Technology · Mobile
React Native
React Native · Expo · TypeScript
React Native renders real native UI from a React codebase, which changes the economics of mobile: one team ships both platforms, features land simultaneously, and if your web app is already React, a large share of logic and developer skill transfers directly. For most business apps the trade-off maths is not close.
How TrivialWorks uses it.
React Native is our default for marketplace, booking and service apps that sit alongside a web product — one Node API feeding web and mobile, one team owning both. We use Expo where it accelerates and eject where hardware access demands it, and we prototype the riskiest native integration first rather than discovering it in week eight.
Decision guide
Should your project use React Native?
Practical selection guidance — the conversation we would have with you before writing a line of code.
When it’s the right choice
- Business apps — marketplaces, booking, portals, field tools — where both platforms matter and budgets are finite
- Products with an existing React web app: shared logic, shared skills, one API
- MVPs that must reach both app stores fast enough to learn something
- Feature parity across platforms as a standing requirement, not an aspiration
When it isn’t
- Games and heavy graphics or AR work — that is native or a game engine, full stop
- Apps built around deep hardware integration — continuous background BLE, custom camera pipelines — where the bridge becomes the project (our connected-device work has been native for exactly this reason)
- Single-platform products, where cross-platform machinery is pure overhead
Consider Native (Swift / Kotlin) — The app is the hardware interface, or platform-specific polish is the product.
Consider Progressive Web App — App-store presence is not required and the budget is thin — a good PWA may be honest scope.
Best use cases
Where React Native makes practical sense.
Marketplace & booking apps
Two-sided products where buyers and providers each get an app off one backend — the shape of our shipped React Native work.
Companion apps to SaaS
The mobile surface of a web product: same accounts, same data, features shipping to both platforms in one cycle.
Field and operations apps
Offline-tolerant tools for people who work standing up — inspections, deliveries, service visits.
Consumer service apps
On-demand and logistics products where time-to-both-stores decides who wins the category.
Related services
Services that commonly use it.
Questions
React Native, asked straight.
React Native or Flutter?
Both are credible; the decision is usually about your team. If your web product is React, React Native shares skills and code that Flutter cannot — and that is our default recommendation. We have shipped Flutter where a client's constraints favoured it, so the advice is not tribal.
Will a React Native app feel native?
For business apps, yes — it renders real platform components, and the difference from native is imperceptible to users. The honest exceptions are games, heavy animation and deep hardware work, where we will tell you to go native before you spend money finding out.
One codebase — how much is really shared?
Typically 90%+ between iOS and Android, and meaningful business-logic reuse with a React web app on the same API. Platform-specific code concentrates at the edges: notifications, deep links, store requirements.
Thinking about React Native?
Send the requirement and you get back a functional specification — screens, data model, stack and an estimate — at no charge. If React Native is the wrong choice for it, that will be in there too.