To design visually appealing user interfaces for your React-based software apps and websites, UI component libraries built on React are invaluable resources. You can save time and effort by using a UI component library rather than writing your code for any feature or capability you wish to add to your design. You can easily incorporate reusable components, like buttons, into your design without creating the code from scratch. Saving time and energy, you can focus on solving more fundamental issues and developing new solutions. It takes time to know where to start when facing an endless number of React UI component libraries, and with so many options, figuring out which library best suits your needs can be difficult. To make things easier, we’ve put together a list of 24+ React UI component libraries that are relevant and useful. We will discuss each library in detail and give you the relevant information you need to know about each one. All of these libraries are open source and available on GitHub.
Why Use a React UI Component Library?
Whether you are learning React in your spare time or work for a top React development company, you can save time and energy when designing and building your app using a React UI component library. Not only will you have access to many components, but you can also access the code for each component, allowing you to customize them to meet your specific needs. As a bonus, many React UI component libraries are open source, so you won’t have to worry about large licensing fees. Let’s learn more about the advantages and disadvantages of using React UI component libraries.
The Advantages of Using React UI Component Libraries
There are several advantages to using React UI component libraries, which include the following:
Faster Development: Since React UI component libraries are prewritten, they save time on app development. There’s no need to copy and paste large amounts of code into your project, and this creates a quicker output with fewer bugs and errors. If you’re a professional software developer, you can use these component libraries to speed up the production process.
Beautiful UI: Using React UI component libraries, your app will perform better and look more attractive. There’s no need to create dynamic UIs from scratch, and your designs will always fit perfectly with the UI of a component library created by expert developers.
Less Coding, More Time Developing: Since React UI component libraries are made to be compatible with React, there’s no need to write a lot of code. Since these libraries are prebuilt and fully functional, developers can move forward without worrying about multiple levels of compatibility.
Easy to Use: CSS can be challenging and tedious if you are just starting out or need a solid grasp of the language, especially when working on elaborate designs and layouts. Using a React UI components library, you can build beautiful and responsive UI designs without needing to understand the JavaScript programming language.
Cross-Browser Compatible: Since React UI component libraries are compatible with the unstyled markup of all the most popular browsers, they allow you to create cross-platform and cross-browser apps. Your application will run on any device or software platform and look as expected.
The Disadvantages of Using React UI Component Libraries
There are often disadvantages to using React components. However, the same is true for nearly any type of software tool. These disadvantages include the following:
Customizing Components Can Be Difficult: Some libraries might only be as customizable as others if you’re an advanced programmer. You may also have to modify the code of a library if you wish to make your changes permanent.
Similar Web Design With Other Sites: Since most components are commonly used across many websites, you may eventually notice a need for more uniqueness and originality in your UI design to make your designs look more varied from those of other sites.
Support Relies on the Community: Due to the popularity of React, libraries in this realm have a small community that can help you with support or troubleshooting issues. Because of this, you may be required to seek community help before using your new UI component library.
25 React UI Component Libraries
Let’s look at the top 25 React UI Component libraries that are relevant and useful. We will discuss each library in detail and give you the relevant information you need to know about each one. All of these libraries are open-source code bases and available on GitHub.
#1 MUI
MUI is a simple and flexible React components package inspired by Google’s Material Design, and over 745,000 projects use it on GitHub. Thus, MUI is more than just a collection of components; it’s a comprehensive framework for creating user interfaces.
- Theme: The color scheme, surface darkness, shadow depth, ink opacity, and so on are all dictated by the theme. Themes allow you to give your app a unified style. It gives you complete control over the look of your project so that you can tailor it to your company’s or brand’s specifications. The option between a light and dark theme style helps maintain a uniform feel across applications, and the bright style is used for components by default.
- Components: With MUI’s extensive library of components, developing a user interface for React apps is a breeze. Make use of the preexisting Material Design components, tweak them to fit your needs, or develop your unified aesthetic. With the help of MUI’s prebuilt components and extensive documentation, even those without experience in UI design can quickly and easily produce high-quality apps for mobile devices and the web.
#2 Storybook
Storybook is a UI component development environment that allows you to build and demonstrate UI elements in isolation from your main project. You can build full user interfaces, one module at a time, without requiring a complicated development stack. You may record UI elements, reuse them, and put them through their paces with Storybook’s help. Additionally, it facilitates the rapid and effective development of online applications. Your app’s functionality can be expanded and refined with the help of the tool’s robust plugin ecosystem. In addition, it works together with the most well-known JavaScript frameworks, including React, Vue, and even Ruby.
Theme: Storybook may have new looks and feel implemented using a simple theming API. Light and dark are two of Storybook’s appealing prepackaged themes. Unless you have specifically instructed Storybook to use a dark theme, it will use a light theme by default.
#3 Ant Design
Ant Design is a React UI library and design system used by over 255,000 GitHub projects; it advertises itself as being tailored to the needs of businesses. The Alibaba Group, a colossal Chinese IT company, developed it. You may use Ant Design’s many high-quality components in isolation or combine them to develop complex UI frameworks rapidly.
