How can React Native Reduce Mobile App Development Costs?
Imagine a scenario when you have a brilliant app idea. You are excited, maybe even a little impatient to see your app in reality on both the Google Play Store and App Store. However, when you receive a price quotation from a mobile app development company, your excitement suddenly vanishes, and you encounter a serious problem with budget reality.
Sounds familiar with your situation?
Here’s a mind-blowing fact that might surprise you: over 60% of the high app development costs come from building two separate apps for iOS and Android. That’s double the work, double the time, and yes, obviously, double the price.
But what if we tell you that you no longer need to build two apps separately?
What if one codebase could run on both platforms, save you months of work, and still deliver a smooth, native experience? That’s exactly what React Native offers.
It’s not just another trend, tech term, or language. It’s a real solution that both big and small companies are using to launch powerful apps without draining their resources.
In this blog, you will come across how React Native can cut your development costs and why it’s the best choice for various renowned brands. Other than this, you will also get to learn about what you should consider before hiring a team to bring your idea to life.
If you are willing to build a smarter, cheaper, and intuitive application. Let’s get started with React Native.
Recommended Read: Cost-effective Solutions with React Native App Development Companies
Factors Affecting Mobile App Development Cost
When you plan to build a mobile application, one of the first questions that strikes your mind is: “How much does it cost?” The honest reply is, that there’s no specific answer. The cost of mobile app development depends on several factors that can either increase or reduce your budget. A deep understanding of these factors can help you make better decisions or can also help you cut down unnecessary costs. Let’s look at the important factors given below:
App Complexity and Features
One of the primary factors that affects the app development cost is the number of features. As more features mean more time and resources, an app with basic functionality, such as a calculator or a to-do list, costs much less than as compared to a complex app with real-time tracking, chat systems, payment gateways, or AI integration.
Moreover, if you want to add push notifications, user authentication, or in-app purchases? Each of these adds to the development timeline and the price.
Platform Choice: Android, iOS, or Both
Decide whether you are developing an app for iOS, Android, or both. Developing a separate native application for both costs comparatively more than just building one.
This is where React Native development plays a critical role. React Native allows you to build user-friendly and engaging cross-platform mobile apps using a single codebase. This ensures faster development and lower costs, without compromising user experience on either platform.
UI/UX Design Requirements
By well-designed apps, we not only signify a pretty application, but we also consider an intuitive and user-friendly app. Custom animations, detailed graphics, and smooth transitions take more time to design and code, which adds to the cost.
If you are working with a mobile app development service provider, ask how they handle UI/UX design in React Native. The right team can help you achieve beautiful, consistent design across platforms without doubling the effort.
Backend Infrastructure
Certain apps require more than what the user experiences on the screen, they require strong backend systems to manage databases, user accounts, real-time syncing, or cloud storage. The stronger your backend, the more development time and expense.
Selecting tools and technologies that play nicely with React Native can help ease the process and lower backend-related costs.
Recommended Read: Top 7 backend technologies for mobile app development in 2025
App Maintenance and Updates
Your app journey doesn’t end at launch. Ongoing maintenance, updates, bug fixes, and OS compatibility improvements are all essential, and they come with a price tag.
The good news? With a React Native app, you’ll be maintaining just one codebase instead of two, which significantly reduces future maintenance costs.
Developer Location and Team Size
Where your development team is based has a lot of influence on costs. For example, it can be more expensive to hire a mobile app development company in Europe or the U.S. compared to having a team based in India or Southeast Asia.
Also, factor in the number of team members. Big teams will work quicker but at the cost of higher hourly bills. A cross-functional team-based React Native development company can provide greater value by efficiently working on both platforms.
Third-Party Integrations
If you are looking to integrate third-party tools such as Google Maps, Stripe, or a social media platform. Remember that such integration leads to an enhancement in your app but may require extra development time, especially if they need customization.
Luckily, React Native supports a wide range of plugins and libraries, which can simplify integration and lower costs compared to fully custom development.
These factors will surely help you make better decisions based on your budget and help you make smart choices about what features are essential now and what can wait for future updates. So, if you are planning to build a cost-friendly application, you must definitely consider React Native as it ensures the delivery of an app that performs exactly like a native application.
How Can React Native App Development Help One Save Costs
If you are planning to develop an application within your specified budget, React Native is one of the smartest choices you can make. But wondering how exactly it saves you money? Let’s look below to learn about it:
One Codebase, Two Platforms
One of the biggest advantages of React Native is the ability to write a single codebase for both iOS and Android. Instead of hiring two separate teams to build two apps, a React Native developer can build one app that works on both platforms, cutting development time and cost nearly in half.
Faster Time to Market
In this digital pron landscape, speed is considered an important factor. As with React Native, you can launch your app faster because developers spend less time writing duplicate code. This step not only reduces the development cost but also helps businesses start generating revenue sooner.
