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Top 11 React Native Alternatives to Look For

Author
SPEC INDIA
Posted

June 9, 2023

Updated

June 16th, 2025

For those who wish to leverage cross-platform competencies for a global audience, React Native development is the ideal choice. React Native development is a preferred choice for today’s businesses as it saves cost and time by delivering native experiences using a single codebase for various platforms.

Supported by Facebook, it empowers developers to share optimal codebases across platforms, enabling faster development, lower costs, and simpler debugging. However, just like any other popular technology, React Native has its share of limitations, including compatibility issues and performance issues. That is where React Native alternatives come into play.

This article focuses on the popular alternatives to React Native that can be implemented. Before that, let us have a glance at what React Native is.

What is React Native?

React Native believes in ‘Learn once, write anywhere’. React Native combines the best parts of native development with React, a best-in-class JavaScript library for building user interfaces.

React Native is widely recognized by companies and brands for developing cross-platform, native-like apps. It showcases several advantages, including cost efficiency, flexibility, performance, and code reusability. It empowers developers to create high-quality applications on a native platform based on React and JavaScript.

Facebook has been leveraging React Native in various production applications. React Native is an open-source, easy-to-use framework that offers simplified UI development with cross-platform compatibility.

Key Features of React Native
  • Code reusability with accelerated development
  • Attractive user interface
  • Faster time to market
  • Open source, Hot Reloading
  • Cost and time savings
  • Native-like performance and feel
  • Support for third-party libraries
  • NPM for installation

React-Native-Alternatives

11 Best React Native Alternatives (Competitors) to Know

React Native is a good mobile app development framework; however, other tools act as ideal alternatives to React Native. When searching for React Native competitors, it is essential to consider various factors, including ease of use, reliability, scalability, availability of skilled resources, budget estimates, and project deadlines.

Below are the React Native competitors that can play the role of an effective alternative to React Native:

  • Flutter
  • Xamarin
  • Ionic
  • Apache Cordova
  • jQuery Mobile
  • Bootstrap
  • Swift
  • Framework7
  • NativeScript
  • Onsen UI
  • React Navigation

Flutter:

Powered by Google, Flutter is an open-source UI framework that enables the development of native-like, flexible, and visually enhanced cross-platform apps for web, mobile, and desktop using a single codebase. It is created with Dart, an object-oriented language. Flutter has gained popularity over the years. There is an enriched set of customizable widgets that can help in creating high-performing apps.

As a practical mobile app development framework and an ideal alternative to React Native, Flutter is the fastest-growing framework from Google to create apps for almost any platform. It allows developers to create a beautiful, fast, and secure app for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. Its rapid development, hot reload, and native-like feel have made it a popular technology for mobile app development.

Xamarin:

Xamarin, as one of the best alternatives to React Native, is a well-known cross-platform mobile app development technology powered by Microsoft. It utilizes the C# programming language and the .NET framework. It empowers programmers to create apps for Android, iOS, and Windows platforms through a single codebase. There is an enriched set of pre-designed UI controls that can be leveraged to develop the native user interface.

Xamarin provides excellent support for smart devices, including Android Wear and Apple Watch. It offers native multi-platform support and a faster development cycle. It empowers features of Shared App Logic, featuring a wide range of components in the Component Store that allow for the exchange of components. Code reusability, easy maintenance, security, and stability are some of its key features.

Ionic:

Ionic is a top choice for building high-quality hybrid mobile apps. Ionic is an open-source mobile UI toolkit for developing cross-platform hybrid apps. It is built on AngularJS and Apache Cordova and now supports other JavaScript frameworks, including Vue, React, and Angular. It is widely used for creating high-quality, best-in-class Progressive Web Applications (PWA), which combine the best of mobile and web to deliver superior experiences.

As a React Native alternative, it enables the creation of mobile, web, and desktop apps using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. There are several plug-ins and pre-designed components that help in developing applications. Some of its salient features include faster time to market, native platform support, a single codebase for multiple platforms, easy access to third-party code, and reduced costs and time.

Apache Cordova:

Initially known as PhoneGap, Apache Cordova is a leading mobile app development framework that is considered a significant competitor to React Native. It assists developers in creating mobile applications with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Creating cross-platform apps is done through the Command Line Interface (CLI). The pre-created plug-ins and UI components help provide features that enhance the user interface and navigation.

It is easy to use and does not require a significant amount of time for application creation. It can be leveraged on various platforms, including Windows, BlackBerry, Ubuntu, etc. There is flexibility in creating apps without needing to learn new programming languages. It also offers multiple community add-ons that provide access to numerous libraries and frameworks. It behaves as a container that is accountable for linking web applications with native mobile functionalities.

jQuery Mobile:

jQuery Mobile is a popular alternative to React Native, serving as an effective open-source JavaScript library for creating cross-platform mobile apps and websites. As an HTML-based user interface system, it is well-known for its ease of use and rapid implementation of various features, including animations, AJAX, and DOM manipulation. It is a touch-optimized web framework ideal for creating responsive apps for multiple devices.

