Big differences of build size of Android and iOS app

Expo Application Services (EAS)
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I have programmed an application with Expo and wanted to compare the final build sizes for iOS and Android afterwards. I am using Expo SDK 43.0.0 and expo-cli 4.13.0. For the build process I used the command: eas build --platform all. I found that the .aab file size is 42MB and the .ipa file is 129MB. I was very surprised about this result and could not find an explanation for it. I also tried using Expo SDK Version 44.0.0 but this had no impact on the file sizes. What could be the reason that the iOS app is so much bigger? Thanks for the help :slight_smile:

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Those values have no relation to what users will download, you will see real values after uploading to appstore/playstore.

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Thanks for your answer.

I am currently writing my bachelor thesis and comparing Expo and Flutter. One criterion for comparison is the build size. Are there any sources I can use to explain the differences in file sizes of the Expo app on different platforms?

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you can check fyi/managed-app-size.md at main · expo/fyi · GitHub

comparison between android and ios is pointless because both platforms have their native SDK that react-native is building on so in most cases differences come from that fact. Also, ios adds a lot of debug info/bitcode and other stuff that makes ipa larger, but it is stripped when uploading to store e.g. depending on some build options ipa can have 200 MB or 30MB for the same application.

One other difference is that android builds have to include the entire Javascript engine (JSC or Hermes), but iOS can use one already present on the device.

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thanks again, these informations helped a lot :slight_smile:

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