Best React UI Framework You Should Know In 2022 (2024)

According to the Stackoverflow’s 2021 Developer survey React is currently at top of the web frameworks category with 40.14%. In the same survey, it secured the fourth position on the most loved Web-framework with 69.28% which is 17,525 from 66,202 responses.

Because of React’s popularity (175K stars on GitHub), developers have a near-endless supply of React UI Libraries. However, not all the React UI Component libraries are the same, some are great for general purposes, some are specifically for web development and some are custom-made for a specific niche like enterprise product production.

Before diving into the list of most popular react libraries let’s first understand what is React component library?

What is React Component UI Framework?

React is a JavaScript library that lets you develop a top react UI for both web and mobile applications. It conveniently integrates with various other JavaScript libraries and frameworks, including small, reusable bits of code called components. React component libraries not only optimize your UI development process but also provide extreme flexibility due to their high modularity.

Best React Component UI Framework In 2022

Picking the correct React design component for an application can be tricky. So here’s the list of best UI frameworks for react that can help React Developers build their ReactJS app quickly and effectively.

1. Material Kit React

GitHub Stars: 5.7K | Forks: 661 | MIT License | Latest release: 3.0.4

Created with the inspiration from Google’s Material Design, Material Kit React builds a set of elements that put consistency as the main feature. That way, your web development project retains a similarity in appearance and functions all through. The kit also contains several basic elements such as buttons, badges, sliders, menu, pagination, navigation bars, tabs, and pills. Using this React Component Framework, you’ll be able to customize the style, size, and colour for most elements. The JavaScript elements include Modals, tooltips, date-time pickers, carousels, and popovers.

Features

• Access the theme values directly from the component props
• UI consistency
• Effortless, responsive layout
• Work with any theme object
• Less than KB gzipped
• Extremely fast

Installation

$ npm install @material-ui/core

Usage

import React from 'react'; import { Button } from '@material-ui/core'; function App() { return <Button color="primary">Hello World </Button>;}

26 developers using Material UI Kit on Stack share

Material kit integration

Pros

Also Read: – Flutter vs React Native

2. Storybook

GitHub Stars: 72.7K | Forks: 7.5K | MIT License | Latest release: 6.5.9

A storybook is a tool for React UI framework and has been popular for some time now. It isn’t exactly a component framework but an open-source tool for developing UI components in isolation for React and many other technologies and platforms. What sets the storybook apart is that it allows you to work on a single component, making development so much faster. In addition, the storybook helps you document components for reuse and automatically visually test your components to prevent bugs. Finally, extend Storybook with an ecosystem of addons that help you do things like fine-tune responsive layouts or verify accessibility.

Features

• Rapid UI development
• Isolated component development
• Virtual testing of components for bugs
• Easy integration with React applications
• Built-in TypeScript Support
• Extend the Storybook’s ecosystem using addons
• Default Webpack Configuration
• Improves efficiency greatly
• Faster & easier development process
• Compatible with almost all the popular front-end frameworks

Installation

npx sb init

Usage

// YourComponent.stories.js | YourComponent.stories.jsximport React from 'react';import { YourComponent } from './YourComponent';//👇 This default export determines where your story goes in the story listexport default { title: 'YourComponent', component: YourComponent,};//👇 We create a “template” of how args map to renderingconst Template = (args) => <YourComponent {...args}/>;export const FirstStory = Template.bind({});FirstStory.args = { /*👇 The args you need here will depend on your component */};

Companies using Storybook

159 Developers using Storybook on Stack share

Storybook Integration

Pros

• Hot Module reloading
• CSS Support
• Can deploy the whole storybook as a static app
• Isolated environment for your components
• Clean & fast UI3

3. Chakra UI

GitHub Stars: 27.6K | Forks: 2.4K | MIT License | Latest release: 2.0.9

Chakra UI is a React UI framework introduced for designing websites and React applications, and Segun Adebayo develops it. Chakra UI library has emerged as a must-do for the react app developer, and its multiple color mode gives you the power to switch the darkness or light as per your customer’s convenience. Moreover, it is very extensible and customized.

