I asked this on a previous React Native thread, and I’m still curious: is RN (on mobile, as that’s where it’s currently used) actually faster than something like PhoneGap? Are there any benchmarks or demos? Anyone got any anecdotes of a like-for-like comparison?

I’m skeptical (though certainly willing to be convinced) because RN runs your JS application in a separate thread from the UI, with a rather expensive bridge sending JSON messages back and forth. That seems to me a poor design choice.

Browsers have the downside of working with the complex DOM that doesn’t map as well to native widgets. But browsers are mature and highly optimized. So I would guess that performance might be a wash.