Lower Maintenance Costs
Once an application is completely developed, it requires regular updates and maintenance to keep it bug-free. At this stage, maintaining two separate apps can double your costs. But with React Native, you only need to manage a single app, which simplifies maintenance and reduces long-term expenses.
Pre-Built Components and Libraries
React Native offers a huge number of third-party libraries and ready-to-use components. It enables developers to add features quickly without building everything from scratch, saving money and time.
Smaller Team, Lower Costs
As React Native builds an app for both platforms, you no longer need two large teams. Even a small experienced team of mobile app developers can handle everything, making the project more affordable and user-friendly.
Hot Reloading = Faster Development
React Native’s unique hot reloading feature allows developers to instantly view changes in real-time. This feature allows developers to easily track errors and speed up the development cycle, ultimately reducing billable hours.
Finally, we can say that React Native is a budget-friendly, scalable, and time-saving platform that makes it the perfect solution for businesses and startups that want to build cross-platform mobile apps without overspending.
Recommended Read: How to Build and Deploy a React Native App in 2025: Expert Tips and Strategies
Popular Apps Developed Using React Native
Still, wondering if React Native is the perfect choice for your business or not? Look at some top-performing apps that are developed with React Native. These popular names in the market prove how powerful and flexible the framework is.
The creators of React Native use it themselves! Facebook’s mobile app uses React Native to deliver a smooth and responsive experience across both iOS and Android platforms. It’s a great example of how well the framework performs at scale.
Instagram is one of the most used social media platforms across the globe, especially by youngsters. This popular app partially uses React Native for various features such as push notifications and post promotions. This allowed the company to speed up feature rollouts while maintaining consistency.
Airbnb
Although Airbnb is one of the popular applications for booking vacation homes, it has recently shifted its tech stacks in recent years. It is one of the earliest adopters of React Native and uses it to develop key features across platforms quickly. It’s a powerful use case for how React Native can handle complex functionality and millions of users.
Walmart
Walmart is yet another large U.S. brand that resorted to React Native to enhance performance while cutting costs on development. It was implemented by them to consolidate their codebase and offer a homogeneous experience across mobile platforms.
Uber Eats
Segments of the Uber Eats mobile experience were implemented with React Native. This enables quicker updates and integration of certain features, such as restaurant dashboards and customer support tools.
Afterpay
One of Australia’s leading fintech apps, Afterpay, utilizes React Native for different aspects of its mobile app. It facilitates providing smooth experiences to consumers wishing to “buy now, pay later”, all the while reducing development time.
Myer
Myer, Australia’s largest department store chain, has utilized React Native for some of its mobile presence to provide quick and responsive shopping experiences across devices.
These testimonials indicate that React Native is not limited to small-scale projects. It’s a robust, versatile framework relied upon by top brands in Australia and the U.S. for developing high-quality, affordable mobile apps.
Detailed Cost Breakdown App Development Using React Native
If you want to know the actual cost of mobile app development, let me tell you that it depends on the specific requirements. In this section, you will get to learn about the rough cost breakdown of a typical app built with React Native to help you estimate your budget.
This table showcases the average costs based on different development stages:
| Development Stage | Description | Estimated Cost (US) |
|---|---|---|
| Requirement Analysis | Discussing goals, features, user needs, and platform requirements | $1,000 – $3,000 |
| UI/UX Design | Creating layouts, wireframes, and user interface elements | $2,000 – $5,000 |
| Front-End Development | Building the user-facing part using React Native | $5,000 – $15,000 |
| Back-End Development | Server setup, APIs, databases, and logic | $5,000 – $12,000 |
| Third-Party Integrations | Payment gateways, maps, social media, etc. | $1,000 – $5,000 |
| Testing & QA | Bug fixing, performance testing, cross-platform testing | $1,000 – $3,000 |
| Deployment (App Stores) | Submitting to Google Play & Apple App Store | $500 – $1,000 |
| Maintenance & Updates (Yearly) | Ongoing updates, patches, and OS support | $2,000 – $10,000 annually |
Total Estimated Cost for a Basic to Medium-Level React Native App: $15,000 – $50,000, depending on complexity, number of features, and platform needs.
React Native app development is considered the best approach as it ensures to reduce development time and cost by enabling a single codebase for both iOS and Android applications. React Native app development is comparatively cheaper than Native app development.
Final Words
Every business is trying to deliver quality mobile experiences without breaking the bank in today’s fast-paced digital world. This is where React Native app development stands out. It’s a popular choice for both new startups and large companies, as it offers the opportunity to build cross-platform applications with a single codebase while reducing time to market and ongoing maintenance.
A reliable React Native app development company can be the difference between developing a simple MVP and a full-fledged application. With the right team supporting you, you can take your app idea from concept to reality quickly, easily, and efficiently without sacrificing quality.
Moreover, React Native not only helps businesses save money, but it is also about developing a smarter platform. So, if you are looking to build a mobile application that looks great, performs well, and supports your business goals, understand that this is the perfect time to choose React Native.
0