Features

Installation

$ yarn add @chakra-ui/react @emotion/react@^11 @emotion/styled@^11 framer-motion@^4
# or
$ npm i @chakra-ui/react @emotion/react@^11 @emotion/styled@^11 framer-motion@^4

Usage

import { Button } from "@chakra-ui/react"function Example() { return <Button> I just consumed some ⚡️Chakra! </Button>}

Companies using Chakra

77 Developers using Chakra UI on Stack share

Storybook Integration

Pros

Also Read: – Top React Native UI Components Libraries

4. Ant Design for React

GitHub Stars: 81K | Forks: 34.8K | MIT License | Latest release: 4.21.6

This React UI Framework is a design system for the enterprise-level product. It is based on an Ant-Design project and contains high-quality components and demos for building rich and interactive UIs. The React UI Components include internationalization support for dozens of languages. You also can customize the components to your design specifications. For example, ant Design uses Less.js for its style language. The Ant Design components include buttons, icons, grids, breadcrumb, dropdown menus, and more.

Features

• Enterprise-class UI designed for web applications
• A set of high-quality React components out of the box
• They are written in TypeScript with predictable, static types
• The whole package of design resources and development tools
• Internationalization support for dozens of languages
• Powerful theme customization in every detail

Installation

npm install antd
yarn add antd

Usage

import { Button, DatePicker } from 'antd';const App = () => ( <> <Button type="primary">PRESS ME</Button> <DatePicker placeholder="select date"/> </>);

Companies using Ant Design

625 Developers using Ant Design on Stack share

Ant Design Integration

Pros

5. Material UI

GitHub Stars: 79.8K | Forks: 27.5K | MIT License | Latest release: 5.8.7

Next on the list is material UI in reactjs. With 72K stars on GitHub, Material UI is amongst the most popular React UI frameworks. Formally known as Material UI, now as MUI, it contains foundational React UI components libraries for shipping new features faster. It contains four things:

• Material UI: The use of Google’s material design technology is featured in this extensive collection of components.
• Joy UI: Beautiful React UI components are contained in this design library.
• MUI Base: This library contains low-level hooks and “unstyled” components. Your app’s CSS and accessibility features are completely in your control with the aid of the MUI base.
• MUI System: consists of a set of CSS utilities that will speed up the layout of bespoke designs

The components rely on React, but they use Google’s Material Design. It consists of a rich set of react components, that every developer needs and can configure with a pre-defined color palette and component, allowing you to set up your design setup or define your personalized app color theme. It is one of the most refined implementations of Material Design apart from being one of the most actively maintained libraries.

Installation

Material UI

// with npm
npm install @mui/material @emotion/react @emotion/styled
// with yarn
yarn add @mui/material @emotion/react @emotion/styled

Material Base

// with npm:

npm install @mui/base

// with yarn:

yarn add @mui/base

Note: MUI base is still in alpha version, there are new components added regularly

MUI System

// with npm:

npm install @mui/system @emotion/react @emotion/styled

// with yarn:

yarn add @mui/system @emotion/react @emotion/styled

In addition, if you wish to use the stylized components as a styling engine use the following instruction.

// with npm:

npm install @mui/material @mui/styled-engine-sc styled-components

// with yarn:

yarn add @mui/material @mui/styled-engine-sc styled-components

For more information on how to configure styled-components as the style engine, you can visit here.

Usage

import React from 'react';import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';import Button from '@mui/material/Button';function App() { return ( <Button variant="contained" color="primary"> Hello World </Button> );}ReactDOM.render(<App/>, document.querySelector('#app'));

Companies using MUI

1295 Developers using Material UI on Stack share

MUI Integration

Pros

6. Semantic UI react

GitHub Stars: 50.1K | Forks: 5.1K | MIT License | Latest release: 2.4.1

React Semantic UI is a development framework that helps create beautiful, responsive layouts using human-friendly HTML. This framework is more influenced by the semantic style of HTML, having meaning for every CSS class. Semantic react UI treats words and classes as exchangeable concepts. Classes use syntax from a natural language like noun/modifier relationships, plurality, word order to link concepts intuitively. It also uses simple phrases called behaviours that trigger functionality.

