React Native is Meta's open-source framework for building native iOS and Android applications using JavaScript and React. Released in 2015 and now on the New Architecture (Fabric renderer + JSI), it lets teams share most of their codebase between platforms while delivering genuinely native UI performance — not a WebView wrapper.
The key strengths that make React Native our framework of choice for cross-platform mobile.
React Native renders to platform-native UI components — UIView on iOS, android.view on Android. Text, images, scroll views and gestures all use native implementations. The result is indistinguishable from an app built in Swift or Kotlin.
React Native's New Architecture, available from v0.68 and default from v0.76, replaces the old asynchronous bridge with the JavaScript Interface (JSI) for synchronous native calls and Fabric for a concurrent, C++ rendering engine. Performance is dramatically improved for complex animations and interactions.
While UI components are platform-specific, state management, API calls, navigation logic and TypeScript types are shared 100% between iOS and Android. Typically 70–90% of code is shared across platforms.
Expo provides a managed workflow on top of React Native — pre-built native modules (camera, location, notifications, biometrics), OTA updates via Expo Updates, and EAS Build for cloud native builds. Most projects benefit from starting with Expo.
Code changes appear on the device within milliseconds, without losing component state. Combined with Expo Go for rapid prototyping, the development cycle is dramatically faster than native toolchains.
Used by Meta, Microsoft, Shopify and thousands of companies. React Navigation (routing), MMKV (fast storage), React Native Reanimated (60fps animations) and Notifee (notifications) are the stable, well-maintained libraries that form the standard React Native stack.
Businesses that need both iOS and Android but want to avoid two separate native teams and codebases. React Native delivers native quality at roughly half the build and maintenance cost of going fully native on both platforms.
Organisations with React web developers who want to extend their product to mobile. The component model, hooks, state management patterns and TypeScript types transfer directly from web React to React Native.
Retailers who want a native mobile shopping experience alongside their Sylius, Shopware or Shopify web store. React Native integrates cleanly with these platforms' APIs for a shared commerce backend.
We build production React Native apps with Expo — from architecture through app store submission — connected to your commerce or API backend.
Full React Native app development — architecture, UI, API integration, push notifications, app store submission and post-launch support for iOS and Android.
Connect your React Native app to Sylius, Shopware or a custom commerce API — product browsing, cart, checkout and account management built for mobile.
FAQ
The New Architecture replaces the original asynchronous bridge (which serialised all data to JSON between JS and native) with the JavaScript Interface (JSI) — a C++ layer enabling synchronous, direct calls between JavaScript and native code. The Fabric renderer makes the UI thread concurrent-aware, improving animation and interaction performance. From React Native 0.76 (2024), the New Architecture is enabled by default for new projects.
Both deliver good cross-platform mobile performance. React Native uses JavaScript/TypeScript (familiar to most web teams) and has a larger library ecosystem. Flutter uses Dart (less common) but renders its own UI pixels directly, giving perfect visual consistency across platforms. We choose React Native for its ecosystem fit with our existing JavaScript/TypeScript stack and the shared code opportunities with React web projects.
Yes — to a meaningful degree. Business logic (API calls, state management with Zustand or Redux, TypeScript types, validation schemas) can be shared via a monorepo. UI components are different (React Native uses View/Text/Image instead of HTML elements), but hooks, utilities and data-fetching logic transfer directly.
We recommend starting with Expo for most projects. Expo Managed Workflow handles the native build configuration and provides a rich library of pre-built native modules. When you need a library not supported by Expo or require deep native customisation, you can eject to a bare workflow. The majority of production apps ship successfully with Expo.
We manage the full process — provisioning profiles, signing certificates, App Store Connect and Google Play Console setup, screenshot and metadata preparation, and submission. For ongoing releases, we use Expo Application Services (EAS) for automated cloud builds and OTA (over-the-air) updates that bypass the app store review cycle for JS changes.
iOS, Android or both — tell us what you're building and we'll outline the right approach.
