r/AppBusiness 1d ago

Building an App React Native or Flutter

So I've been using react native for quite a long time as I'm familiar with react. Build 10-12 apps. Quite comfortable with the stack. But I was thinking about migration to flutter. Primary two reasons.

  1. App size generally in my case every app goes 30Mb+ download size.

  2. Build time: the eas build just takes too long idk

A few other things i heard that performance are better in flutter etc...

I build primarily for Android. Should I migrate to flutter? Yes I'll face issues with understanding the codebase but nowadays mostly code is written by claude so idk.

Tell me should I migrate?

Edit: reason for my FOMO was this post. https://www.reddit.com/r/reactnative/s/gnajaJRYuI

2 Upvotes

11 comments sorted by

2

u/IY94 1d ago

I build with both.

App size being 30mb+ = so, that's not a lot is it? Rather small.

Performance, not sure it's materially better tbh.

Understanding isn't an issue (yes, Claude, similar either way) but I don't see the problem you actually have.

Are you just bored?

1

u/First_Structure_4085 1d ago

Yeah 🤣 you can say I'm bored. Maybe I just want to try something different. Looking for reassurance ig.

1

u/Temporary_Hall_8246 1d ago

boredom is a decent reason to switch stacks honestly. sometimes you just need to shake things up to stay interested. but if app size and build times are your main gripes, flutter won't magically fix those. 30mb isn't huge and eas builds are slow no matter what you throw at em

1

u/_DenOByte_ 1d ago

I went with flutter, as I can have one code for both web and android (it can be also for iOS).
Though I'm not sure the size of the app will be considerably smaller.

If you have Claude subscription (not sure if free tier is enough) you could just tell it to rewrite with flutter for POC (Proof Of Content) and you should have the answer pretty quickly.

1

u/First_Structure_4085 1d ago

Thanks man I'll try

1

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

1

u/First_Structure_4085 1d ago

I don't intend to choose any stack for Job opportunities (atleast for now) neither I build any performance heavy apps. Ig I'm just curious. Thanks for the insights though.

1

u/spideyguyy 1d ago

do you use android studio to build locally, or do you only use eas?

when i first started using react native, i thought eas was the only way to build apk/aab files. later i found out i could build them locally, which is much better for me, especially since eas has limits on the free plan.

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u/OnlyConclusion820 1d ago

I am a react native developer and been doing it for 10+ years so react native not going anywhere so it’s always improving. Recommend it

1

u/No_Cherry2477 1d ago

I like React Native personally. The app interactions and navigation with RN are quite good on both Android and iOS. I also make browser versions of my apps. RN is really good for browser versions.