Why we think Flutter will help us scale mobile development at Nubank

Nubank, Latin America's largest digital bank, faced a critical scaling problem: too many tech stacks, not enough mobile developers, and teams blocked by platform specialization.

In 2019, Nubank assembled a task force to evaluate Flutter, React Native, and Kotlin Native against 11 criteria. They ran usability tests with engineers at all levels, built production features, and analyzed long-term viability to make a data-driven decision.

Key Takeaways

• Evaluated 3 platforms using usability tests, production experiments, and 11 criteria
• Flutter won on testing infrastructure, developer experience, and hot reload capabilities
• React Native had more dependencies and vulnerability to breaking changes
• Launched Rewards program transfer feature in Flutter with millions of users
• Made full research report publicly available for other teams to learn from

The usability test results revealed surprising differences in how engineers at every level handled increasingly complex tasks across the three platforms.