having a single source of truth for code hasn't quite gone away yet”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin” - Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin”
- Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “The 9 Cost Factors”
- Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin”
Renders real native UI components
“All UI views and widgets are native. Platform SDK is native, Yoga Layout is native C++ and even faster than UIKit layout.”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux” “its components become native platform views which would directly be located by 3rd party apps like Appium etc”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “What's New in Flutter 3.47” “React Native is able to build abstractions on top of both Android and iOS that uses native UI”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “The Codex App” - Comment from 14 May 2026 in “WinUI 3 Performance: A Leap Forward”
- Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin”
Over-the-air hotfix updates
“Over the air updates is SO valuable with react-native. Being able to ship hotfixes instantly to our users has saved our asses multiple times.”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin” “they're losing the ability to ship hotfixes over the air and will always be at the mercy of apple & google to deliver their updates”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin” “The most valuable feature which RN have is OTA updates, this has been a game changer for us and many fast moving companies.”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin” - Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin”
Fast iteration and developer experience
“With React and Expo the AI was able to generate from the first few short prompts what it took me a month to produce with Swift.”
Comment from 14 Dec 2025 in “I tried Gleam for Advent of Code” “incredible DX improvement to be able to just save a file and instantly see the behavior of your app update”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Swift on Android: Full Native App Development Now Possible” “The frameworks, developer tools, languages, and iteration speed of RN hands down beat any one platform”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin” - Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Android CLI: Build Android apps 3x faster using any agent”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Dependency hell and difficult upgrades
“inherently difficult to maintain without huge amounts of ongoing effort and capital invested”
Comment from 14 Jun 2026 in “Phoenix LiveView 1.2 Released” “React Native is a viable option if you don’t mind installing lots of third party packages”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “What's New in Flutter 3.47” “React Native, with its dependency hell, project rot, npm ecosystem under the hood, and transpilation with lax runtime leaking into TS, is a total no-go for me”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “What's New in Flutter 3.47” - Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin”
Technical debt and hidden complexity
“it adds a layer of indirection, so you're no longer as "in touch" with the underlying platform”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin” “React Native is penny-wise and pound-foolish. You save on initial time-to-market for two platforms, then spend years mired in technical debt.”
Comment from 12 Jan 2026 in “I spent 10 years building React Native apps. SwiftUI made me quit in 2 weeks” “It gives you the appearance of efficiency and uniformity, but much of the complexity is just moved elsewhere”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin” - Comment from 14 Sep 2026 on Hacker News
JavaScript runtime performance overhead
“These tools are bad, objectively! They give inferior user experiences, and waste resources”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin” “reviews everywhere about React Native that it's doesn't have that kind of performance”
Comment from 28 Sep 2026 in “Ask HN: React Native or Flutter when the back end is Node?” “React native will always be more resource intensive than a native framework because it relies on a whole javascript runtime to work.”
Comment from 3 Jan 2026 in “2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop” Web developers produce messy apps
“they usually take random react developers to work on these apps and the structure they create is absolutely horrible to work with”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “What's New in Flutter 3.47” “RN has historically attracted a lot of web developers who treat mobile like a React website, and the result can be terrible.”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “What's New in Flutter 3.47”
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 | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flutter | 171 | 106 | 62% | 12 | 3 yrs11 owners | — |
| React NativeThis page | 98 | 128 | 43% | 12 | 8 yrs7 owners | — |
| Kotlin Multiplatform | 27 | 12 | 69% | 9 | 2 yrs3 owners | Approved |
| Expo | 21 | 10 | 68% | 11 | — | Approved |
| .NET MAUI | 21 | 68 | 24% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 258 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“React Native got me out of a jam when I had to build identical apps for AppleTV and Android/Amazon TV.”
“the issues I see are more around platform glitchiness or workarounds than performance”
“reviews everywhere about React Native that it's doesn't have that kind of performance”
“notoriously more convoluted than just implementing the feature straight up within the native ecosystem”
“The frameworks, developer tools, languages, and iteration speed of RN hands down beat any one platform”
“I love that testing is only (almost) only thing now, instead of 3 platforms.”
“I'd expect it to be considerably easier for a few people to use the AI to improve React Native with whatever matters”
“It gives you the appearance of efficiency and uniformity, but much of the complexity is just moved elsewhere”
“React Native and Flutter as cross platform frameworks are best for Startups which can't handle 2 mobile developers.”
“it adds a layer of indirection, so you're no longer as "in touch" with the underlying platform”
“The most valuable feature which RN have is OTA updates, this has been a game changer for us and many fast moving companies.”
“depending on the app a lot of shared logic has to be written only once with RN”
“they're losing the ability to ship hotfixes over the air and will always be at the mercy of apple & google to deliver their updates”
“It's incredibly easy nowadays to drop down to native from react native where you need to.”
“Over the air updates is SO valuable with react-native. Being able to ship hotfixes instantly to our users has saved our asses multiple times.”
“Being able to release to the App Store without having to go through a review.”
“React Native's advantage of having a single source of truth for code hasn't quite gone away yet”
“React Native apps are not webview based like Electron, they use native components”
“unnecessarily difficult upgrades, impedance mismatch w/ underlying core frameworks, and incredibly uneven library quality”
“These tools are bad, objectively! They give inferior user experiences, and waste resources”
“its components become native platform views which would directly be located by 3rd party apps like Appium etc”
“React Native, with its dependency hell, project rot, npm ecosystem under the hood, and transpilation with lax runtime leaking into TS, is a total no-go for me”
“RN has historically attracted a lot of web developers who treat mobile like a React website, and the result can be terrible.”
“they usually take random react developers to work on these apps and the structure they create is absolutely horrible to work with”
“React Native is a viable option if you don’t mind installing lots of third party packages”
“inherently difficult to maintain without huge amounts of ongoing effort and capital invested”
“Would you consider migrating to a cross platform development framework like Flutter or React Native.”
“Maybe React Native is the way to go for you with lots of native controls available”
“you can make a cross-platform react native app with expo in a day without any AI”
“It's gotten so bad that probably the right way to do a modern windows desktop app is react native.”
“React Native continues to receive regular updates and is actively discussed at major global conferences.”
“React Native is able to build abstractions on top of both Android and iOS that uses native UI”
“All UI views and widgets are native. Platform SDK is native, Yoga Layout is native C++ and even faster than UIKit layout.”
“Most of the mainstream UI frameworks are under licenses like that and for good reasons.”
“React Native is penny-wise and pound-foolish. You save on initial time-to-market for two platforms, then spend years mired in technical debt.”
“incredible DX improvement to be able to just save a file and instantly see the behavior of your app update”
“React native will always be more resource intensive than a native framework because it relies on a whole javascript runtime to work.”
“With React and Expo the AI was able to generate from the first few short prompts what it took me a month to produce with Swift.”
“I think the biggest advantage at that point is that React has an enormous community with high-quality solutions”
“If you're building a cross-platform app, React Native is the modern standard.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.