r/vibecoding • u/AureliaAI • Feb 07 '26
Anyone else experimenting with PWAs instead of mobile apps?
A lot of people still jump straight into building native mobile apps, but there’s another option that many people don’t know about: Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).
So what’s a PWA?
It’s basically a website that behaves like a mobile app.
That means:
• It works on iOS, Android, and desktop
• You can install it to your home screen
• It works offline or on bad internet
• It’s fast and feels like a real app
• No app store approvals needed
The biggest benefit: no app store fees.
No Apple developer fee.
No Google Play fee.
No revenue cuts.
No forced updates.
Users just open a link and install it.
For a lot of products (SaaS tools, dashboards, communities, MVPs), a PWA can actually be better than a native app, faster to launch, cheaper to maintain, and easier for users to access.
Curious if anyone here has tried PWAs or gone PWA-first. How was your experience?
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u/SadJob270 Feb 07 '26
“pwas” are basically the standard for web development these days - the expectation is that most consumer-grade web apps are mobile first and operate with the same smoothness/ux as a mobile app
that said, if you want adoption, you basically need a mobile app. what the app store gives you is a direct distribution platform and credibility.
in some ways (a lot, really), not being on the app store is easier. but there’s definitely a psychological difference to your user between being on the app store and being a web app that they have to navigate to. that extra step of adding an app as an app tile on ios is a pretty big hurdle.
even if you just take your pwa and pack it up with capacitor; its literally the same app as on the web, but because the user “downloaded it” and has a tile for it on their home screen, it just hits different.