One of the first decisions when commissioning a mobile app is whether to build native (separate codebases for iOS and Android) or cross-platform (a single codebase that runs on both). It’s a decision that affects cost, performance, development speed, and long-term maintainability.
There’s no universally correct answer — but there is a right answer for your specific situation.
What Is Native Development?
Native apps are written in the platform’s own language:
- iOS: Swift or Objective-C, using Apple’s UIKit / SwiftUI
- Android: Kotlin or Java, using Android’s Jetpack / Compose
Each platform gets its own codebase, optimised specifically for that OS.
Advantages: Maximum performance, full access to every platform API, pixel-perfect native UI, best user experience for complex interactions.
Disadvantages: Two codebases to build and maintain, higher cost, longer time to market.
What Is Cross-Platform Development?
Cross-platform frameworks let you write once and deploy to both platforms:
- React Native — JavaScript/TypeScript, compiles to native components
- .NET MAUI — C#, Microsoft’s modern cross-platform framework
- Flutter — Dart, Google’s UI toolkit
Advantages: Single codebase (roughly 70–90% shared code), faster development, lower cost, consistent behaviour across platforms.
Disadvantages: Occasional platform-specific workarounds, sometimes a step behind the latest native APIs, performance ceiling for very demanding applications (games, AR, intensive graphics).
When to Choose Native
- Your app requires cutting-edge platform features (advanced camera, ARKit, HealthKit)
- You’re building a consumer-facing app where UI polish is a key differentiator
- Performance is critical (real-time audio/video processing, complex animations)
- You have different feature sets for iOS and Android users
When to Choose Cross-Platform
- You need to ship to both iOS and Android with a limited budget
- Your app is primarily data-driven (forms, lists, dashboards, CRUD)
- Your team already has strong JavaScript/C# skills
- You want a single team maintaining both platforms
Our Recommendation for Most Business Apps
For the majority of business-facing mobile apps — internal tools, customer portals, scheduling apps, loyalty programmes — cross-platform is the right call. React Native and .NET MAUI have matured significantly; they handle business use cases excellently and deliver a near-native experience at a fraction of the cost of two separate native codebases.
We reserve native development for projects where platform-specific capabilities are core to the product, not just nice to have.
Planning a mobile app? Get a free consultation — we’ll help you choose the right approach for your audience, budget, and timeline.