Features

Installation

npm install semantic-ui-react semantic-ui-css

Usage

import React from "react";import { render } from "react-dom";import {Button, Container, Divider, Header, Icon, Message }from "semantic-ui-react"; const App = () => ( <Container> <Divider hidden /> <Header as="h1" floated="left"> Click To Select </Header> <Divider hidden clearing /> <Button content="GitHub" icon="github" href="https://github.com/Semantic-Org/Semantic-UI-React" target="_blank" /> <Button color="blue" content="Documentation" icon="book" href="https://react.semantic-ui.com" target="_blank" /> <Button color="orange" content="Stack Overflow" icon="Stack Overflow" href="https://bit.ly/35omSF2" target="_blank" /> <Divider hidden clearing /> <Message info> After forking, update this template to demonstrate the bug. </Message> </Container>); render(<App />, document.getElementById("root"));

Companies using Semantic UI

183 Developers using Semantic UI on Stack share

Semantic UI Integration

Pros

7. React Admin

GitHub Stars: 20.1K | Forks: 4.4K | MIT License | Latest release: 4.2.2

The React UI Component framework is suitable for building business-to-business admin applications on top of REST/GraphQL APIs and is customizable by design. It’s built with several well-known projects, in addition to React: Material UI, React Router, Redux, and react final form. The latter is a popular form of state management solution. In addition to the free version and its components, there is also an enterprise solution. the enterprise solution includes pro support from Marmelab and access to private modules. React Admin is actively maintained.

Features

• Adapts to any backend (REST, GraphQL, SOAP, etc.)
• Powered by material-ui, redux, react-final-form, react-router, and a few more
• Super-fast UI thanks to optimistic rendering (renders before the server returns)
• Undo updates and deletes for a few seconds
• Relationships (many to one, one to many)
• Data Validation
• Internationalization (i18n)
• Themeable, Highly customizable interface
• Supports any authentication provider (REST API, OAuth, Basic Auth, …)
• Full-featured Datagrid (sort, pagination, filters)
• Large library of components for various data types: boolean, number, rich text, etc.
• Conditional formatting
• Filter-as-you-type
• Supports any form layout (simple, tabbed, etc.)
• Custom actions
• WYSIWYG editor
• Customize dashboard, menu, layout
• Super easy to extend and override (it’s just React components)
• Can be Integrate with another React app

Installation

npm install react-admin
#or
yarn add react-admin

Usage

import * as React from "react";import { render } from 'react-dom';import { Admin, Resource } from 'react-admin';import restProvider from 'ra-data-simple-rest';import { PostList, PostEdit, PostCreate, PostIcon } from './posts';render( <Admin dataProvider={restProvider('http://localhost:3000')} > <Resource name="posts" list={PostList} edit={PostEdit} create={PostCreate} icon={PostIcon} /> </Admin>, document.getElementById('root'));

Companies using React Admin

10,052 Developers using React Admin on GitHub

React Admin Integration

Pros

• Supports almost all platforms such as SOAP, REST, GraphQL, and more.
• Fast UI due to optimistic rendering
• Supports various platforms such as Material-UI, redux, and more.
• Data Validation Support
• Internationalization (i18n)
• Provides WYSIWYG editor.

8. React Bootstrap

GitHub Stars: 20.9K | Forks: 3.4K | MIT License | Latest release: 2.5.0 beta.1

Next on the best ui framework react list is React Bootstrap, a UI Kit that retains its Bootstrap core. React Bootstrap is a set of React components that implements the Bootstrap framework and combines Bootstrap and React. It is one of the most popular and commonly used CSS frameworks. React Bootstrap CSS was created with compatibility in mind: bootstrap core compatibility and the world’s largest UI ecosystem compatibility. It’s compatible with the thousands of Bootstrap themes that developers already use. The React component models provide you with more control over the look and feel of each component, and they’re all built with accessibility in mind. As a result, React Bootstrap produces a set of components accessible by default, as opposed to what is feasible with basic Bootstrap.

There are three common ways of using React Bootstrap:

Installation

npm i react-bootstrap

Usage

import Button from "react-bootstrap/Button"function BootstrapButtonEx() { return ( <div> <Button> Click Me </Button> </div> )}

Companies using React BootStrap

43 developers are using React BootStrap in their tech stack on Stack share

React Bootstrap Integrations

Pros

9. React Toolbox

GitHub Stars: 20K | Forks: 3.2K | MIT License | Latest release: 1.6.4

Another React UI components Framework that you can be used to implement Google’s material principles in your project is React Toolbox. React Toolbox relies on CSS modules for this purpose. Though you can use any module bundler, it integrates neatly with webpack workflow. In addition, react Toolbox provides visitors with an in-browser editor where you can experiment with the components in real-time. While working with react Toolbox, you can choose to import components in bundles or raw components. The difference is that the components come with all the necessary dependencies and themes injected for the former. This means that the CSS for each dependency will be available in CSS automatically. On the contrary, with raw components, no CSS is included. This means you’ll have to provide a theme via properties to the component to be properly styled.

