Tauri
Build desktop and mobile apps with web frontend
The Lens
By Erik Loyd, SaaS CEO and former COO/CFO of an AWS Premier Partner.
Updated Oct 2026
Tauri builds desktop and mobile apps from a web frontend with a Rust backend. It's the lighter answer to Electron: instead of packing Chromium into every app, it uses the web renderer the OS already has, so a minimal app can come in under 600KB. Free under MIT or Apache 2.0.
Version 2 is the stable line and targets Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android from one codebase. Setup is Rust plus each platform's toolchain. Version 3 has been in alpha since September and makes the rendering engine swappable, with a Chromium (CEF) option in the works.
No paywall. CrabNebula, whose team includes Tauri's co-founders, made its update and distribution cloud free in June 2026. Your real bills are platform fees, like Apple's $99/year developer account for signed Mac apps. Solo and small teams: free, great for shipping tools with web skills. Larger teams: free, but someone has to own the Rust side.
The catch: each OS renders your UI with a different engine (WebView2, WebKit, WebKitGTK, Android System WebView), so CSS that works on one can break on another. Native work also leaves JavaScript fast: Rust on desktop, Swift and Kotlin for mobile plugins.
Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid
fully freeFree: The whole framework, dual-licensed MIT or Apache 2.0: bundler (.app, .dmg, .deb, .rpm, AppImage, NSIS .exe, .msi), system tray, native notifications, a self-updater (desktop only), a GitHub Action for CI, and official plugins. Desktop and mobile (iOS, Android) targets ship in the same free v2 release.
Self-hosted: Nothing to host for the framework itself. You build on your own machine or CI with Rust plus each platform's toolchain. For auto-updates you serve the update files yourself or use CrabNebula Cloud.
Paid: No paid tier. CrabNebula Cloud (updates, distribution, release insights, DevTools) has been free for everyone since 19 June 2026, under fair-use rules: a release with no downloads for 90 days is removed (the latest release on each channel is protected), and unusual download spikes may be throttled after contact. Real costs are platform fees, e.g. an Apple Developer account at $99/year to sign and notarize macOS apps.
Free. CrabNebula's distribution cloud went free in June 2026, so the only bills are platform fees like Apple's $99/year developer account for signed Mac apps.
What to do by team size
- Solo
- free; ship a desktop app with the web skills you already have
- Small team
- free; good fit for internal tools across Windows, Mac and Linux
- Medium team
- free; make sure at least one person is comfortable in Rust
- Large team
- free; budget for code signing and per-platform QA, not licenses
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