Top Popular Apps Built With React Native In 2024

Introduction

React Native is one of the most popular frameworks for developing native apps for Android and iOS. It was developed by the Facebook team as a modern solution for developing native (or, more specifically, native-like) apps for multiple platforms with one codebase. It is a JavaScript-based framework specifically used in the development of applications for two prominent platforms – Android & iOS.

React Native application development gained widespread popularity due to its versatility in helping developers cross-platform apps with one codebase.

It is built on top of Facebook’s React JS library, with the enhanced capability to develop native apps. The speed at which applications can be developed is a crucial factor nowadays. React keeps up with the current fast-paced era of app development. Therefore, React Native development has gained widespread popularity, making it the second most used framework in recent times.

It empowers over 10+ million websites (including web apps) across the globe – from small to the world’s most powerful tech giants – including Walmart, Tesla, Facebook, etc. Read on to learn about top companies using React Native.

React Native: An Excellent Solution for Multi-platform App Development

With rapidly evolving technology, many businesses often struggle to manage their application to keep up with the latest trends. Without a doubt, native apps have much better performance and offer better performance than hybrid apps, but they are very expensive, not to mention long deployment times.

In today’s digital era, apps come with an overwhelming number of features to help businesses communicate with their target customers and promote and sell their services and products, etc.

However, app development is expensive, mainly when you aim to develop a multi-platform app that can run on two prominent platforms – Android and iOS. In this case, react native proves to be the best solution for millions of companies across the globe.

It enables rapid app development and significantly contributes to app development cost reduction. Here are some top companies that use React Native owing to its versatile nature.

Why React Native a Popular Choice in Mobile App Development

• You can develop apps without employing a separate team of native developers.
• React-Native apps are almost as fast as Native apps in terms of performance.
• You can combine Native components and React Native to develop a robust and scalable application.
• It is backed by Facebook and a large community of developers, making it the sixth most popular framework for app development, as per the Stack Overflow developers survey 2022.
• React Native has excellent features, such as live reload and reusable components, that dramatically improve the development process.
• Businesses can get their developed in less time for multiple platforms.

Top Companies Using React Native

1. Bloomberg

Bloomberg used it a long back in 2016, with the launch of a revamped app for iOS and Android platforms. The company employed React Native to introduce features such as personalized content, videos, and live feeds.

Before React Native, Bloomberg teams “would have developed the iOS and Android versions in parallel without being able to share most of the code they wrote, leading to delays and repetition,” Lew explains. By comparison, the React Native platform’s unified development capabilities made for a seamless process that allowed each developer to focus on one feature at a time.

2. Facebook

Facebook is the world’s most popular social media platform that connects users across the globe and allows them to interact with each other.

It is obvious Facebook would use it as it developed it. Initially, Facebook developed it for the iOS platform to implement modern web techniques in the mobile development. Sooner after a few months, the company released it for Android app development, making it a cross-platform technology.

Facebook ads manager is entirely built using React Native, while the company used native code and React Native JavaScript in its Facebook Group app.

3. Discord

Discord is a popular instant messaging platform that allows a group of users or community to connect over chat, calls, or video calls. It has more than 200 million monthly active users. It has 4.7 stars and 4.5 stars on the App Store and Google Play Store, respectively, and it is a 99.9% crash-free app.

As stated in the blog published by the Discord team:

React Native has been instrumental in allowing us to achieve this with a team of only three core iOS engineers!

As per the blog post, React Native helped the development team in two ways – firstly, they were able to write applications by using a significant amount of the same code for its Android and iOS app development. Secondly, the app’s performance was remarkably improved.

4. Wix

Image source: Medium

Wix is a popular website builder platform that includes web design and hosting services to let users create a website quickly using their website design services. It was among the companies that were early adopters of React Native.

It all started in 2015 when the Wix mobile team was small, with only 4 team members. They decided to implement react for the reasons as follows:

• To make their mobile app more efficient
• To develop the app in less time
• To develop the significant part of the app using single code (the team shares over 95% of the business logic codebase for iOS and Android)
• To build a scalable application

The Wix app has undergone several changes, and a large number of features were added within a short period of time, leveraging React Native.

5. Pinterest

Pinterest is an image-sharing and social platform where you can explore new ideas and save them.

Speaking of Pinterest, initially, the company chose React Native due to its so-called capability of enabling developers to create native-like apps for Android and iOS platforms using a common codebase.

As per the company’s blog, the implementation of React Native resulted in increased development and reduced development costs. 

6. Walmart

Walmart is the world’s leading online retail store. It provides users with a website and top-notch mobile apps to shop from their homes.

They switched to React Native to build a scalable application with the growing number of smartphone users. They took advantage of React Native in their Android and iOS app development.

Walmart migrated to React Native in order to increase the development velocity. Also, The company has observed better performance in page transition and a native feel across the app.

7. Instagram

Instagram is another popular example of reacting powered application. It has over 2 billion active users monthly, making it 4th most popular social media platform in the globe in 2023.

After incorporating RN into its Facebook mobile app and Facebook Ads Manager, Meta leveraged its own developed technology to its third platform – Instagram.

They shipped various features to the Instagram app using React Native, like revamping the then-existing edit profile UI, adding a push notification feature, and the product development team used in building various core components.

8. Soundcloud

The team published a blog mentioning why they adopted React Native:

The main driver for us at SoundCloud to use React Native was the lack of enough mobile engineers to start development on a new mobile app.

They adopted React Native to build its SoundCloud Pulse within five months after Facebook made it open-source. Since it was hard to find iOS developers, they didn’t want to have a gap of months in-between the launch of the Android and iOS apps.

9. Flipkart

Search/Browse is built with react-native, an infinite list of heterogeneous items.

Flipkart is an Indian online shopping portal with 150+ million active users per month.  The app holds a 4.3-star rating and has over 500 million downloads so far.

Flipkart has bulit various components on its homepage with React Native. Though, optimized native apps always exceed react-native apps. The company chose React as one of the tech stacks to enhance the app, keeping the factors below in mind.

• It would not degrade the performance, and they found it quite true. The app’s performance didn’t degrade even after using a significant amount of code.
• Parallel usage of the native components, along with leveraging the React Native features.
• Ability to push minor changes and OTA instantly

10. Facebook Messenger Desktop

Until mid-2020, Meta's Messenger Desktop relied on Electron, but its large size and sluggish startup times, particularly on low-end devices, made them switch to React Native. This change resulted in a significant reduction in the app's final binary size by over 100MB on both macOS and Windows, leading to a 50% improvement in loading speeds. 

Additionally, Meta reports a 15% and 67% decrease in app crashes on macOS and Windows, respectively. This successful migration showcases the potential of React Native for building performant desktop applications, as evidenced by the improved Messenger Desktop experience.

Meta reports in their blog that

App loading time was reduced by 50 percent for the great majority of their users on macOS and Windows by using React Native. Application crashes have reduced by 15 percent on macOS and 67 percent on Windows.

Facebook messenger desktop app is prime exmaple of React Native apps.

Conclusion