- Theme: The customizable theme comes with a simple configuration.
- Components: More than fifty ready-made elements may be dropped into your projects without further design work. Buttons, icons, typography, layouts, navigation, data entry, data display, feedback, etc., are all examples of these parts.
- Apps and Websites Built on Ant Design: Many Chinese tech giants, like Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, and others, rely on this platform. You can integrate various UI elements from Ant Design into your existing apps and programs.
Ant Design suggests utilizing many third-party React-based component libraries, such as React JSON View, React Hooks Library, and many more. It does keep documentation up to date and encourages community discussion on GitHub, Segmentfault, and Stack Overflow.
#4 Chakra UI
Chakra UI is a popular React component library used in over 20,000 GitHub projects due to its ease of use, modularity, and adaptability. In addition to being completely compatible with the WAI-ARIA accessibility standards, all elements are tuned for dark mode in Chakra UI. Chakra UI is a simple, open-source, and modular component framework for building React apps. It provides a solid foundation for constructing your apps’ features, allowing you to provide your consumers with more value and satisfaction.
#5 React Virtualized
React Virtualized is a set of React components that allows rapid rendering of tabular and extensive list data. React Virtualized is a good option when developing a sophisticated front end with plenty of data. This utility makes it simple to do everything, from installing components to making adjustments.
Components: Apart from the standard tools, you will receive an auto-sizer, column sizer, cell measures, multigrid, arrow keeper, direction sorters, etc. This adaptable collection of books can accommodate your ever-increasing tabular requirements. Altering the height of the table’s rows is another way to personalize the layout.
#6 React-Bootstrap
React-Bootstrap is one of the earliest React UI component libraries and is used by more than 605,000 GitHub projects. For those who want the short version, it’s just a React port of the widely used Bootstrap front-end framework. The library has prebuilt, mobile-friendly, and accessible components, and all visual components can be modified to suit individual needs.
The React-Bootstrap framework can create UI components, web pages, and software templates.
- Theme: Bootstrap is among the most widely used web frameworks today, which makes it easy to find numerous free and paid themes online.
React-Bootstrap is an excellent choice if you need out-of-the-box accessibility in your React project. Though React-Bootstrap has no official support, many online resources and a vibrant community help you get started. Help resources include Stack Overflow, the Reactiflux Discord, and GitHub Issues.
#7 Blueprint UI
Blueprint is a UI toolkit for developing web apps built on the React framework. This project is open source and developed at Palantir, a company with extensive experience in improving its clients’ user experience through applications that interact with data. More than 9,800 GitHub projects use Blueprint’s approximately 40 cutting-edge components. The primary goal is to develop a React UI for feature-rich, data-intensive desktop applications. Hence it is not entirely mobile-friendly. Applications that save a lot of data on your desktop will benefit greatly from Blueprint.
- Themes: Even though Blueprint lacks a wide selection of themes, it does include a few distinct ones, including dark and light modes, as well as other design components, including color palettes, specialized classes, typography, and more.
- Components: Blueprint provides snippets of code for making and showing buttons and 300+ customizable icons, adjusting the date and time, selecting a time zone, and more. Some additional features include breadcrumbs, callouts, dividers, buttons, navbars, cards, tags, tabs, and more.
#8 visx
Airbnb’s visx is a library of low-level visualization primitives designed specifically for React apps. It was built to standardize the company’s visualization stack, fusing the fun of React with the sturdiness of D3 for computations.
In any codebase that uses the React framework, having visx by your side will make it feel like you’re working in a native environment due to its use of the same patterns and APIs. This is achieved by avoiding the hassle of repeatedly copying and pasting different React hooks. However, it can hide the specifics of D3 and provide components and utilities in more universal formats. Visx is an excellent program for creating individualized and effective charts.
Components: The visx library contains several low-level visualization components that can be reused. The visx framework combines the efficiency of d3 for creating your visualization with the flexibility of react for modifying the document object model.
#9 Semantic UI
As a means to get a unique UI component library for your projects, integrating React with Semantic UI might be a great option. Using Semantic UI React, you can create websites and apps with little and straightforward HTML. There are 12,000+ stars for it on GitHub.
This instrument allows you to apply any CSS theme you like to the application you are developing. Human-readable HTML is also included for creating applications. It’s a declarative API with robust validation and customization options for props. Multiple large-scale software production settings can use this free and open-source solution.
- Theme: With Semantic UI, you have complete control over the look and feel of your interface because of its sophisticated inheritance system and top-level themes. There are over 3,000 options for customization of the theme’s appearance. It’s sufficient to create the user interface once and reuse it indefinitely.
- Components: Besides icons, headers, containers, and buttons, this library provides various other reusable elements. You will also receive shorthand props to facilitate the generation of markup automatically.
