react-native
React Native is a framework for building native iOS and Android apps using React and JavaScript, rendering real native UI controls rather than web views. It lets developers share a single codebase across platforms with fast iteration via live reload.
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[](https://opensources.dev/resource/react-native)MITPermissive — free to use in commercial and proprietary software, with attribution.View license →
Production readiness
4/5- Actively maintainedCommits in the last 6 months
- No known vulnerabilitiesNot yet scanned
- Clear, usable licenseMIT (permissive)
- Proven adoptionWidely used
- Has documentationDocumentation indexed
Our analysis
A cross-platform framework that lets you write mobile apps in React/JavaScript while rendering genuine native UI components on iOS and Android. It bridges JS to native platform APIs, giving access to real device controls and capabilities.
When to use react-native
Choose it when you have React/web expertise and want to ship to both iOS and Android from one codebase, need near-native UI fidelity, or want fast iteration with live reload. It's especially strong when paired with Expo for tooling and when reusing React knowledge across web and mobile teams.
When not to
Skip it for graphics-intensive apps, games, or anything needing deep platform-specific performance where fully native (Swift/Kotlin) or Flutter may serve better. It's also overkill for simple content sites where a PWA or web wrapper suffices, and the native module/bridge complexity can be a burden for tiny apps.
Strengths
- Huge ecosystem, community, and corporate backing (Meta) with mature tooling
- Real native UI components, not web views
- Fast developer feedback loop via Fast Refresh and live reload
- Code and skill reuse across iOS, Android, and web via React
Trade-offs
- Native module integration and bridging can be complex and version-fragile
- Upgrades between major versions historically painful
- Performance ceiling below fully native for heavy/animation-rich workloads
- iOS builds require macOS; debugging across the JS/native boundary is harder
Maturity
Very mature and production-proven, powering apps at Meta, Microsoft, Shopify, and many others. Actively maintained with a public roadmap, regular releases, and a new architecture (Fabric/TurboModules) modernizing the rendering and native interop layers.
React Native brings React's declarative UI framework to iOS and Android. With React Native, you use native UI controls and have full access to the native platform.
Declarative. React makes it painless to create interactive UIs. Declarative views make your code more predictable and easier to debug.
Component-Based. Build encapsulated components that manage their state, then compose them to make complex UIs.
Developer Velocity. See local changes in seconds. Changes to JavaScript code can be live reloaded without rebuilding the native app.
Portability. Reuse code across iOS, Android, and other platforms.
React Native is developed and supported by many companies and individual core contributors. Find out more in our ecosystem overview.
Contents
📋 Requirements
React Native apps may target iOS 15.1 and Android 7.0 (API 24) or newer. You may use Windows, macOS, or Linux as your development operating system, though building and running iOS apps is limited to macOS. Tools like Expo can be used to work around this.
🎉 Building your first React Native app
Follow the Getting Started guide. The recommended way to install React Native depends on your project. Here you can find short guides for the most common scenarios:
Trying out React Native
Creating a New Application
Adding React Native to an Existing Application
📖 Documentation
The full documentation for React Native can be found on our website.
The React Native documentation discusses components, APIs, and topics that are specific to React Native. For further documentation on the React API that is shared between React Native and React DOM, refer to the React documentation.
The source for the React Native documentation and website is hosted on a separate repository, @facebook/react-native-website.
🚀 Upgrading
Upgrading to new versions of React Native may give you access to more APIs, views, developer tools, and other goodies. See the Upgrading Guide for instructions.
React Native releases are discussed in this discussion repo.
👏 How to Contribute
The main purpose of this repository is to continue evolving React Native core. We want to make contributing to this project as easy and transparent as possible, and we are grateful to the community for contributing bug fixes and improvements. Read below to learn how you can take part in improving React Native.
Code of Conduct
Facebook has adopted a Code of Conduct that we expect project participants to adhere to. Please read the full text so that you can understand what actions will and will not be tolerated.
Contributing Guide
Read our Contributing Guide to learn about our development process, how to propose bugfixes and improvements, and how to build and test your changes to React Native.
Open Source Roadmap
You can learn more about our vision for React Native in the Roadmap.
Good First Issues
We have a list of good first issues that contain bugs which have a relatively limited scope. This is a great place to get started, gain experience, and get familiar with our contribution process.
Discussions
Larger discussions and proposals are discussed in @react-native-community/discussions-and-proposals.
📄 License
React Native is MIT licensed, as found in the LICENSE file.