No, you do not, you can use a free service by expo that would build in the cloud. Literally requires zero setup. Local build is needed only if you are sensitive to security, but many banks started to use it. Also native plugins became so easy to use it is a joke how simple it is comparing to cocoapods and some cryptic libraries.

Expo's workflow is so perfect comparing to pure native, it is not even comparable. To do iOS development you need: Swift Packages, Cocoapods and XCode at least. Whils in general it is simple, but cocoapods constantly fights with apple and xcode to not crash anything. While expo also uses cocoapods, it is much more stable because you can always just delete a native project and regenerate it from scratch and it will work.

I am not even starting to discuss how complicated is development for Android - literally everything now have 5+ different APIs for a simple things like "please encrypt this string" or "take a photo". React Native and Expo has perfect packages that solves real problems and work with a few keystrokes.