Native vs. Cross-Platform: How to Choose the Right Technology for Your App (iOS & Android)

A native app is built separately for iOS and Android, using each platform’s own languages and frameworks — Swift/SwiftUI for iOS and Kotlin/Jetpack Compose for Android. These apps are fully optimized for each operating system, follow the platform’s design guidelines, and automatically support new features as soon as Apple or Google releases them. A cross-platform app, on the other hand, is built with a shared codebase that runs on both platforms. The two most common options today are Flutter (Dart) and React Native (JavaScript/TypeScript). The core is written once and then adapted by the framework for both iOS and Android. The result is that the app can be launched on both platforms faster, with a single codebase to maintain.

Cross-platform development gained popularity as smartphone performance improved and frameworks matured. Around 2018–2020, Flutter and React Native became good enough to deliver user experiences close to native, at least for most types of apps. For many companies, this meant being able to build an app for both iOS and Android significantly faster and at a lower cost. In the projects where the conditions were right for cross-platform we often saw time savings of about 20 to 30 percent during the period 2021 to 2024. The time savings appear in the part of the project that deals with pure implementation. If you look at the project as a whole it of course includes design, UX, flows, API structure, testing and product decisions, all of which take time. Those parts do not become noticeably more efficient just because you choose-cross platform.. Cross-platform is particularly suitable for apps such as company apps, booking apps, news and information apps, internal business apps, or apps that primarily display data. For teams with limited development resources, it can also be advantageous to focus all development on a single codebase rather than splitting efforts across two separate technology tracks from the start. At Intunio, we are proficient in both iOS and Android development. However, when the client is going to take over and maintain the app independently after delivery, it is crucial that the app is developed in a technology the client can manage.

There are many situations where native development is the stronger choice, especially when it comes to feel, design, and the everyday user experience. iOS and Android have different approaches to navigation, animations, interactions, and subtle behaviors that affect the overall experience more than you might expect. When building natively, the app automatically follows the platform’s guidelines, resulting in an app that feels “just right” for the user on their specific device. Users rarely care if an app is identical on another platform; what matters is that it feels natural on the one they’re using. If the goal is for the app to feel fully tailored for both iOS and Android, native development is usually the most reliable way to achieve this, without compromise. Native development is often the better choice when an app requires advanced Bluetooth communication, sensor control, background processes, camera APIs, or real-time data, as it tends to be more stable and faster to implement. When an app needs to use new features released by Apple or Google, native development is almost always the easiest and most stable path. Cross-platform solutions can handle a lot, but frameworks and their plugins often lag behind the operating systems. For example, we’ve experienced situations where Bluetooth modules in cross-platform frameworks were no longer maintained, forcing us to implement much of the functionality ourselves. This is precisely where native shows its long-term strength. Building directly with Swift and Kotlin ensures full support from the platforms without relying on third-party modules or community-driven packages. This reduces the risk of technical surprises when new OS versions are released or when features need updates years after launch. Another long-term perspective is that the popularity of cross-platform frameworks has always been cyclical. Even though Flutter and React Native are strong today, it’s impossible to predict what the landscape will look like in five years. Native platforms, however, evolve steadily year after year, regardless of trends, making them a safe choice for apps intended to live long and continue evolving. In summary, native development today is about quality, feel, and predictability over time, and about giving users an app that is fully tailored to their specific platform.

When companies choose a technology for app development, three factors usually guide the decision: the app’s complexity, the team’s expertise, and the budget for development and future maintenance. The choice between native and cross-platform is rarely about right or wrong. It’s about what will deliver the best results for your project, your team, and how you want to work going forward. When we start a project, we typically hold a workshop with the client at our office in central Gothenburg, where we review goals, requirements, timelines, and the team’s skills together. It’s almost always in this dialogue that the choice between native and cross-platform becomes clear. It guarantees that the decision is based on your actual needs, not general rules of thumb. Here are some example questions that can help guide the decision: Does the app have many technical dependencies on the phone’s hardware? If the app needs to communicate with Bluetooth devices, sensors, or platform-specific background processes, native is often the most stable choice, as it provides direct access to everything iOS and Android offer. Do you have web developers in-house who you want to involve in the app? If your team is strong in web development and you want to be able to maintain the app yourselves, React Native is a logical choice, as web developers can quickly get up to speed with the framework. Do you want the app to have the same visual appearance on iOS and Android? If the goal is identical design and UI across both platforms, Flutter is often the most consistent option, as the framework renders all graphics itself. Are you building a relatively simple app that primarily displays data or content? If the app mainly involves lists, bookings, feeds, or other clearly structured functionality, cross-platform is usually faster and more cost-effective. Is it important that the app feels completely natural to users on their platform? If you want users to experience gestures, interactions, and conventions that match iOS and Android, native is the obvious choice. Do you have a limited budget and want to release a relatively simple app on both iOS and Android at the same time? In this case, cross-platform is often the most cost-effective option. Do you want the technology to be long-term safe and predictable? If the app is intended to have a long life, continuous development, and stability regardless of trend cycles, native is the most sustainable choice, as it avoids dependencies on frameworks whose popularity may fluctuate over time. Do you want to eventually reuse the same codebase for web or desktop? If you plan to build both a mobile app and a simpler web or desktop version, cross-platform can be an advantage. Flutter and React Native support both web and desktop, allowing some reuse of logic and components. However, these platforms are still more limited than traditional web and desktop frameworks, so if web is a primary focus, alternatives should be evaluated carefully.

Over the past year, AI has dramatically changed the development process. This directly affects the balance between native and cross-platform development. Previously, much of the technology choice was about avoiding duplicate work. Now duplicate work is not as costly, since AI can automate large parts of porting, testing and repetitive coding tasks when used correctly. In practice, this means developers can create equivalent functionality on both platforms more quickly, which in some projects makes the time difference between cross-platform and native surprisingly small. This does not mean that cross platform has lost relevance, on the contrary it remains an excellent choice for certain types of applications. At the same time, it’s important to understand that this landscape is constantly changing. Both native and cross-platform development are becoming faster as tools improve, and it’s difficult to predict exactly how the balance will look in the future. Porting between platforms will likely continue to become easier, and with the right architecture, component libraries, and toolchain, the gap between technologies can remain minimal even in the long term. AI is therefore not only changing how we develop apps, but also when one option or the other is the right choice. This makes it more important than ever to select technology based on the app’s needs and the organization’s capabilities.

This article is based on the questions we most often encounter in our client projects, primarily the choice between native and cross-platform app development for iOS and Android. We do not cover all technical possibilities, such as Kotlin Multiplatform or scenarios where the same service is also being built for the web. There are more perspectives than those presented here, and we are happy to assist with such decisions as well. The goal of this article has been to provide a clear and practically useful overview based on the decisions our clients typically face.