What native gives you that Flutter can't
Native development means writing Android in Kotlin and iOS in Swift — two separate codebases, each using the platform's own UI toolkit directly. That gets you:
- Immediate access to new OS features on day one of release, no waiting on a framework to catch up.
- The most precise control over performance-critical work — heavy graphics, real-time audio/video, complex animations.
- UI that matches platform conventions exactly, since you're using the platform's actual components.
The tradeoff: you're paying for two builds if you need both platforms — see our Android and iOS pricing to compare against a single Flutter build.
What Flutter gives you that native can't
Flutter builds one codebase in Dart that compiles to both Android and iOS. For most apps — anything that isn't pushing hardware limits — the practical benefits are:
- One codebase means one set of bugs to fix, not two.
- Lower cost than building native twice — see our Flutter pricing.
- Faster to ship to both stores at once, since there's no second build running in parallel.
A decision checklist
Ask these in order:
- How many platforms do you actually need? One platform → native is usually simplest. Both → Flutter usually wins on cost.
- What's the budget? Two native builds cost roughly 1.5-2x one Flutter build.
- Does the app need deep hardware access? Heavy camera/AR/real-time processing leans native.
- How fast do you need to ship? One Flutter build ships to both stores faster than sequencing two native builds.
Can you switch later?
Technically yes, but it's a rewrite, not a migration — moving from native to Flutter (or the reverse) means re-implementing the UI and business logic, not porting a config file. Decide based on where you expect to be in a year, not just what's easiest to start with today.