React Native vs Flutter vs Native: Choosing Your App Stack

What the three options actually are

Native means one codebase per platform: Swift and SwiftUI for iOS, Kotlin for Android, using Apple’s and Google’s own frameworks. Everything the platform can do, the app can do, and it does it the way the platform intends.

React Native, maintained by Meta, lets you write the app once in JavaScript or TypeScript with React, and renders real native UI components on each platform. Flutter, maintained by Google, lets you write once in Dart and draws its own UI with its own rendering engine, so the app looks the same everywhere.

Tepia has shipped production apps with all three approaches. The choice is not about which framework is best in general.

Decision table by app type

Tepia uses this table as a starting point. Most apps fall clearly into a row; the ones that straddle rows get a short technical spike during Discovery before a commitment.

How Tepia approaches stack selection

Tepia does not choose the stack before Discovery, because the answer lives in the requirements.

1. Discovery. System investigation identifies hardware, integrations and background processing needs; user interviews reveal how the app is actually used (offline in a plant, one handed on a route, on a tablet at a counter); third party integration review checks SDK availability per framework. Tepia writes the stack recommendation into the Investigation Summary alongside the User Stories, and runs a one to two week technical spike when a requirement is borderline.
2. Design. Design questionnaire, moodboards and a style guide that accounts for platform conventions (back navigation, sheets, tab bars) so the app feels native whichever way it is built, followed by detailed wireframes and sample designs.
3. Development and Testing. Alpha and Beta schedules with functional, user acceptance and non functional test plans, including performance testing on low end Android devices and older iPhones, which is where cross platform choices are validated.
4. Training. Hands on sessions for your team on the admin tools and, if you plan to take the code in house, on the codebase itself.
5. Launch. Store submission for both platforms, data migration and Tepia support reps on rollout.

Tepia’s engineering leadership, led by Director of Engineering Brianna Martison and Technical Lead Manager Fahad Baig, reviews every stack decision before it reaches you.

Tepia's honest summary

Default to cross platform for business, content and commerce apps where screens and data dominate, and choose React Native if your team or web app already lives in React, Flutter if pixel exact custom UI matters most. Go native when the app depends on hardware, camera, background processing or platform ecosystem features, or when you are shipping a single platform anyway.

Tepia builds in Swift, SwiftUI, Kotlin, React Native and Flutter, has thirteen years of disciplined engineering behind those decisions, and will put the recommendation in writing before you commit. Browse Tepia’s work, services and process, or contact Tepia with your app idea to get a stack recommendation.

Frequently asked questions