The Three Contenders

1. Native Development

You write platform-specific code — Kotlin/Java for Android, Swift for iOS — from scratch. Full access to every device API, best possible performance, and the platform's own design language out of the box.

The catch: you're maintaining two separate codebases (or one with Flutter/React Native, which brings its own trade-offs). A simple content change on your website doesn't automatically appear in the app — someone has to update the app code, rebuild, and resubmit. For a small team or solo founder, this is often the single biggest reason "let's build an app" quietly dies in the backlog.

2. PWA (Progressive Web App)

Your existing website gets a manifest.json, a service worker for offline caching, and suddenly browsers offer an "Install" prompt. No app store required — the site itself becomes installable.

The catch: platform support is uneven. iOS Safari has historically lagged behind Chrome on PWA capabilities, and — this is the part that trips people up — Google Play doesn't accept a PWA directly. To list it, you need a TWA (Trusted Web Activity) wrapper, which is essentially a thin native shell around your PWA. So "just make it a PWA" doesn't actually skip the native-wrapping step if your goal is Play Store distribution; it just moves it later.

3. WebView Wrapping

You take your existing site and load it inside a native WebView component within a real Android project. The build produces an actual APK/AAB — a genuine native app package, submittable to Google Play like any other app, but the "app" itself is your website rendered in a controlled browser context.

The catch: you're not getting deep native APIs unless you explicitly bridge them (camera, push notifications, biometrics — all possible, but need explicit native code on top). For content-driven sites, e-commerce, SaaS dashboards, or anything where the web experience is already good, this gap rarely matters in practice.

Where Each One Actually Wins

The honest takeaway: PWA and WebView aren't really competitors — they solve different problems. PWA is about making your website installable without a store at all. WebView is about getting a real store listing without a full native rewrite. If your actual goal is "I want my app in Google Play," WebView gets you there in one step; PWA gets you there in two (PWA + TWA wrapper).

The Underrated Failure Mode

Here's what doesn't show up in comparison charts: most "convert my site to an app" projects don't die because the tech doesn't work. They die because of the boring parts after the build — generating a privacy policy that satisfies Google Play's requirements, producing store-compliant screenshots and feature graphics, filling out the Data Safety form correctly, picking a content rating. None of that is hard individually, but it's exactly the kind of checklist work that stalls a side project for weeks.

Where This Leaves You

If your app's value is mostly your existing website — a WordPress site, a SaaS dashboard, an e-commerce store — a WebView-based build gets you a real, listable APK without touching Android Studio or maintaining a second codebase. That's the exact gap KotApp automates: point it at a URL, and a GitHub Actions pipeline produces a signed, ready-to-submit APK/AAB on the other end.

If your app genuinely needs deep native integration — background location, complex camera pipelines, heavy offline-first architecture — native is still the right call, and no wrapper will substitute for it.

Pick based on what your app actually needs to do, not on which approach sounds most impressive in a pitch deck.