Appifex vs Rork
Native on both sides — the difference is the backend. What decides it: one codebase or two, and who hosts the server. The full comparison is below.
Head-to-head comparison
What the difference looks like on a real app
Take a habit tracker with a widget, an Apple Watch complication and a subscription. Rork writes the iPhone app in SwiftUI and submits it to the App Store from the editor, which is as good as this gets — but the complication needs Rork Max at $200 a month, and the Android version is a second app written in Kotlin that you maintain alongside the first. On Appifex the same description produces one React Native codebase that ships to both stores on the $20 plan, native Swift where the widget and complication need it, and a FastAPI service with a PostgreSQL schema holding the subscription state as code in your repository rather than in Rork Cloud. The honest summary: Rork writes better native code, Appifex writes it once and gives you the server.
What each one costs
Rork
Free tier: 35 credits a month in major markets, 5 elsewhere. The free tier is design mode only: it cannot build for any platform.
Paid: Pro is $20/month for 100 credits. Max starts at $200/month for 1,000 credits and scales to $1,800 for 10,000.
Build mode — which turns a design into real Swift, Kotlin or React code — starts at Pro, and Pro already covers iPhone, Android and web. iPad, Apple Watch and Vision Pro are what Max adds.
Appifex
Free is 1,000 credits a month, card-free; Pro $20/month for 5,000, which is also where native Swift builds and managed hosting start; Max $200/month for 100,000. Full breakdown.
Rork pricing read from Rork subscriptions on , the same day as every other claim on this page. Vendors change prices; check the source before deciding.
The verdict
Choose Appifex if you want one codebase shipping to both stores rather than two, or you want the backend and database as source code you deploy to your own infrastructure rather than a managed cloud.
Choose Rork if you want hand-written-quality native Swift and Kotlin rather than React Native, your app leans hard on platform-specific Apple APIs, and maintaining two codebases is a price you are happy to pay for it.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best Rork alternative?
Appifex, and the two are closer than any other pair on this site — both generate real native apps for both stores rather than a web app in a wrapper, and both cost $20 a month for the main tier. Three things separate them. Rork writes iPhone in SwiftUI and Android in Kotlin, so you maintain two codebases; Appifex generates one React Native codebase for both, and native Swift when a project needs platform APIs. Rork's backend is Rork Cloud or your own Supabase project, both managed; Appifex generates a FastAPI service and PostgreSQL schema as source code you deploy anywhere. And Rork's free plan is design mode only, while Appifex's free plan builds and previews real apps.
Does Rork generate a backend?
It gives you one, but not as a codebase you own. Rork Cloud is a managed backend with a Postgres database and server-side functions, and Rork's docs describe moving to your own Supabase project as the alternative. Both are hosted services. Appifex generates the backend itself — a FastAPI application with SQLAlchemy models, Alembic migrations and its own PostgreSQL database — and commits it to your repository, so it deploys to Railway, Fly.io or your own servers with no vendor in the path.
Try Appifex for free
See how Appifex compares to Rork — build your first app in minutes.
Related reading
- Building for iOS from one codebase instead of two
- Getting through App Store review
- React Native source, generated rather than assembled
- What Appifex costs next to Rork
- Credits, next to what Rork meters
- Where secrets live when the backend is yours
- Why Appifex generates the server too
- Apps shipped this way, with their repositories
- Appifex vs FlutterFlow
- Appifex vs Draftbit
- Appifex vs Replit
One caveat we hold ourselves to, because this page holds others to it. Connect your GitHub and Expo accounts and almost all of this is yours outright. Skip that step and several pieces stay ours, so it is worth saying which.
Provisioned rather than generated: your database is PostgreSQL on Neon, and authentication — when you enable it — is Neon Auth. The schema and the migrations live in your repository, so the database moves to any Postgres by changing a connection string. Neon Auth does not; swapping it means replacing an auth provider, which is a day of work rather than a rewrite.
Ours until you connect an account: without GitHub repo scope the repository is created in Appifex's organisation rather than yours, and without a connected Expo account TestFlight builds ship under ours. Both are one connection away from being yours, and the ownership claims on this page assume you have made it.
A platform component in mobile apps: generated React Native projects contain a _system/ folder — error handling, Sentry reporting and a floating Appifex button — that the agent will decline to remove on request. It is ordinary TypeScript in your repository and you can delete it yourself after cloning, but while you are working inside Appifex it is not optional, and calling that "no shim to work around" would be too generous.
This comparison is published by Appifex, one of the two products in it. Treat the recommendation accordingly and check the claims. Capability claims were checked against Rork documentation, and pricing against Rork subscriptions— neither page reproduces the other's full pricing, so check it there — both last verified on . Both products change often — check the current terms before deciding.