Features

• React components
• Implements Google Material Design specification

Installation

$ npm install --save react-toolbox

Usage

import React from 'react';import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';import { Button } from 'react-toolbox/lib/button';ReactDOM.render( <Button label="Hello World!" />, document.getElementById('app'));

Also Read: – When and Why Not Use React Native?

2 Developers are using React Toolbox in their project

React Toolbox Integration

Pros

• Implements Google material design
• Build on the proposal like CSS modules written in SASS, webpack, and ES6.
• Easy Integrations
• Supports Customizations
• Flexible Development

10. React Virtualized

GitHub Stars: 22.5K | Forks: 2.8K | MIT License | Latest release: 9.22.3

React Virtualized is the library you need to dip into if the front end of your application is data-heavy. It includes numerous components for efficiently rendering large lists, tables, and grids. For example, customize the tables by configuring the row heights and display placeholders in the cell. It also has very few dependencies & supports standard browsers, including recent mobile browsers of both Android and iOS.

Installation

npm install react-virtualized --save

Usage

import React from 'react';import { render } from 'react-dom';import UserForm from './UserForm';const imaginaryUser = { email: '', username: '', imaginaryThingId: null,};const App = () => ( <div className="App"> <UserForm user={imaginaryUser} /> </div>);render(<App />, document.getElementById('root'));

Companies using React Virtualized

9 Developers using React Virtualized on Stack share

React Virtualized Integration

Pros

Advantages and Disadvantages of using React UI frameworks

Every UI frameworks have there benefits and limitations and react UI framework is no different. Below are the general benefits of using any component libraries which will help you achieve enhanced user experience while developing react applications.

Easy Learning Curve

As the UI libraries consist of inbuilt components such as buttons, text fields, form fields, and various other things. So as an amateur programmer you can focus on learning necessary elements as well as in’s and out of the language rather than building components from scratch. You can focus your attention on customization and a smooth user experience.

Quick MVP development

With ready-made components at your disposal, you can develop various working prototypes within a few hours. This will help you prove that the design you have generated is working properly and you can also check the functionalities without spending too much time.

Easy Navigation

An application that is unique and innovative stands out from the crowd. But this can also put a damper on the user experience. It is better to use designs that can be universally understood by the users. It is easy to understand the designs that have universal icons that can help users navigate smoothly.

Customizable components

Although each library allows you to customize its in-built components to some extent. Different libraries allow you various levels of controls to customize the component.

Time-Saving

Using various UI libraries available in the market, allows the developer to add new features to your existing project without having to write code from scratch.

Device Compatibility

Most of the UI libraries are mobile responsive by default. This helps as you don’t have to create React applications for various devices. It ensures that your app works on different types of devices.

Open Source

Almost all of these libraries are open-source, which means that they are maintained by the contributors around GitHub. This means you can suggest the features, pull the request, raise an issue, or you can easily contribute.

These were some of the benefits of using React UI components, But despite having various advantages there are certain limitations that you need to consider before making a selection to use one.

Difficulty In customization

Depending on the library you have chosen it can limit the customization it offers. Some libraries allow the primitive components that are meant to be heavily customized by the developers, but for some, it can be tricky.

Similar UI/UX

Choosing a popular UI library can result in a similar UI design. It can be possible that the themes are not customized enough and can end up looking similar to other websites already available. Conditional to your project it can be an issue or it might not be also.

Smaller community

As the community is not large enough, it can be an issue for unpopular libraries. Most of the libraries don’t offer official support but rather guide users to various forums such as GitHub, Stackoverflow, Discord, and more.

Wrapping Up!

The list of the ReactJS UI Framework doesn’t end here. There are various other frameworks available in the market. It is always important to choose the Best React UI Framework by analyzing clients’ requirements and the objective of the React app to be built, and which framework is best for your project. Don’t just jump into the hype created by trends among the developers, and it’s better to choose the one to React UI Component Framework that are useful.