#10 Evergreen
Segment’s Evergreen is a fantastic React UI toolkit used to build top-notch applications. It’s not just a pretty face; the design framework behind it gives you options and doesn’t force you to stick to any old, incompatible setup.
Evergreen makes it simpler to create software that can easily adjust to new requirements as they arise during the design process. It provides a wealth of tools and components to assist in the development of intuitive and effective user interfaces. This is viable if your goal is to create high-performance, business-focused web apps.
- Theme: Evergreen has two distinct styles, the default and the classic. The default theme matches Segment’s current aesthetic, while the vintage theme dates back to Evergreen’s inception. Even though Evergreen doesn’t have a built-in theme editor, it includes a robust theming system that can modify the app’s elements to meet certain design criteria.
- Components: With over 30 finely tuned parts, Evergreen is ready to go right out of the box. Everything from fonts and colors to buttons and emblems to pills and patterns and layouts is a part of this.
#11 Reactstrap
Reactstrap is a Bootstrap-based React UI toolkit that can quickly and easily create professional-looking websites. The styles and themes of Reactstrap come from the Bootstrap CSS framework; it does not provide its own styles. Reactstrap offers reusable Bootstrap 4 parts with extensive customization options and built-in checks for validity. With this, we can create stunning forms in record time, ensuring a positive first impression and a pleasant, easy-to-navigate user experience.
Component: From the simplest text input to the most complex file upload input, Reactstrap provides a wide variety of ready-to-use components.
Other Notable React UI Component Libraries
#12 Onsen UI
Onsen UI is an open-source user interface framework with components for creating hybrid mobile apps in HTML5 using the PhoneGap and Cordova platforms. It paves the way for developers to build mobile apps with web standards like CSS, HTML5, and JavaScript. Onsen UI has become JavaScript framework-agnostic, allowing programmers to build mobile apps with or without a specific framework.
#13 React Toolbox
React Toolbox is a set of React components that implement the Google Material Design guideline. It is constructed using modern best practices such as CSS Modules (written in SASS), Webpack, and ES6. The library works in tandem with your Webpack process without causing any friction.
#14 Grommet
Grommet is an open-source React framework that provides developers with easily accessible, mobile-first code components. The package includes templates, fonts, colors, controls, inputs, visualizations, media, and utilities. Grommets are designed to be easily reachable and quick to react.
#15 Rebass
Rebass is a library of React UI components written in Javascript with a simple design philosophy adopted by over 10,000 GitHub projects. All parts are adaptable, minimal, and quick to react. The library bundle size is 43 Kb, making it lightweight.
#16 React Suite
The React Suite is a collection of React libraries designed for use in enterprise software. It’s a well-designed, easy-to-use UI framework that works with the most recent, stable versions of the most popular browsers and operating systems.
#17 PrimeReact
PrimeReact is a well-known library for designing React user interfaces. It contains many components and capabilities that enable developers to construct interactive and aesthetically pleasing user interfaces. It includes an extensive collection of 80+ components, a theme designer, 280+ ready-to-use UI blocks, alternate theme options, premium create-react-app templates, and expert support.
#18 React-admin
React-admin is an excellent choice if you need a React framework to create business-to-business applications. It’s made to make life easier for developers so that you can devote more time to meeting the demands of your business.
#19 React Desktop
React Desktop is a great choice for developing custom applications. You can organize your work more efficiently and start making apps people want to download. It integrates many components from macOS Sierra and Windows 10 to create a native desktop experience on the web based on Facebook’s React library.
#20 Theme UI
Theme UI is a library for creating React UI themes with more than 30 basic UI components, and it’s used by over 15,000 projects on GitHub. Theme UI is predicated on the idea of constraint-based design.
#21 Shards React
Regarding resource usage, Shards React leaves little to be desired, and its performance is lightning quick. Developers will be fine getting up and running with Shards React because of the thorough documentation for every component.
#22 Argon Design System React
Argon Design System React is entirely open source, freely available, and can be used to create great websites. Argon Design System React comprises over 100 parts, enabling you to choose from or combine them in any way you wish through the SASS plain text files.
#23 Mantine
Mantine is a comprehensive set of React UI components that may help you rapidly create websites and online applications. It has over 40 hooks and over 100 modular components to make your app accessible and adaptable.
#24 Gestalt
The Gestalt user interface library allows you to design beautiful, intuitive interfaces for your products. It is a Pinterest design tool with all the same options and customizations, and it also has a simple interface that makes it easy for developers to use immediately.
#25 Headless UI
Headless UI, developed by Tailwind Labs, provides style-free UI components that are fully accessible. It’s a must-have component library for any React-based app. Over 54.5K ratings on GitHub attest to its widespread acclaim.
Conclusion
In conclusion, React UI component libraries are helpful tools that could save you time and effort when developing interfaces for your React applications and make the entire process easier and faster than developing code for each function. Using these component libraries has advantages and disadvantages, but overall, each solves a problem for your specific project needs. Take a test run with any of the React UI component libraries mentioned in this article. There may be a component library that could work for you.
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