The debate never really ended
The question of which cross-platform mobile framework to use has been relitigated every year since 2015. React Native launched in 2015. Flutter arrived in 2018. Expo matured in 2021. The New Architecture landed in React Native in 2024.
Every year, someone declares one of them dead. Every year, both keep shipping.
In 2026, the practical answer for most teams is still React Native , not because it wins every benchmark, but because of what it fits.
What has changed with the New Architecture
React Native spent several years carrying the weight of its bridge architecture: a JavaScript thread and a native thread communicating asynchronously, with the serialization overhead that entailed.
The New Architecture, which became stable in 2024, eliminates the bridge. JSI (JavaScript Interface) allows synchronous, direct calls between JavaScript and native code. The result is meaningfully better performance for complex UIs, smoother animations, and smaller bundle sizes.
Combined with Expo's SDK, which now covers the vast majority of native capabilities without requiring custom native modules, the developer experience in 2026 is genuinely good.
Why not Flutter
Flutter's performance story is strong. Dart compiles to native, the rendering engine is consistent across platforms, and the widget ecosystem has matured.
The friction point remains talent and ecosystem. React Native runs JavaScript , or TypeScript, which most modern product teams already use. Sharing logic, utilities, and types between a React Native app and a Next.js web frontend is natural. Doing the same with Flutter requires maintaining two entirely separate codebases for shared logic.
For teams with existing web infrastructure and TypeScript codebases, that cost is real.
When native is the right answer
There are cases where React Native is not the right tool. Highly performance-sensitive apps , games, real-time video processing, AR , benefit from native development. Apps that need deep OS integration or access to APIs that React Native does not expose well may also hit limits.
For those cases, Swift and Kotlin are the answer. React Native is not a replacement for native development. It is an alternative that fits the majority of use cases.
What we build on
At Willowcy, our mobile work is predominantly React Native with Expo. It lets us share code across web and mobile, ship quickly, and maintain a single TypeScript codebase across the stack.
The New Architecture has addressed most of the performance concerns that used to send teams toward Flutter. For the products we build , business applications, client portals, IoT dashboards , it is the right foundation.