Compare expo vs react-native for frameworks use cases, including package popularity, downloads, ecosystem fit, and practical tradeoffs.
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Expo is the officially recommended framework for building production React Native apps. It gives you everything you need to design, develop, and ship universal apps for Android, iOS, and the web from a single codebase — the SDK, the router, the build and update infrastructure, and the tooling — all open source and production-tested.
You write your app in React with TypeScript or JavaScript; Expo handles the rest: a Metro-powered dev server with fast refresh, file-based routing that works the same on every platform, and a curated SDK of native modules you can drop in. From there, choose your own path — ship straight to the App Store and Play Store without ever opening Xcode or Android Studio, or reach for development builds and custom native code when your app needs to go further.
Built and maintained in the open by the Expo team and a community of thousands of contributors.
Create a new app and start the dev server:
npx create-expo-app@latest my-app
cd my-app
npx expo start
Then open the app on a simulator, a device with Expo Go, or the web. See the official Quick Start guide for a full walkthrough.
Already have a React Native app? Add Expo to it with install-expo-modules:
npx install-expo-modules@latest
Expo is a collection of tools and services that work together, but each piece is independently useful.
A large set of first-party, cross-platform modules covering device APIs, media, storage, and system services — expo-camera, expo-image, expo-notifications, expo-file-system, expo-sqlite, expo-sensors, and many more.
Every module is opt-in, fully typed, and maintained by the Expo team — install only what you need with npx expo install, and your bundle stays as small as your app demands.
A file-based router for universal navigation across Android, iOS, and the web. Drop a file into app/ and you have a route — with typed paths, automatic deep linking, and universal-link config generated for you. Layouts, modals, tabs, and stacks compose as React components and look the same on every platform.
Under the hood it builds on react-native-screens for true native navigators on mobile, plus a real router on the web. It also brings a fullstack story to React Native: API routes and static rendering for SEO-friendly web builds.
A modern Swift and Kotlin API for writing native modules — and the foundation the entire Expo SDK and a growing ecosystem of third-party libraries are built on.
You describe a module declaratively: functions, properties, native views, and lifecycle events all live in a small Swift or Kotlin DSL. The framework handles type coercion and the calls between JavaScript and native automatically — no Objective-C, no Java, no C++, no JNI, no boilerplate. Scaffold a new module in seconds with npx create-expo-module@latest, ship it as a regular npm package, and have it picked up by Expo's autolinking on iOS and Android.
Expo UI — a set of truly native UI components backed by SwiftUI on iOS and Jetpack Compose on Android. Use platform controls (pickers, switches, sliders, menus, …) that look and feel exactly like the rest of the OS, from React.
Mark a React component with "use dom" and Expo will render it as web content inside your native app — perfect for incrementally migrating web code or reusing a React web component on mobile. Learn more.
Your ios/ and android/ folders are generated, not maintained. Describe your native config in app.json and config plugins; run npx expo prebuild to materialize the projects on demand. Upgrades, package additions, and native customizations all flow through the same declarative pipeline — no more merge conflicts in native code.
Expo Application Services — hosted infrastructure for shipping React Native apps:
EAS is optional, but the fastest path from git push to the store.
npx expo install.Bug reports, fixes, and improvements are very welcome. See CONTRIBUTING for how to set up this package locally, and the repo-wide contributing guide for general guidelines.
The Expo source code is made available under the MIT License.
The API and real-time application framework
CLI tool to initialize a React Native application with Expo. Provides options to include Typescript, file-based routing via Expo Router, configuration based routing via pure React Navigation, styling via Nativewind, Restyle, Unistyles, StyleSheets, or Tamagui, and/or backend as a service such as Firebase and Supabase.
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CLI tool to initialize a React Native application with Expo. Provides options to include Typescript, file-based routing via Expo Router, configuration based routing via pure React Navigation, styling via Nativewind, Restyle, Unistyles, StyleSheets, or Tamagui, and/or backend as a service such as Firebase and Supabase.
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