It is based on the ‘write less, do more’ jargon. Some of the reasons why jQuery Mobile is well-suited for developing mobile applications are its simplicity, flexibility, and usability, support for high-end and low-end devices, support for user-friendly inputs, speed due to its lightweight size, responsiveness, theming, and UI widgets, as well as a unified user interface system across all popular mobile platforms.

Bootstrap:

Bootstrap is a leading React Native alternative that enables the responsive development of mobile-first apps, web pages, websites, and Progressive Web Applications (PWA). It possesses the fundamentals of responsive web development, such that code must be inserted in a pre-built grid system. It is a comprehensive toolkit that utilizes the capabilities of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

It is easy to begin with, and is easily customizable. Some of its key characteristics include browser compatibility, mobile friendliness, simple integration, LESS and CSS files, an extensive list of components, bundled JavaScript plug-ins, a robust grid system, and ease of preventing repetition across multiple projects.

Also Read: Bootstrap Alternatives: 25 Best Alternatives To Bootstrap

Swift:

Swift is an able and intuitive programming language for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. Composing Swift code is collaborative and fun; the syntax is crisp yet expressive, and Swift comprises robust features that developers love. It encourages developers to create their own iOS-powered devices.

It is an advanced, secure, and high-performance language that is easy to write apps and is suitable for native iOS app development. Its fast and natural programming style with simple maintainability and readability makes it a developer’s delight. It features an expressive syntax with reformed elements, including simplified syntax, compatibility with Objective-C, multiple return values, functional programming patterns, and a package manager.

Framework7:

Framework7 is a free, open-source React Native alternative that is apt for developing iOS, Android, desktop, or web apps with a native look. It also works well as an effective prototyping tool. You can create apps for any platform with its attractive user interface elements. You can even create native desktop apps by integrating it with other tools.

Being an easy-to-use tool, it is fast, thanks to its built-in FastClick library. Due to its built-in grid system layout, elements can be arranged responsively. It is entirely dynamic and showcases high-performance animation capabilities. It has many pre-designed widgets and inbuilt helper libraries.

NativeScript:

As one of the well-known React Native alternatives, NativeScript offers in-depth integration with JavaScript frameworks like Angular and Vue, which helps lessen the learning curve. Developers can leverage their web skills to create native mobile apps. There is a massive code-sharing facility between mobile platforms and web apps.

It is an open-source technology that is a JIT-compiled framework and can execute on a JS virtual machine. It utilizes the V8 engine runtime for both platforms – Android and iOS. It lets developers create web and mobile apps from a single codebase. It offers you a facility to access native APIs from JavaScript directly.

Onsen UI:

Onsen UI is an open-source UI framework that offers a variety of components, including tabs, side menus, stack navigation, lists, and forms. It also provides support for iOS and Android Material design. It is based on Apache Cordova and utilizes web technologies, including HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript, to create mobile apps.

It is easy to create native-feeling Progressive Web Apps, hybrid apps, and mobile apps with this framework. It offers a grid system to arrange elements on the screen that is divided into rows and columns. It is an easy-to-learn technology that is often used in conjunction with AngularJS, but it is also possible to use jQuery or any other framework.

React Navigation:

React Navigation is an easy-to-use framework that offers built-in navigators for a seamless experience. There are components for iOS and Android that provide a platform-specific look and feel with seamless animations and gestures. It is customizable and offers extensibility across all platforms.

It features a native stack navigator that enables your application to transition between screens and manage navigation history. It is a standalone library that lets you implement navigation functionality in a React Native application. It is written in JavaScript and creates subsets of the navigation APIs.

Winding Up

Considering the top React Native alternatives, as mentioned above, it appears to be a challenging choice. Several key parameters must be considered when selecting the ideal alternative to React Native. Based on that, the right choice can be made in consultation with an experienced IT partner.

At SPEC INDIA, we help you accelerate business growth and increase user engagement with best-in-class React Native apps that are cross-platform compatible. We create natively rendered web, mobile, and desktop experiences using React Native, a robust UI software framework created by Meta Platforms.

We combine our years of experience and technical expertise to deliver the best user experience. We use battle-tested methodologies and industry best practices to develop mobile apps that are cross-platform compatible, robust, and secure.

Bring your ideas to life by hiring skilled and competent React Native developers from SPEC INDIA. We combine our technical and business expertise to create mobile app solutions that enhance engagement, deliver a personalized experience, and meet your unique business needs.

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Author
SPEC INDIA

SPEC INDIA, as your single stop IT partner has been successfully implementing a bouquet of diverse solutions and services all over the globe, proving its mettle as an ISO 9001:2015 certified IT solutions organization. With efficient project management practices, international standards to comply, flexible engagement models and superior infrastructure, SPEC INDIA is a customer’s delight. Our skilled technical resources are apt at putting thoughts in a perspective by offering value-added reads for all.

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