Every marketplace team that decides to go mobile eventually ends up in the same meeting. Someone says "Flutter", someone else says "React Native", and the next forty minutes turn into a benchmark debate.

I want to suggest a different approach: treat the framework choice like an architecture decision record (ADR). Write down the context, list the drivers, score the options against your constraints and then validate with a small spike. That way the decision is something your team can defend in a year, not just a vibe from a conference talk.

Below is a decision framework for marketplace apps specifically, because marketplaces have a particular mix of needs: listing feeds, image-heavy screens, checkout, vendor onboarding and payments.

Context: why this decision is expensive

Most marketplace users discover and use the product on their phones, so a mobile app is rarely optional. Flutter and React Native are both mature cross-platform frameworks that let you ship iOS and Android from a single codebase.…