I built the same iOS & Android app five times to measure what sharing code really costs
Most "should we go cross-platform?" debates are fought with opinions. I wanted numbers. So I built the same app five times. Each version is an iOS app and an Android app with the same product, data and screens. The only thing that changes is how code is shared between the two platforms : Shares UI on iOS / Android Native baseline nothing SwiftUI / Compose, written twice Rust + UniFFI logic…
A reporter conducted an experiment to measure the cost of sharing code between iOS and Android apps. The app was built five times, with each version using a different method to share code between the two platforms. The methods included SwiftUI/Compose, Swift, Rust, React Native, and Skip Lite. The report highlights the trade-offs of each method, such as the added runtime, coordination between SDKs, and duplicated logic.
The report concludes that sharing logic reduces the amount of code in the apps, but the runtime still separates them. The report also notes that while some methods may feel more familiar or easier to work with, none of them remove the inherent cost of sharing code between platforms.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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