Is SwiftUI finally as fast as UIKit in iOS 26?

By Jacob Bartlett · Published April 13, 2026 · 1 min read · Source: Level Up Coding

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Is SwiftUI finally as fast as UIKit in iOS 26?

A scientific performance comparison. The final word.

Jacob Bartlett11 min read·1 hour ago

If anybody was on the fence about having kids, my four-year-old daughter saw this and started dancing along with the baby GIF.

I love SwiftUI; I hate SwiftUI.

I love UIKit; I hate UIKit.

When you’re as suggestible as me, it’s easy to be swayed based on the last blog post you read.

SwiftUI has forever been on a long journey to parity with UIKit, and the question of “is SwiftUI production-ready” has had a clear answer for years: Yes, but.

Yes, but you will need to drop down to UIKit for stuff like the Camera.

Yes, but some functionality like UIScrollViewDelegate scroll velocity is missing.

Yes, but performance on an infinitely-scrolling feed will never be as good.

Performance.

Specifically, scroll performance.

At one time or another, we’ve all sat under the thumb of an imperious product manager or QA tester, demanding the single frame drop on their nan’s iPhone 4s be eliminated before you can go home.

But they do have a point:

Performance is the final bastion of native iOS supremacy.

You don’t want to hear it, but if we get comfortable shipping apps with noticeably mediocre performance on scroll-heavy…

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