HYBRID APPS VS NATIVE APPS: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

4 min readAug 9, 2022

For business owners, the idea of creating an app for one’s business may seem like an excellent idea. Knowing the difference between hybrid and native mobile apps is the first step to helping figure out what type of app would eventually move the business forward. This is especially so in the age of the internet where applications are just about everywhere and digital marketing is the main mode of advertising.

What Are Hybrid Apps?

Hybrid applications are a combination of both native applications and web applications. Hybrid apps run offline on the devices. Hybrid apps are written by using the web technologies like HTML5 and CSS.

Hybrid apps are designed in a way to render the existing website’s content in an application format. Hybrid applications can be accessed from a web browser and can also be downloaded from an app store. Like web applications, hybrid apps are written in JavaScript and HTML5. Hybrid apps require less maintenance. The speed of a hybrid app is entirely dependent on the speed of the browser, so hybrid apps are never as fast as native apps.

Advantages of hybrid apps

The benefits of hybrid apps are listed as follows –

Hybrid apps can work on various platforms. It means that they can operate on both iOS and Android, as they have a single code base. Since developers have to create a single codebase.
The maintenance and development of hybrid applications are simple.
The development of Hybrid applications is cheaper than the native application.

Disadvantages of the hybrid applications

The limitations of hybrid apps are as follows –

Requirement of an uninterrupted internet connection to work.
They are slower than the native applications.

What Are Native Apps?

A native app is a type of software or program that has been developed to carry out a very specific task within a particular platform or environment. Native apps are built using software development tools (also known as SDK) for specific software frameworks, hardware platforms, or operating systems. Native applications are the applications of smartphones that are specifically designed for mobile operating systems. For instance, Swift for iOS, Java, and Kotlin for Android.

Advantages of Native apps

The benefits of native applications are listed as follows –

We can download and install these applications on a device from the Google play store or App store. These applications are accessed by the icons on the home screen.
Native applications are the fastest and provide a reliable experience to the user.
Native applications can take advantage of mobile features such as GPS, camera, compass, contacts list, and many more.
Native applications can work offline by using the notification system of the device. It can be done by using push notifications and by alerting the users whenever there is a new piece of content is published, or if the user’s attention is required.

Disadvantages of Native apps

The limitations of using the native applications are listed as follows –

Native applications developed on one platform will not run on another platform. These applications are particularly developed for one platform.
A large amount of budget is required to develop a native application that will be compatible with multiple platforms (such as iOS and Android) and to keep the native application updated. The updating of the native applications can be done on the App Store or Google play store.
The maintenance of native applications is higher.

Now, let’s see the comparison chart between hybrid applications and Native applications. We are comparing both terms based on some characteristics.