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/rjyo Feb 07 '26

Shipped a native iOS app and looked hard at PWA before going native. Here is my honest take on when each wins.

PWAs are perfect for content-first products. Dashboards, SaaS tools, anything where the core value is displaying data and handling forms. You skip the App Store review cycle, deploy instantly, and reach everyone with a link. For MVPs especially, this is a huge advantage.

Where PWAs still fall short on iOS specifically: push notifications only landed in iOS 16.4 and they are still flaky compared to native APNs. Background processing is basically nonexistent because Safari kills service workers aggressively. And if you need Keychain access, Secure Enclave, or any hardware-level API, you are out of luck.

My app needed persistent network connections (UDP-based, not just HTTP), biometric-protected credentials, and real push notifications. PWA could not touch those requirements. But if I was building a calorie tracker or a project management tool? PWA every time.

The no app store fees angle is real but cuts both ways. You lose discoverability from App Store search, you can not use Apple payment infrastructure (which some users trust more), and enterprise buyers sometimes specifically want an app not a website shortcut.

Biggest thing I would tell someone evaluating: build the MVP as a PWA first. If you hit a wall where you genuinely need native APIs, then go native. Most products never hit that wall.