Building and maintaining a large-scale web project is a daunting task. While new features are born and killed as the project grows, there are processes that are literally endless.
One such endless process is working on the User Interface (UI) of the product. Very few people would disagree if I say that it is one of the most important parts of any modern web application.
How the app is designed and presented to the end user is one of the greatest factors that determine the success of the project. However, great products evolve over time and this holds true for websites also.
Check out any large website like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc., and see how they used to look earlier vs how they look today and you will find a vast difference. While it's good to hear that but you may want to spend only some of your time building interfaces during the infancy of your project because there are also other important tasks that need your attention.
Best React UI Libraries
Thankfully, there's an option to work with React UI libraries that makes your task much easier. With React UI libraries, you don't have to spend much time on the front end and you can still ensure that the website you built is top-notch in design and user experience.
Now, let's move ahead and learn what are the best React UI libraries you need in 2023 to create a visually appealing web application in no time:
1. TailwindCSS
TailwindCSS is a utility-first CSS framework designed to build modern and beautiful websites in no time. Here, utility class names define what to do. Each utility class comes with pre-defined CSS properties.
To put a CSS property into action, you have to find the relevant class and assign it to your element. Let's say you want to make a paragraph bold on your website. You have to just assign the class font-bold to the paragraph.
Similarly, there are lots of other utility classes like underline, text-center, py-4, etc. that cover almost everything you need to do with CSS. Apart from that, Tailwind is highly customizable so if your particular use case is not met with the existing classes, you can easily create your own class to do the work.
As of August 2023, TailwindCSS has crossed more than 70K stars on GitHub and is ruling over NPM trends with more than 6 million+ weekly downloads.
2. MUI
MUI is a collection of UI tools and component libraries that helps you bring great designs to life in no time. The most popular of these is MUI Core.
MUI Core contains foundational React UI component libraries for shipping new features faster. (Source: MUI)
MUI Core contains 4 foundational libraries that are as follows:
Material UI: Material UI is a library of React UI components that implements Google's Material Design. (Source: Material UI)
Joy UI: Joy UI is a library of beautifully designed React UI components built to spark joy in the development process. (Source: Joy UI)
Base UI: Base UI is a library of headless ("unstyled") React UI components and low-level hooks. (Source: Base UI)
MUI System: MUI System is a collection of CSS utilities for rapidly laying out custom designs with MUI component libraries. (Source: MUI System)
The most popular library of the ones created by MUI preferred by developers to design components is Material UI. It's an open-source project that has amassed more than 88K stars on GitHub as of August 2023.
3. Chakra UI
Chakra UI is another popular UI component library often used by React developers to design components. Similar to the previous two libraries, it is also an open-source project.
The Chakra UI components are built with simplicity, consistent design patterns, and accessibility in mind. All Chakra components are also dark mode compatible.
There is a total of 52 different components serving various purposes to help you create great UI in less time.
As of August 2023, it has got 30K+ GitHub stars and 450K+ weekly downloads on NPM.
4. Ant Design
Ant Design is a UI library that is used to build enterprise-level interfaces for web applications. It has its own design language that is used extensively in the products of Ant Financial.
There is a total of 72 different components, common and unique, under various categories in Ant Design that are enough to take care of most of your UI needs.
As of August 2023, it has more than 85K stars on GitHub and more than 1.2 million weekly downloads on NPM.
5. React Suite
React Suite is a popular React UI component library focused on building for middle platforms and backend products. It has inbuilt support for Light, Dark, and High Contrast themes that can be switched with a simple configuration.
There are more than 50 components like Button, Carousel, Calendar, Pagination, etc. in React Suite to fit your UI needs that also support accessibility and i18n.
As of August 2023, React Suite has amassed more than 7K GitHub stars and more than 60K weekly downloads on NPM.
6. React Bootstrap
React Bootstrap is the rebuilt version of the popular frontend CSS framework for React. Each component of the React Bootstrap is built from scratch with no unneeded dependencies and is accessible by default.
There is a total of 27 components with a consistent design that is compatible with core bootstrap and can be easily put into production.
As of August 2023, React Bootstrap has got more than 21K stars on GitHub and is getting more than 2 million weekly downloads on NPM.
7. Semantic UI
Semantic UI React is the official integration of the popular frontend framework Semantic UI for React.
The styling of Semantic UI React is based on the Semantic UI theme and it's also free from jQuery. Apart from that, there are other useful features like augmentation, shorthand props, auto controlled state, etc.
There are around 50 useful components in multiple styles and variations for your React application. As of August 2023, the total GitHub stars of Semantic UI React are more than 13K and weekly NPM downloads are around 250K.
8. Mantine
Mantine is a free and open-source React components library that provides 134 fully responsive React components for 25 different categories like navbar, error pages, blog card, comments, sliders, etc. to be put into production.
Mantine is highly customizable and allows you to change themes, fonts, colors, etc easily. Most of the components also have built-in support for both light and dark mode.
As of August 2023, it has got more than 20K stars on GitHub and more than 250K weekly downloads on NPM for its core components library.
9. Blueprint
Blueprint is a UI toolkit for React that is designed to build data-rich interfaces for web applications. The core Blueprint NPM package contains 30+ common and unique React components like Button, Card, Menu, Form Group, File Input, etc.
Apart from the core NPM package, Blueprint also provides a set of other NPM packages like Datetime and Datetime2 to work with dates, Icons with more than 300 vector UI icons, Select and Table for working with selecting items in a list, and to build interactive spreadsheet interfaces.
As of August 2023, Blueprint has got more than 20K stars on GitHub.
10. NextUI
NextUI is a React and Next.js UI library that gives you amazing components to build beautiful and modern websites. If you are someone who is obsessed with building great designs, NextUI is one of the best options. The whole library is built keeping the design factor in mind.
It provides you with 25 different components in multiple variations, the use of which is properly documented.
Apart from that, NextUI is highly customizable. You can change colors, fonts, breakpoints, etc as per your need. It also comes with automatic dark mode recognition.
As of August 2023, it has got 11K GitHub stars and more than 25K weekly downloads on NPM.
What’s Next?
The next thing which you as a tech team or a solo developer should do is to identify your unique needs and problems and explore these libraries and frameworks.
Once you identify your own challenges and are aware of the problems that various libraries solve, you would be in a better position to judge their effectiveness for your unique situation and hence make an informed decision of choosing the ideal UI tech stack for your project.
Top comments (2)
Amazing deepdive. Thanks for this!
Thank you!!