Before exploring the technology, we must address “why”. From a business standpoint, website development is expensive and complex. Building a platform-specific application however, costs even more while adding additional layers of complexity.
Progressive Web Apps solve this by offering “write once, run anywhere”. Rather than numerous codebases for numerous versions of the same application, with a Progressive Web App businesses can achieve rapid feature rollout and focused maintenance, significantly reducing overhead.
Progressive Web Applications
Many users are unaware but they are already using PWAs. They can be installed directly from popular app stores like Google Play or Microsoft Store, appearing and behaving just like native applications. There, the Progressive Web Apps can be installed , “just like a platform-specific app.” ( mozilla.org ).
Alternatively, you can install PWA from the browser itself. On most desktop browsers, you can find an "Install" option within the top-right menu (the "three dots"). Mac users may find this under the Share menu as “Add to Dock.” Once installed, the website functions as a standalone application, bypassing the clutter of browser tabs.
As demonstrated by the ease of which websites can be installed as Progressive Web Applications, albeit with no additional functionality when a web-manifest is not provided, a major advantage of the web is free distribution. Native app stores often impose significant fees on developers, taking a percentage of revenue. PWAs bypass these "gatekeepers," allowing developers to retain more profit—savings that can be passed on to users through lower prices or free services.
Distinctly, the term Progressive Web Application has been used repeatedly rather than simply Web Application. There is a distinction between the two that gives the extra “spice” necessary to compete with native applications. Features like service workers (fancy background processes) in PWA “give the web all the powers of Android, iOS, and desktop applications.” (LePage and Richard). Progressive enhancement is the key idea behind said power.
When a PWA is installed, an additional level of trust is implied, granting the ability to determine and utilize more features supported by the device and browser. Some real-world examples of this are that PWA can utilize notifications without a browser open, add alert badges to their icon, synchronise data with a dedicated process, and most importantly: Implement offline caching. What this last thing means is that once a PWA is installed, more components are stored on-device and for longer times. As a result when a PWA is reopened, loading is much quicker, working in tandem with background syncing to stay up-to-date. As part of fully offline caching, PWA may use some or even full functionality without internet connection, utilizing content stored before the connection was lost even across multiple pages. Older devices lack some of these features yet still support PWA at the browser level by design, allowing a more app-like feel even in a worst case scenario where no enhancements are supported.
As for when people actually use Progressive Web Applications, the answer is surprisingly often with popular examples of Starbucks, Trivago, and Tinder. Corporations benefit greatly from PWA too. “Tinder cut load times from 11.91 seconds to 4.68 seconds with their PWA. ” (Microsoft)
Progressive Web Applications are thus preferred for ease and convenience, however native applications cannot be dismissed without understanding their own advantages and use-cases.
Native Applications
Inherently, native applications gain an advantage that by definition, they integrate with the platforms they support. Not all native applications actually integrate properly but as shall be detailed later: wrapper applications intentionally are excluded from being “native”, instead residing in a limbo between.
While Progressive Web Applications have begun appearing in some mainstream app stores, across all major app stores are native applications. Developing a native application is much more resource-intensive but there are tangible benefits. In native applications written in Swift (a programming language specifically for Apple devices) the default is true OS theme inheritance, supported on a level unreachable for PWA and wrapper applications.
Beyond aesthetics, native applications can leverage hardware-specific optimizations that are otherwise inaccessible. The performance gap is significant; native applications perform nearly twice as fast as PWA equivalents with an even higher difference against wrapper applications. Personally testing a popular native vs Electron wrapper application for coding gave expected results; Zed slammed VSCode, asserting native application dominance.
Fundamentally, a well-optimized native application will consistently outperform an equivalent PWA, while leaving Electron wrapper applications unsalvageably in the dust.
Although native apps are more efficient regarding system resources such as memory and battery consumption, they can be outdone in a single aspect: storage. Native applications must reside entirely on the device, whereas PWAs may utilize online resource offloading.
Unlike the flexibility of PWA, which may gracefully degrade, native applications mandate support cycles. In the fast-moving realm of gaming and other demanding software, when native applications can no longer run efficiently on older hardware, that hardware is typically dropped from support entirely.
The final advantage of native applications is not by feature but by mindset. Native apps have been the backbone of app store ecosystems since their inception. While the plague of low-quality "wrapper" apps and increasing maturity of PWA are gradually shifting public opinion towards a more neutral stance, the general assumption is still that anything in an app store has superior performance.
Unexplained till now to understand the shift towards PWA, there is a common case for PWA as an upgrade to a specific type of application - Electron wrapper applications.
Electron wrapper applications are frequently criticized because of excessive memory consumption and often being just a web app “wrapped” in Electron. Because Electron is essentially a standalone Chromium browser instance, these apps duplicate processing overhead.
In contrast, PWAs run within the user’s existing browser process, isolating only the site’s specific elements. This architecture naturally leads to lower memory usage and improved system efficiency compared to bulky Electron wrappers.
From a development standpoint, native applications offer another distinct advantage: they gain immediate access to system-level features as they are released, such as Passkey integration. Furthermore, while PWAs are excellent for long-term support, native applications offer unparalleled stability; when software must remain functional for over a decade, a native build can be frozen in time, remaining unchanged and operational ad infinitum.
Conclusion
Despite my personal preference for the technical superiority of native builds, I find that in my daily routine I rely heavily on Progressive Web Applications. The reality is that many “native” applications are merely Electron web-wrappers in disguise. By choosing PWA I optimize my battery life, storage, and convenience.
Under the hood, a lot of large corporations are moving in this direction, quietly shifting to web-first architectures. Thus, I challenge you. Try using Progressive Web Applications and decide for yourself: Should websites be used as applications?
Works Cited
Apple. “Use Safari web apps on Mac.” Apple Support, 5 December 2025, https://support.apple.com/en-us/104996#differences . Accessed 3 April 2026.
LePage, Pete, and Sam Richard. “Progressively enhance your Progressive Web App.” web.dev , 29 June 2020, https://web.dev/articles/progressively-enhance-your-pwa#progressive_enhancement . Accessed 3 April 2026.
Microsoft. “Overview of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) - Microsoft Edge Developer documentation.” Microsoft Learn, 1 October 2025, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-web-apps/#success-stories . Accessed 3 April 2026.
mozilla.org . “What is a progressive web app? - Progressive web apps | MDN.” MDN Web Docs, Mozilla Corporation, 4 December 2025, https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/Guides/Making_PWAs_installable . Accessed 3 April 2026.
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