React Native and Expo
One codebase for iOS and Android (and web when it earns its place), native modules when a feature needs them, and AI added beside what already works. Our founder has shipped React Native for over eight years, since 2018.
Is this the right tool
For most mobile products, one React Native codebase across both platforms is the pragmatic win. But it is a tool with edges, and we will tell you where a different one fits better.
We will not pretend React Native is the answer to every mobile question. When a feature genuinely needs native code, we write native code and bridge it. When a whole product is better served by another stack, we will say so on the call rather than sell you the framework we happen to prefer. Most of the time, though, one RN codebase is simply the sensible choice.
How we build it
The difference between a React Native app that ships and one that rots is the boring engineering: architecture, native bridges done right, and a codebase a team can keep moving in.
Expo's managed workflow gets a product to the stores fast with over-the-air updates and a clean build pipeline. When a feature needs custom native code, we drop to the bare workflow or add a config plugin. We have shipped both: Expo apps like Epiphra and Afterlight, and bare React Native like VocalMD.
When there is no JavaScript path, we write the native layer. Our founder built a custom RN bridge to the Doximity Dialer iOS SDK on VocalMD for masked calling, and our team has done BLE device provisioning and native audio work. Native is a tool we reach for deliberately, not a wall we hit.
When web parity matters, react-native-web lets one codebase serve iOS, Android, and web. On Nightingale Labs our team built a single RN and RN Web codebase driving dense clinical dashboards across all three, with platform splits where native and web genuinely differ.
This is our specialty: bringing AI into an existing RN app without a rewrite. The AI feature is a thin integration layer with fallbacks, caching, and guardrails, sitting beside your current architecture. What already works keeps working.
Trade-offs and failure modes we design around
What it costs to run
The core saving is one codebase and one team instead of two. Most of an app is shared logic, screens, and integrations, and writing that once rather than twice is the whole economic case for React Native. When web parity matters, react-native-web extends that saving to a third platform from the same code, which is what our team did on Nightingale Labs.
The cost that is easy to forget is maintenance. A React Native app depends on a chain of native modules that have to be kept current, and letting them drift turns a routine upgrade into a wall. We budget for staying current rather than deferring it, because a well-maintained RN codebase is cheap to move in and a neglected one is expensive to rescue.
When we add AI to an existing app, the "no rewrite" approach is a cost decision as much as a technical one. Rebuilding to add a feature means re-testing and, in regulated products, re-validating everything. Adding AI as a layer beside what works keeps that cost off the table.
Proof
Live apps across marketplaces, healthcare, and consumer, with precise attribution on who delivered each.
Built by Inseed, project-led by our founder
A two-sided marketplace and social community for carnival-goers to buy, sell, and resell tickets and costumes, with Stripe escrow and multi-channel chat. Inseed took it from zero to the App Store in under four months, and it is live on both stores with a growing user base.
Delivered by our team via Toptal
A consumer-facing enterprise smart-home app for Carrier (HVAC), with real-time two-way sync and BLE device provisioning. Our founder led a team of four on an Nx monorepo of around seven apps and twenty-two shared libraries, using React Native and react-native-web with a custom 64-component design system.
Delivered by our team via Toptal
A healthcare IoT platform with dense clinical dashboards. Our founder and team built one React Native and react-native-web codebase that renders on web, iOS, and Android, including a hand-built charting engine and around forty screen modules across 114 API endpoints.
Attribution kept honest: LYVE is an Inseed-direct build our founder led. Carrier SmartHome and Nightingale Labs are work our founder and team delivered through Toptal, so we say "delivered by our team", not "our client". The engineering is ours to stand behind either way.
Borrowed proof, labeled honestly
Shopify, Discord, Microsoft, and Coinbase all run React Native in production at scale. These are not our clients. They are proof that the framework we build on is trusted by some of the most demanding mobile teams in the world, so the question for your product is the feature, not the foundation.
FAQ
Yes, for the vast majority of apps, and we can point at live evidence. Carrier SmartHome runs at over a million downloads with real-time two-way sync; Nightingale Labs renders dense clinical charts from one codebase across web and native. Performance problems in RN are almost always specific, profileable bottlenecks we can fix, not a ceiling on the framework. Where a feature genuinely needs native performance, we write native code and bridge it.
Expo unless a hard requirement forces otherwise. The managed workflow gets you to the stores faster with over-the-air updates and a clean build pipeline, and config plugins now cover most native needs. When a feature truly needs custom native code Expo cannot reach, we go bare or add a plugin. We have shipped both, so we pick based on your requirements, not a default preference.
When web parity is a real requirement, yes, via react-native-web. On Nightingale Labs our team ran a single React Native and RN Web codebase serving web, iOS, and Android, with platform splits where native and web genuinely differ. We plan those splits up front, because some native libraries have no web equivalent and finding that out late is expensive.
That is our specialty. We add the AI feature as a thin layer beside your current app, with fallbacks, caching, and guardrails, so your existing architecture stays yours and nothing that already works has to be rewritten. It is the same "AI into mobile, no rewrite" approach across every capability we build.
Where this goes next
React Native underpins everything we build. Here is where it lands most often, plus our pricing so you can size the work.
30 minutes, free. We will look at your app or your idea and tell you honestly what we would build, where React Native fits, and what it costs. Shuhel will be on the call.
Book a 30-minute call