Building a Real-Time Chat App with Instant DB, React Native & Expo SDK 55

Real-time used to mean wrestling Firebase. Instant DB is the alternative I reach for now: open source, a generous free tier (1GB database, unlimited API requests), and it works with Expo out of the box. So I built a real-time chat app on the unreleased Expo SDK 55, no AI assistance, just the actual code.

Change a color on one device and watch it update on the other instantly. The full build is in the video.

What's inside

• Scaffold an Expo SDK 55 project with bun and the @next template
• Authenticate and push schema changes with npx instant-cli
• Test queries and permissions in Instant's sandbox before shipping
• Install the SDK with zero native rebuilds (Expo Go friendly)
• Sync data across devices in real time automatically
• Keep your app ID out of GitHub with EXPO_PUBLIC_ env variables

Resources

CourseReact Native course

Pair this with Backend Basics: 55 minutes on API routes, streaming, and hosting for your RN apps.