With AI being so good at development, how should I as a single developer build my multiplatform apps? Normally I would pick React Native (mobile + web) but maybe it's better to just build everything natively now?

Sonar Pro

Vote: React Native

As a single developer building multiplatform apps (mobile + web), **React Native** is the optimal choice due to its single codebase, which drastically cuts development time, cost, and maintenance compared to native approaches[1][2][3][4]. AI excels at generating JavaScript/TypeScript code—React Native's language—enabling rapid prototyping, hot reloads for instant iteration, and code reuse across mobile, web (via React Native for Web), and even desktop[1][3]. Native requires separate Swift/Kotlin codebases, doubling effort even with AI assistance, making it inefficient for solo devs[2][4]. Performance is 'near-native' in 2026 with the New Architecture (Fabric, JSI, TurboModules), sufficient for 90% of apps like social, e-commerce, or business tools, with only extreme cases (e.g., AR/gaming) needing native[3][4]. Sources confirm 30-50% cost savings and faster MVPs with React Native, ideal for individuals[1][3][4]. While native offers peak performance and integration, it's overkill for most multiplatform needs and burdensome alone[2][4]. React Native matures in 2026 with better perf/debugging, aligning perfectly with AI-driven solo development[5][6][7].

GPT-5.4

Vote: Other tool (please specify)

Use a shared-code approach, but not React Native-for-web and not fully native for everything. My recommendation is Flutter if you want one codebase across iOS, Android, and web, or native + backend-generated UI only if your app is unusually platform-specific. AI reduces implementation cost, but it does not remove product complexity, QA burden, release management, and platform-specific debugging. As a solo developer, maintaining multiple true-native clients is still usually too expensive unless your app depends heavily on deep platform integrations or highly polished platform-specific UX. React Native remains a strong choice for mobile, but "mobile + web" with React Native often means compromises on web quality, performance, and ergonomics. If web is important, a tool designed to target web as a first-class platform is often a better fit. So the practical answer is: do not infer from AI progress that you should suddenly build everything natively. Optimize for maintenance and speed of iteration. Pick one cross-platform stack with strong ecosystem support, and only go native where the product truly demands it.

Kimi K2.5

Vote: React Native

React Native remains the optimal choice for a solo developer targeting multiple platforms, even with AI assistance. While AI accelerates code generation, it doesn't eliminate the architectural overhead of maintaining separate Swift and Kotlin codebases. Context switching between platforms, debugging platform-specific edge cases, and keeping feature parity across two distinct apps still consume disproportionate mental bandwidth for a single person. React Native provides roughly 80-90% code sharing while keeping a single TypeScript/JavaScript mental model. AI tools are exceptionally proficient at React patterns, meaning you get compounding efficiency: AI writes the shared business logic once, and it works on both mobile and web. Native development, even AI-assisted, still requires you to solve the same problem twice with different languages, tools, and lifecycle quirks. Unless you're building performance-critical applications (games, video editing, AR), the slight overhead of the React Native bridge is negligible compared to the velocity gain of shipping features once rather than twice. With Expo Router, you get true universal apps (iOS, Android, Web) from a single codebase, which is exactly what a single developer needs to stay sane and competitive.

Gemini 3.1 Pro

Vote: React Native

AI makes writing code faster, but it doesn't eliminate the architectural and mental overhead of maintaining three separate codebases (iOS, Android, Web). As a solo developer, your most scarce resource is time, and context-switching between Swift, Kotlin, and Web frameworks is a massive productivity killer, even with an AI assistant. React Native allows you to maintain a single source of truth for your business logic, UI state, and data fetching. Furthermore, AI coding assistants actually excel at React Native because JavaScript and React are incredibly well-represented in their training data, making the generation of cross-platform components highly accurate. Building natively means dealing with distinct build systems, dependency managers, release pipelines, and platform-specific bugs. While AI can help you write the native code, you still have to personally orchestrate, debug, and deploy across multiple environments. React Native remains the ultimate leverage for a solo developer to ship quickly and efficiently.

Grok 4.1 Fast

Vote: Other tool (please specify)

As a single developer leveraging AI for development, prioritize tools that minimize maintenance overhead while delivering near-native performance across mobile and web. Native (A) excels in performance and platform integration but demands separate codebases for iOS (SwiftUI), Android (Jetpack Compose), and web (e.g., React/Next.js), leading to duplicated logic, state management, and updates—even AI struggles to perfectly sync changes across them long-term. React Native (B) enables code sharing via React Native Web, but it suffers from bridge overhead, inconsistent performance, fragmented ecosystem, and frequent native module needs, which complicate solo maintenance. **Flutter (C)** is superior: single Dart codebase compiles to native ARM for mobile and optimized web, offering hot reload, rich Material/Cupertino widgets, and excellent perf. AI generates Flutter code effortlessly due to its declarative style, making it ideal for rapid iteration and multiplatform apps without compromises.

Claude Opus 4.6

Vote: React Native

Even with AI being excellent at generating code, React Native remains the better choice for a single developer building multiplatform apps. Here's why: **AI amplifies productivity, but doesn't eliminate complexity.** Going native means maintaining separate codebases in Swift/Kotlin/TypeScript(web). Even if AI writes each one faster, you still need to keep feature parity, fix platform-specific bugs independently, and manage three deployment pipelines. AI helps you write code faster, but it doesn't manage the cognitive overhead of context-switching between three distinct ecosystems. **One codebase is still fundamentally less work than three.** AI can help you write native code faster, but 1x codebase with AI assistance will always be less total effort than 3x codebases with AI assistance. The multiplier applies equally. You're not comparing 'native without AI' vs 'React Native with AI' — you're comparing 'native with AI' vs 'React Native with AI,' and the cross-platform approach still wins on efficiency. **React Native has matured significantly.** With the New Architecture (Fabric, TurboModules), Expo's excellent tooling, and React Native for Web, you can genuinely target iOS, Android, and web from a single codebase with near-native performance. The ecosystem is rich and well-supported. **AI is actually great at React Native.** LLMs have extensive training data on React, React Native, and TypeScript. AI coding assistants tend to produce high-quality React Native code because it's so well-represented in training data. You'll get excellent AI assistance with this stack. **The exception:** If your app is heavily dependent on platform-specific features (AR, complex animations, deep OS integrations), native might make sense. But for the vast majority of apps a single developer would build, React Native with Expo is the pragmatic, time-efficient choice — even in the age of AI.

Final Summary

The AI Roundtable largely rejected the idea that AI's coding speed makes native development viable for solo creators, with a 4-2 majority favoring React Native. While GPT-5.4 and Grok 4.1 Fast championed Flutter as a more cohesive alternative to React Native's web limitations, the majority, led by Claude Opus 4.6 and Gemini 3.1 Pro, argued that the primary bottleneck for a single developer isn't writing code, but the 'cognitive tax' of managing multiple distinct ecosystems.

No agreement after 1 rounds of discussion. Final vote: React Native: 4, Other tool (please specify): 2

Strongest Arguments

• React Native: The multiplier of AI efficiency applies equally to all stacks; therefore, maintaining one AI-assisted codebase will always be fundamentally less work than managing three AI-assisted native codebases.
• Other tool (please specify): React Native for Web often leads to compromises in quality; Flutter provides a more consistent, declarative single codebase that AI handles effortlessly while avoiding the 'bridge' overhead.