The short answer
- You want sign-in, subscriptions, push and analytics working this week, with the providers you choose: ReadyNative.
- You want a free, fixed stack and will wire the services yourself: Obytes starter or Ignite.
- You want a generator and will build every feature yourself: create-expo-stack.
- You are learning Expo: create-expo-app.
1. ReadyNative
Free, or $49 Starter / $69 Pro one-time · Free tier MIT; Starter and Pro commercial, unlimited apps. A pick-your-stack Expo SDK 57 boilerplate: one command builds the app from the modules you choose and deletes the rest, so what you ship reads like your own code.
- 32 modules across 17 categories, one pick per category: Supabase, Clerk or Better Auth; RevenueCat, Adapty or Stripe; PostHog or Amplitude; NativeWind, Tamagui, Unistyles or plain StyleSheet; and more.
- Sign-in, subscriptions, push, analytics and Sentry arrive wired on Pro, not as a to-do list.
doctorlists every key still missing, with a link to where you get it; on Pro,doctor --storechecks App Store and Play review rules before you submit.- EAS build and submit profiles, Maestro flows, Jest, and agent files for Claude Code or Cursor.
- One payment, lifetime updates, unlimited apps, client work included - and a free MIT version to try first.
2. Ignite
Free · MIT · by Infinite Red, since 2016. The longest-running React Native boilerplate: a CLI that creates an opinionated app and generates components and screens, with Reactotron for debugging.
Pick it if:
- You want a free, MIT-licensed base with a decade of community use behind it.
- You like React Navigation's config-based routing and Reactotron debugging.
- You will wire sign-in, payments and push yourself.
3. Obytes starter
Free · MIT · by Obytes. A popular free Expo template with a modern fixed stack: Expo Router, Uniwind, TanStack Query and Form, Zustand, MMKV and i18next, with GitHub Actions and Maestro.
Pick it if:
- You want a free, MIT-licensed template and like its exact stack.
- You will add your own auth, payments, push and analytics providers.
4. create-expo-stack
Free · MIT · by Ronin OSS (rn.new). A free CLI that asks a few questions and generates a new Expo project: navigation, a styling library and optionally Firebase or Supabase.
Pick it if:
- You want a free generator and plan to build the app's features yourself.
- You want Firebase, or React Navigation instead of Expo Router.
5. create-expo-app
Free · MIT · by Expo. Expo's own project creator. The default template is a small multi-screen app with Expo Router and TypeScript: the official starting point, with no services wired.
Pick it if:
- You are learning Expo, or you want to choose and wire every library yourself.
- You want the smallest possible starting point, straight from Expo.
6. Shipnative
$99 one-time (launch price; $149 regular) · Commercial: unlimited apps, one seat · by Shipnative. A paid Expo SDK 54 starter built around Supabase or Convex, RevenueCat, PostHog and Sentry, with mock services so it runs before you add keys.
Pick it if:
- You want Convex as the backend, or its mock-services mode.
- Its fixed stack is the one you would have picked anyway.
Side by side
“Not stated” means the product’s own pages do not say. Each entry was checked against its sources on the date above; tell us through the support form if something changed.
| Feature | ReadyNative | Ignite | Obytes starter | create-expo-stack | create-expo-app | Shipnative |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, or $49 Starter / $69 Pro one-time | Free | Free | Free | Free | $99 one-time (launch price; $149 regular) |
| License | Free tier MIT; Starter and Pro commercial, unlimited apps | MIT | MIT | MIT | MIT | Commercial: unlimited apps, one seat |
| Expo SDK | SDK 57 | SDK 55 | SDK 54 | SDK 56 | Latest at creation | SDK 54 |
| Navigation | Expo Router 57 | React Navigation 7 | Expo Router | Expo Router or React Navigation | Expo Router | Not stated |
| Styling | NativeWind 4, NativeWind 5, Tamagui, Unistyles 3 or StyleSheet (plain RN) | Themed StyleSheet | Uniwind (Tailwind) | NativeWind, NativewindUI, Restyle, Unistyles, Tamagui or StyleSheet | StyleSheet | Not stated |
| Data fetching | TanStack Query, Apollo Client or SWR | apisauce (REST) | TanStack Query + axios | No | No | React Query |
| State | Zustand or Jotai | React context | Zustand | Zustand (optional) | No | Zustand |
| Storage | expo-sqlite/kv-store, MMKV or AsyncStorage | MMKV | MMKV | No | No | Not stated |
| Forms | React Hook Form | No | TanStack Form + Zod | No | No | Not stated |
| Translations | i18next or Lingui; 6 languages, right-to-left Arabic | i18next | i18next | i18next (optional) | No | 7 languages, RTL |
| Sign-in | Pro: Supabase Auth, Clerk or Better Auth | Demo login screen, no provider | Demo sign-in flow, no provider | Firebase or Supabase client | No | Supabase or Convex: email, magic link, social |
| Payments | Pro: RevenueCat, Adapty or Stripe Checkout | No | No | No | No | RevenueCat |
| Push notifications | Pro: Expo Notifications | No | No | No | No | Included |
| Home-screen widgets | Expo Widgets: home-screen widget and Live Activity (iOS) | No | No | No | No | Not stated |
| Location | Expo Location | No | No | No | No | Not stated |
| Over-the-air updates | EAS Update with an in-app “Update ready” banner | No | No | No | No | Not stated |
| Analytics | Pro: PostHog or Amplitude | No | No | Vexo (optional) | No | PostHog |
| Crash reporting | Pro: Sentry | No | Sentry recipe in the docs | No | No | Sentry |
| Unit tests | Jest + Testing Library | Jest + Testing Library | Jest + Testing Library | No | No | Not stated |
| E2E tests | Maestro | Maestro | Maestro | No | No | Not stated |
| CI and store builds | EAS build and submit profiles | EAS profiles | GitHub Actions + EAS builds | No | No | Not stated |
| Choose the stack | One option per category; setup deletes the rest | Generators, one fixed stack | No | CLI prompts at creation | Five starting templates | Supabase or Convex backend |
| AI agent files | AGENTS.md, an architecture graph and agent skills | No | claude.md | Not stated | Not stated | AGENTS.md |