The Case for React Native in 2025
Three years ago, React Native was a compromise. You chose it when budget didn't allow for two native apps, accepted some performance trade-offs, and shipped. Today, the landscape has changed materially.
Expo's new architecture (based on the JSI bridge and the Fabric renderer) has eliminated the most significant performance gap between React Native and native code. For the vast majority of apps — everything short of high-performance 3D games and AR/VR experiences — React Native is now a true first-class option.
What Expo SDK 51+ Changes
Expo SDK 51 introduced several capabilities that significantly change how we build:
Native Modules Without Ejecting
The Expo Modules API now makes writing native code in a managed workflow dramatically simpler. You can write Kotlin or Swift that integrates cleanly without ejecting the entire project.
New Architecture by Default
Fabric renderer and TurboModules are now the default in new Expo projects. This brings render performance in line with native iOS/Android apps for the majority of UI patterns.
EAS Build & Updates
Expo Application Services has matured into a production-grade CI/CD pipeline. We use EAS Build for all our client app projects, giving us automated iOS and Android builds, OTA update delivery, and environment management.
Our Recommended Stack
For production mobile apps in 2025, our default Keystone stack is:
This stack gives us extreme development velocity while shipping genuinely great apps.
The Design Gap (And How We Close It)
The remaining challenge with cross-platform apps isn't performance — it's design fidelity. Apps that look identical on iOS and Android often feel slightly wrong on each platform, violating platform conventions users expect.
Our approach: we design for each platform separately in Figma, using platform-specific component patterns, then map those to a shared codebase with platform-specific style overrides. The result is an app that feels native everywhere, built from a single codebase.
When to Choose Native
We're React Native advocates, but we'll always give clients honest advice. Choose native if:
In every other case, React Native with Expo in 2025 is the right call.
Part of the Keystone Software team, building premium software for South African businesses.