Well-Known Apps Built with React Native, and What They Teach You

"Is React Native used by anyone serious?" usually means "Is it safe to bet my company on it?" The fair way to answer is with evidence: apps you've probably used this week, and what their teams have said publicly about how they built them.

Below are well-known React Native app examples, grouped by what they teach. Everything here comes from the official React Native showcase or the companies' own engineering writing, not from rumours or "list of 50 apps" posts. I'll finish with what these examples mean for a startup, which is a different situation from Meta's.

Key takeaways

• The official React Native showcase lists apps from Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Shopify and Wix, including Facebook, Instagram, Microsoft Office, Outlook, Teams, Amazon Shopping, Alexa and Kindle.
• Shopify states that all of its mobile apps are built with React Native, a whole-company bet rather than one screen.
• Most big companies use React Native inside existing native apps (brownfield), adding shared screens and features over time.
• Discord and Bluesky show consumer apps with demanding performance running on React Native, Bluesky openly on Expo.
• The lesson for startups isn't "Meta uses it, so it's good". It's that React Native scales from one developer to very large teams without a rewrite.

The official showcase

The React Native website keeps a short list of companies and apps. Here's what it includes:

Lesson 1: brownfield is how giants adopt it (Meta, Microsoft, Amazon)

None of these companies rewrote their flagship apps from scratch. They added React Native inside existing native apps, feature by feature, where shared code across iOS and Android paid off most. Facebook Marketplace is the famous example inside Facebook.

What it means for you: if you already have native apps, you don't need a big-bang migration. You can build new features once in React Native and ship them inside both native apps.

Lesson 2: a whole company can standardise on it (Shopify)

Shopify went further and moved all of its mobile apps to React Native, from the consumer Shop app to the merchant Point of Sale app. Their engineering team wrote publicly about the decision: one technology, shared knowledge across teams, and engineers who can work on mobile and web.

What it means for you: standardising on React Native and React for web lets a small team behave like a bigger one. The same people can move between the app, the website and the admin tools.

Lesson 3: desktop is on the table too (Microsoft)

Microsoft maintains React Native for Windows and macOS and uses React Native in Office and other desktop experiences. Meta lists Messenger Desktop on the showcase.

What it means for you: if you'll ever need a desktop app, React Native gives you a path that reuses your mobile knowledge.

Lesson 4: performance-sensitive consumer apps work (Discord, Bluesky)

Discord's iOS app has used React Native for years, and the company wrote about how it achieved native-level performance with it. Bluesky's social app, a fast-moving consumer product, is open source and built with React Native and Expo, so you can read exactly how a modern React Native app is structured.

What it means for you: feeds, chat, media and real-time updates aren't off-limits. Performance comes from engineering choices (list virtualisation, image handling, startup work), not from avoiding the framework.

From the field: I've used React Native for the same kinds of products at a smaller scale: real-time chat and collaboration for 100K+ concurrent users with Socket.IO and Redis, offline-first workout tracking for an app with 100K+ active users, and live Bluetooth heat maps at 60fps. The framework wasn't the limit in any of them.

What these examples don't tell you

A few honest caveats:

• Big companies have big teams. Meta and Microsoft can afford native specialists alongside React Native developers. A startup should still plan for some native work.
• "Uses React Native" can mean one screen. In brownfield apps, parts of the app are native and parts are React Native. That's a feature, not a weakness.
• Their constraints aren't yours. They optimise for hundreds of engineers. You're optimising for shipping with a few. React Native fits both, for different reasons.

Why this matters for a startup

For a new product, the argument isn't prestige. It's practical:

Open-source React Native examples to learn from

Showcase apps tell you what's possible; open-source code shows you how. Bluesky's mobile and web app is open source and built with React Native and Expo, which makes it one of the best real-world codebases to read. Expo's examples repository has small, focused projects for specific features, and npx create-expo-app@latest with the default template gives you a working app with tabs and navigation to build on.

FAQ

Which famous apps use React Native?

The official React Native showcase lists Facebook, Instagram, Messenger Desktop, Microsoft Office, Outlook, Teams, Xbox Game Pass, Amazon Shopping, Alexa, Kindle and all of Shopify's mobile apps, among others. Discord and Bluesky are other well-known examples with public engineering writing or code.

Is Instagram built with React Native?

Instagram appears on the official React Native showcase under Meta, which uses React Native in parts of its apps. Like most large apps, it combines native code and React Native, adding React Native for shared features rather than rebuilding the whole app.

Do big companies still use React Native in 2026?

Yes. Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Shopify and Wix are all listed on the official showcase, Microsoft maintains React Native for Windows and macOS, and the framework moved fully to its New Architecture in version 0.82. It remains one of the most actively developed mobile frameworks.

Can a startup build its whole app with React Native?

Yes. Shopify and Wix build entire app suites with it, and many startups run their whole product on React Native and Expo, adding native modules in Swift or Kotlin only where a feature needs them.

Next steps

If you're deciding whether React Native is the right bet for your product, I'm happy to look at your requirements and give you an honest answer. Get in touch, or see how I work as a React Native developer.

Sources

• React Native showcase, React Native
• React Native is the future of mobile at Shopify, Shopify Engineering
• How Discord achieves native iOS performance with React Native, Discord
• Bluesky social app source code, GitHub
• React Native for Windows and macOS, Microsoft
• React Native 0.82 release, React Native blog