Native, Web, or Hybrid: Which Mobile App Is Right for You?

In the consumer realm, the term “mobile app” assumes that an application is intended to work on a mobile device. In the software developer’s world, there is much more to consider.

Once the decision to develop a mobile application has been made, the first technical questions related to the project usually concern what platforms to develop it for and how to approach to building it.

Today, the platform question is simpler than it used to be: iOS and Android are the two platforms that matter, together covering nearly all mobile users worldwide. Windows Phone, once considered a minor third platform, was discontinued by Microsoft and is no longer relevant to new mobile development. For most projects, targeting iOS and Android covers your audience. I think this decision is an easy one. At the technical level, a typical second question is, what type of application should it be: native, web or hybrid? This is a very important consideration, and the answer depends on your goals.

Let’s take a look at the three types of mobile applications in greater detail.

Native Applications

Native applications are developed using platform-specific programming languages and frameworks. Swift is Apple’s current, recommended language for iOS development (Objective-C still exists in older codebases but is rarely the starting point for new apps), while Kotlin has become Google’s preferred language for Android, alongside Java. All of these languages and their development environments are free to use.

For cross-platform native development, the landscape has shifted since Xamarin: Microsoft retired Xamarin in 2024 in favor of .NET MAUI, its direct successor, which lets C#/.NET developers build native apps for iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows from a shared codebase. Outside the .NET ecosystem, React Native (JavaScript) and Flutter (Dart) have become the most widely used cross-platform native frameworks, each letting you write one codebase that compiles to genuinely native apps on both platforms.

One of the main benefits of native app development is that performance is maximized. When we discuss performance, we mean the ability of a mobile app to use a particular device’s memory, CPU, graphics and user interface at maximum capacity. Being able to adapt to a device’s user interface (UI) is one of the important benefits that native development offers. With a native application, users operate with the standard graphic elements – including lists, tabs, toggles, calendar and date/time – available on the platform used by their phones or tablets. Native development gives users the best possible UI responsiveness in mobile applications.

Sensors like the GPS, accelerometers, compasses, gestures, contacts and cameras, can be accessed and used in the mobile application in the most effective way on the device’s platform.

Mobile applications that require extensive use of sensors, gestures and cameras are usually developed as native apps. Applications for communications such as voice, video, chat or navigators normally use the native approach, since this is the best way to achieve good results.

The main disadvantage of native development for mobile platforms is that a separate application needs to be developed, almost from scratch, for each platform. For example, the code that implements the application logic and user interface screens needs to be written separately for each platform. Thus, if you need your mobile application developed for two or three platforms, you will need different development teams with specialized programming skills to develop each version of the app.

Developing with Xamarin is a bit of a different story. For business applications, Xamarin can be a good choice. Xamarin tools allow you to develop a single application that can be written in the same programming language by the same development and QA team since about 75% of the application’s code is common to all platforms. Only the UI elements associated with the different platforms will require additional effort to implement in the mobile app when you develop with Xamarin.

Mobile Web Applications

The products we refer to as web apps are not actually applications. They are websites wrapped into your mobile device’s web browser that mimic the look and feel of a native application on your device. Even though they look like normal applications, the code is usually written in HTML5, the standard markup language used for web pages. Sometimes web apps are very hard to distinguish from other native applications on your phone or tablet. You can navigate between screens, and these applications often also support basic gestures and other native functions. However, on screens with lots of UI elements, you may start noticing a slight delay or lag in the amount of time your device takes to display information on its screen.

Typical web applications can include news applications and basic search apps, for instance, realty property search applications, catalogue list applications. Usually, web applications appear identical on different platforms. If a web app uses the iOS look and feel, then it will work just fine on iOS, unless there are radical UI changes in the iOS user interface. When a platform rolls out a significant visual redesign, native applications generally inherit those changes automatically, while web apps can start to look dated until they’re specifically updated to match. Additional effort was required to adapt older mobile apps to the new UI. Moreover, Android web app users may sometimes have to get used to the iOS look and feel as well. For many people, it’s a very sad thing to have to learn to operate the UI in a mobile app from an alien platform.

The benefit of web apps is that development costs and the time required for distribution are reduced. These types of applications are developed and tested only once for use on multiple platforms. Once tested, the application is ready for use on iOS, Android and Windows. In addition, the time required to deliver your business idea via a web application tends to be minimal. Once developed and distributed, the same look and feel can be applied to versions of the application designed for different platforms. In addition, any bug fixes or modifications can be done bypassing tedious and time-consuming routine of re-submitting the application to different marketplaces as Apple AppStore, Google Play, Microsoft Windows Store.

There are a few disadvantages of web apps. In many cases, web applications require Internet connections to function. These applications also can’t make use of the full range of available sensors, cameras and other native features now available on many mobiles. Further, performance and UI consistency of these applications are also weak points.

Hybrid Applications

Hybrid applications are basically web applications with the capacity to natively access hardware-related cell phones features, such as GPS, gestures, cameras, and contacts. Because the development of this type of application assumes that the major task is web development and the minor task is native development, they are referred to as hybrid apps. In my experience, the hybrid ratio is normally about 70% web development to 30% native development for a mobile application.

Apache Cordova remains a maintained, open-source option for hybrid app development. Adobe’s PhoneGap, once Cordova’s main alternative, was discontinued in 2020. Today, the more common path for this kind of “mostly one codebase, with native access where needed” approach is React Native or Flutter (mentioned above), which have largely become the default choice for teams building cross-platform apps that need both broad code sharing and genuine native performance.

In many cases, hybrid mobile applications are extended versions of existing websites that are adapted to work on mobile platforms. For example, if the existing website does require an image upload to the web server, uploading and browsing will not be functional on mobile devices without additional native development. Such tasks require native programming to embed integration between the web and the device’s native platform in order for the mobile application to work properly.

Hybrid applications have similar advantages and disadvantages as web apps. Typical hybrid applications can include the same types of applications as are developed for the web, including functionality for accessing webshops, simple GPS-related applications, etc. The part of the app that requires access to the device’s specific features can be implemented natively for each platform.

So what should you choose?

It’s totally up to you, and you should take some time to make the right choice. List your targets for the mobile app you have in mind and prioritize the items in the list. This should help you make the correct move in terms of the type of app you want to develop. If you’re still in doubt, contact Diatom and we’ll help you make the right choice.