This is the first architectural decision on a mobile project and the most expensive one to reverse, so it is worth more than a preference.
When cross-platform is right
Most business apps. If the screens are lists, forms, content and dashboards, and the hard problems are in your data model rather than in the device, a single codebase on both stores is straightforwardly cheaper — to build and, more importantly, to keep maintained.
Four of the five apps we have shipped took this route.
When native is worth it
When the platform is the product surface: a camera app doing sustained capture and processing, anything relying on background location, deep OS integration (widgets, extensions, complications), or a case where profiling shows the framework bridge is the actual bottleneck.
“It will feel more native” is not on its own a sufficient reason in 2026. The gap has narrowed to the point where users do not reliably notice it on standard UI.
The answer nobody likes
Sometimes it is one native app, not two of anything. If the overwhelming majority of your users are on one platform, building well for that platform and waiting is often better than building mediocrely for both.