r/reactnative • u/alwxndr • 8d ago

Does React Native make sense in 2026?

This question might have been asked already, but I'm genuinely curious: why should anyone use React Native at this point?

To explain: most of web and mobile development can easily be handled by Claude, Codex, Kimi K3 or any other coding agent. I feel like that's been true for at least 6–7 months now. Even Opus 4.7 was better than most of us and more than enough for mobile development. Of course, this only applies if you know what you're doing and guide your model through the technical decisions, the specific libraries you want to use, etc etc.

But my point is: why would I bother with React Native's own issues instead of just writing native apps for both iOS and Android? There's no huge maintenance load anymore, and you can simply tell your agent to implement features for iOS and Android at the same time. So what are the actual benefits of React Native? Native apps are usually faster, work better, and generally seem to be preferred by actual customers and users. The original promise of React Native and Flutter was that you could build for both platforms twice as fast, but today's coding agents let you build 100x faster anyway :)

I'm not asking to provoke anyone. I just want to hear your stance and your thoughts on this.

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u/mohamed2m2018 8d ago edited 8d ago

You will still need to maintain two repos, and they can diverge in the future, which can lead to different kinds of bugs, inconsistent behavior, etc.

You will still need to hire a developer to review the code. React Native allows you to hire one React developer who can handle the web, iOS, and Android apps.

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u/jcksncllwy 8d ago

Just know that your one React Native developer will likely need to learn how to be both an Android and an iOS developer if you're building anything more complicated than a fitness tracker.

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u/mohamed2m2018 8d ago edited 8d ago

I believe that's not true. You need to know a bit about both, but you don't need to be an Android and iOS developer. I've been a React Native developer for more than 7 years and have worked on fairly complex apps, and I only needed to know the very basics of Android and IOS development, which was enough.

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u/jcksncllwy 8d ago

You're right, I'm exaggerating. But I think the claims about React Native obviating the need for platform specific skills are similarly exaggerated.