When building list screens in React Native, choosing the right list component is important for performance and user experience.

Use FlatList

• Small to medium-sized lists
• Simple use cases
• Basic applications with fewer UI updates

Use FlashList

• Production-level apps
• Large datasets
• Social media or media-heavy applications
• Better scrolling performance (recommended)

An app that displays a large number of items in a list should prioritize smooth scrolling performance. This directly impacts user experience, especially when handling long or dynamic lists.

React Native provides a built-in component called FlatList, which is widely used for rendering lists efficiently. It works well for many scenarios and is a reliable default option.

FlashList, developed by the Shopify team, is a high-performance alternative designed to improve rendering speed and scrolling smoothness with minimal integration effort.

FlatList

A reliable built-in list component. However, when lists become:

• Large
• Dynamic
• Media-heavy (images/videos)

it may experience:

• Frame drops
• Laggy scrolling
• Higher memory usage
• More manual optimization requirements

compared to newer solutions like FlashList.

FlashList v1

• Focused on improving performance over FlatList
• Required manual tuning
• estimatedItemSize was important for better performance

FlashList v2 (2025)

• Better performance out of the box
• Smoother list positioning
• No need for item size estimates
• Smarter layout handling
• Improved recycling system for efficient rendering
• Better support for dynamic item heights
• Less manual configuration
• Faster performance with React Native’s new architecture
• Optimized for both iOS and Android, including low-end devices

Why developers prefer FlashList

Smoother scrolling

• Better FPS (frames per second)
• Smooth experience for long or infinite feeds

Lower memory usage

• Useful for apps with many images and videos

Easy migration

• API is very similar to FlatList
• Simple to switch from FlatList

Future-ready

• Designed for React Native’s evolving architecture
• Better long-term performance for modern apps

Final takeaway

For simple apps, FlatList is still a good choice. But for production apps, large datasets, or performance-critical screens, FlashList is usually the better option due to smoother scrolling, lower memory usage, and better optimization.