"Should I use SwiftUI or React Native?" — I've been giving vague "it depends" answers to this question for years, mostly because I didn't have confident data to back up a stronger position.
So at the start of 2026, I ran an experiment. I built the exact same app in both SwiftUI and React Native using Rork Max, then measured development speed, code volume, runtime performance, and maintainability. This is the report.
Experiment Design: Same Spec, Different Stacks
The test app: a wallpaper collection app — a genre I've shipped and maintained personally, so I could control the requirements precisely.
Features implemented:
- Wallpaper grid (infinite scroll, category filters)
- Wallpaper detail view (full-screen, save to Photos)
- Favorites management (persistent)
- Subscription (RevenueCat integration)
- Push notifications (Firebase)
Both implementations had the same time budget: two weeks each, 2–3 Rork Max sessions per day.
SwiftUI Implementation: How Rork Max Performed
Rork Max's SwiftUI support was, frankly, quite good. Standard patterns like LazyVGrid with infinite scroll came out nearly complete from a single prompt:
// Ask Rork Max for "a wallpaper grid with category filters" and you get:
struct WallpaperGridView: View {
@StateObject private var viewModel = WallpaperGridViewModel()
@State private var selectedCategory: WallpaperCategory = .all
let columns = [
GridItem(.flexible()),
GridItem(.flexible()),
GridItem(.flexible())
]
var body: some View {
NavigationStack {
ScrollView {
CategoryFilterBar(selected: $selectedCategory)
.onChange(of: selectedCategory) { _, newValue in
viewModel.filter(by: newValue)
}
LazyVGrid(columns: columns, spacing: 2) {
ForEach(viewModel.wallpapers) { wallpaper in
WallpaperThumbnail(wallpaper: wallpaper)
.onAppear {
viewModel.loadMoreIfNeeded(current: wallpaper)
}
}
}
}
}
}
}That level of completeness in one prompt is genuinely impressive. That said, two real problems came up.
Problem 1: Outdated Swift Concurrency patterns. Generated code used async/await, but @MainActor annotations sometimes appeared in old-style patterns, with occasional DispatchQueue.main.async mixed in. This required manual correction in several places.
Problem 2: StoreKit 2 handling was incomplete. RevenueCat integration worked cleanly, but direct StoreKit 2 usage sometimes produced code that mixed StoreKit 1 and 2 patterns. Adding "use RevenueCat only, no direct StoreKit calls" to .agents.md fixed this.
Two-week completion: feature implementation 95%, test coverage 70%.
React Native Implementation: How Rork Max Performed
The React Native build used Expo Router v3 as its foundation. Rork Max's React Native support is solid, but the ecosystem's library diversity created a different challenge: without explicit guidance, library choices varied session to session.
Asking for "a wallpaper grid" without constraints produced FlatList-based code one session, FlashList another, and a custom ScrollView wrapper in a third.
// What I added to .agents.md to solve this:
// List rendering: @shopify/flash-list only (FlatList prohibited)
// Navigation: expo-router v3 only (react-navigation prohibited)
// State: Zustand (Redux prohibited)
// Styling: NativeWind v4 (StyleSheet prohibited)After adding these constraints, generated code consistency improved dramatically.
One genuine strength of React Native here: business logic testability. Since logic is plain TypeScript, Jest unit tests were significantly easier to write than in SwiftUI. The favorites management logic was fully tested in a single session.
Problem 1: Native module configuration. Firebase push notification setup broke because google-services.json placement and app.json settings were out of sync. Rork Max couldn't resolve this — it required manual troubleshooting against the official documentation.
Problem 2: Performance tuning limits. Scrolling through 100+ images caused frame drops. Rork Max offered memo, useCallback, and other suggestions, but none addressed the root cause. The actual fix — fully migrating to FlashList and adding FastImage — was a judgment call I had to make myself.
Two-week completion: feature implementation 90%, test coverage 75%.
Comparison Results Across Six Metrics
Development speed: SwiftUI slightly faster (same feature: SwiftUI ~1.5 hrs vs React Native ~2 hrs). Rork Max's SwiftUI comprehension is high — first-attempt completeness is better.
Code volume: React Native smaller (SwiftUI ~2,800 lines vs React Native ~2,100 lines). Swift's type and UI declaration verbosity accounts for most of the difference.
Launch time (real device): SwiftUI clearly faster (cold start: SwiftUI 0.8s vs React Native 1.4s). Perceptible difference in everyday use.
Scroll performance: SwiftUI smoother. React Native with FlashList comes close, but LazyVGrid benefits from more automatic optimization under the hood.
Maintainability: Roughly equal. Swift's type safety gives a slight edge in theory, but React Native's ecosystem has enough poorly-typed libraries that the practical advantage narrows.
Android/cross-platform potential: React Native wins decisively. Building for both platforms from one codebase is a massive advantage for solo developers.
When to Choose Each: Scenario-Based Recommendations
This experiment confirmed "it depends" is technically correct — but I now have concrete criteria behind it.
Choose SwiftUI when: iOS-only, peak performance matters, you want deep Apple platform integration (WidgetKit, Live Activities, WatchKit), or your team is Swift-fluent.
Choose React Native when: iOS + Android both needed, your team knows TypeScript, you want to share logic with a web service, or cross-platform expansion is in the roadmap.
My personal policy going forward: Apple-differentiated apps where first-class iOS features drive the value → SwiftUI. Multi-platform apps where reach matters more than native depth → React Native.
Rork Max improves development speed meaningfully for both stacks. But you get the most benefit when you've locked down your stack and rules in .agents.md before your first session. Without that foundation, you spend time correcting inconsistent library choices instead of building features.
The most important step before starting with Rork Max isn't deciding what to build — it's deciding how you'll build it.