A progressive web app is a website that behaves like an app: installable to a home screen, works offline to some degree, and doesn't require an app store to distribute or update. That sounds like a strictly better deal than native — no store approval, no store fees, one codebase for every platform. In practice, it depends heavily on what your app needs to do, and specifically on how it needs to behave on iOS.

What PWAs do well

No app store review process means updates ship the moment you deploy, not after a review queue. One codebase covers web, Android, and iOS to varying degrees, which lowers build cost significantly versus separate native apps. And because there's no store listing barrier, users can start using a PWA the moment they visit the site — no install friction if you don't want it.

Install prompts

On Android and desktop, PWAs support a proper install prompt that adds the app to the home screen or app drawer with minimal friction. On iOS, there's no automatic install prompt — users have to know to use Safari's "Add to Home Screen" option manually, which most people never discover on their own.

Push notifications on iOS

This is the sharpest limitation. Push notifications on iOS only work for a PWA that has been installed to the home screen — a PWA running in a regular Safari tab cannot receive push notifications at all, even with permission granted. If push notifications are core to your product (re-engagement, time-sensitive alerts), this constraint alone can rule out a PWA for iOS users.

Offline support

PWAs can cache content for offline use, but iOS imposes a hard cap on cache storage (around 50MB via Safari), and cached data can be cleared automatically if device storage runs low. Offline support that needs to reliably persist meaningful amounts of data is a genuine constraint on iOS specifically.

App store absence

No app store listing means no app store discoverability, no app store reviews building trust, and for some users, an assumption that "it's not a real app" if it isn't in the store. For consumer products that rely on app store search as an acquisition channel, this is a real tradeoff, not just a technicality.

Cost difference

A PWA is typically cheaper to build than separate native iOS and Android apps, and often cheaper than a single cross-platform native app too, since it reuses existing web infrastructure. The saving is real, but it's not free — the iOS limitations above sometimes mean extra engineering effort to work around gaps that native simply doesn't have.

When a PWA genuinely fits

Content-focused products, internal tools where users are on Android or desktop, apps where push notifications aren't core to the experience, and situations where update speed and avoiding store friction matter more than deep platform integration.

When it doesn't: apps that live or die on push-notification engagement, apps needing significant offline data on iOS specifically, or consumer products where app store presence itself is part of the acquisition strategy.