A practical comparison based on 12 shipped apps — what the benchmarks do not tell you. By David Friedman , Founder of AppBrewers I have shipped 12 cross-platform mobile apps in the last three years. Six with React Native. Six with Flutter. Here is what I wish someone had told me before I started. The Short Answer Factor React Native Flutter Winner Time to first screen 2–3 days 1–2 days Flutter Hiring pool Massive (React developers) Growing fast React Native UI consistency Platform-native look Pixel-perfect custom Tie Performance Good Better for animations Flutter Long-term maintenance Facebook backs it Google backs it Tie Best for Teams with React experience Custom UI-heavy apps Depends When React Native Wins 1. Your Team Already Knows React If you have React developers, they are 80% of the way to React Native. JSX, hooks, and npm packages all transfer. Flutter requires learning Dart — a fine language, but a new one. 2. You Need Third-Party Packages React Native has 1,000+ packages for every use case.…