Native vs Flutter: Which Should You Choose for Your App?

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.