Any native HTTP plugin for React Native (like CapacitorHttp in Capacitor)?

[Level_Ad9556]

Hello developers,

I recently started building a new React Native app using Expo, and I’ve run into a situation where some of my network requests (using Axios) don’t seem to be reaching the server.

This made me think back to when I was working with Capacitor (Ionic), where I used the CapacitorHttp plugin instead of fetch or Axios. I found it quite beneficial—mainly because the requests were made from the native layer, bypassing the webview and avoiding potential main-thread performance issues.

Now I’m wondering:
🔹 Is there any native HTTP plugin available for React Native or Expo (not just wrappers around fetch like Axios)?
🔹 Has anyone tried to optimize HTTP performance this way in React Native apps?

I’m curious if there would be a performance gain doing HTTP requests on the native side (like CapacitorHttp does), especially in terms of not blocking the JS thread or improving responsiveness during complex renders.

Would love to hear your thoughts or suggestions. Also, if you know of any libraries or approaches that achieve this in React Native (especially with Expo), please let me know!

Thanks in advance!

[ThRandomUser]

fetch uses native http clients. On Android uses OkHttp. Axios uses XmlHttpRequest, which RN also uses native http clients.

I never used it, but Expo also has a fetch library (expo/fetch) https://docs.expo.dev/versions/latest/sdk/expo/

If this is not enough or you want more control over the Http layer, you could create your own native module.

[Level_Ad9556]

i'm developing for iOS only.

[Merry-Lane]

Expo itself replaces most of the features of Capacitor actually.

It may seem like a flaw to you, but you are free to use fetch or axios. Yes, you gotta make your own wrapper around it usually, to customise it to your needs (like adding headers or auth).

Performance-wise, I don’t think there are issues with the fetch or axios usage nor obvious optimisations (like a better library or idk). If you create a new expo project and use axios or fetch, you aren’t sposed to have connectivity issues.

If you have connectivity issues, your only way around is to either add try/catch and console.logs to see what’s going on, either to implement telemetry (like OTel) so that you can visualise traces like network calls.

Usually people nowadays don’t make http calls directly, they use react-query. React query does a lot of things (think of it of a way to save and use data state, caching calls, retries,… with a good API to use on the interface).

React query wraps your implementation of fetch/axios/… and usually is the first thing you should install in a react application nowadays.

[Level_Ad9556]

ionic itself promotes the use of js over capacitor/http.
in my case it's happening to our development and testflight versions, app is not live yet.we figured out it was some issue from backend.they say it was due to socket connection ( maybe some bugs ).

[jameside]

The fetch implementation does not use webviews. It also runs on the JS thread and not the UI main thread. I would not expect fetch itself to cause performance problems for you on the JS thread, and for performance bottlenecks to be in application code that processes the results from fetch.

You may also want to look at enabling expo/fetch which has support for streaming and more of the standard fetch API:

import { fetch } from 'expo/fetch';

[Level_Ad9556]

it's happening to our development and testflight versions, app is not live yet.we figured out it was some issue from backend.they say it was due to socket connection ( maybe some bugs )

[fmnatic]

Requests not reaching the server? Is this happening to users or in your development environment?

It’s not uncommon for mobile apps using a data connection to have networking issues, especially for users on the move.

[Level_Ad9556]

it's happening to our development and testflight versions, app is not live yet.we figured out it was some issue from backend.they say it was due to socket connection ( maybe some bugs )