It depends on your project's goals, stakeholders, budget, and stage of development.
If you are building for
1. Investor pitches or early client demos: a high-fidelity interactive prototype (built using Figma, Adobe XD, or even Flutter) works best.
2. in-house or validating logic with developers: a throwaway or evolutionary prototype might save more time & cost.
Don’t treat prototyping as a one-time step. For agile teams, we have found success using rolling prototypes, we iterate the prototype alongside sprint cycles. It helps teams stay aligned on UX & functionality without endless rework.
At Impero IT Services, we worked with a startup in the mental wellness space. Initially, they opted for a clickable wireframe to validate concept with therapists. Once that got traction, we moved to a high-fidelity UI prototype. That phased approach helped them raise seed funding before a single line of backend code was written.
TL;DR
There is no one-size-fits-all prototype. Match the prototype type to your project’s audience, timeline & validation goals.
