Top 29 React UI libraries and kits

The reality is, React is immensely popular as a front-end framework for developing web applications. Its popularity can be attributed to its component-based architecture, virtual DOM, and high performance. Another factor that makes React loved is the vibrant ecosystem of different React libraries, like React testing libraries, React UI libraries, table libraries, charting libraries, and more.

In this blog, we will explore 29 top-notch Reactjs UI libraries and kits, each with its own unique features and advantages. From component libraries like Material-UI and Ant Design to design systems like Fluent UI and Chakra UI. These Reactjs UI library tools provide a solid foundation for creating stunning web applications with ease.

Before we dive deep into our lists, let’s first understand a bit about Reactjs UI libraries.

What is a React UI Library?

React UI libraries are collections of pre-built components designed to streamline the development of user interfaces. These libraries typically include a variety of elements such as buttons, forms, modals, and navigation menus. Developers can combine and customize these elements to create unique user interfaces for different projects.

Instead of building UI components from scratch, these libraries allow developers to focus on writing code for the core functionality of their applications.

Why Do We Need React UI Libraries?

While React provides a solid foundation for creating interfaces, developers often turn to UI libraries and kits to accelerate the development process and improve the visual and functional quality of their applications. These libraries offer a range of tested, performance-optimized UI components that are easy to integrate into React apps, saving developers time and effort.

Reasons to Use React UI Libraries

1. Faster Development: React UI libraries come with pre-tested, performance-optimized components, enabling developers to build high-quality apps more quickly.
2. Consistent Design: Standardized components, theming, style guides, and design systems help create applications with a unified design.
3. Optimized Performance: Features like code optimization, server-side rendering, and lazy loading of components enhance performance.
4. Customizability: These libraries offer extensive customization options, including styling, configuration, extensibility, and theming.

1. Material UI

Material UI is one of the most popular React UI libraries, built on Google's Material Design system. It offers a vast array of pre-built components that follow Material Design guidelines, making it easy to create visually consistent applications.

2. Ant Design

Ant Design is another widely used React UI library, built on the principles of the Ant Design system. It offers a variety of components, including forms, tables, charts, and more, making it a versatile choice for developing applications.

• Extensive Component Library: Ant Design includes over 50 components, from basic layout elements to advanced data visualization widgets.
• Customization and Internationalization: The components are highly customizable and come with built-in support for multiple languages, making it ideal for apps that need to support different languages.
• Design Tools: Ant Design provides a range of design tools, such as icon sets and color schemes, to help you achieve a cohesive appearance for your application.
• Community and Popularity: With around 69k stars on GitHub, Ant Design is highly rated and popular in the React community.

3. Semantic UI React

The Semantic UI React package provides a robust collection of pre-built components rooted in the Semantic UI design system. It includes a wide range of elements such as forms, menus, modals, and more, making it a versatile toolkit for developers.

Key Features of Semantic UI React

• Comprehensive Component Collection: With components for layout, inputs, buttons, menus, and more, Semantic UI React covers all the essentials for building modern user interfaces.
• Theming System: The built-in theming system allows for easy customization of the look and feel of your application, ensuring it aligns with your brand's style.
• Modern and Responsive Design: Semantic UI React is designed to help you create sleek, responsive interfaces that perform well on various devices.
• Community and Popularity: With over 14k stars on GitHub, Semantic UI React is a well-regarded choice among developers.

By leveraging Semantic UI React, you can speed up development with ready-made components while maintaining the flexibility to tailor your app’s design. Its comprehensive set of tools and customizable themes make it a strong candidate for any modern web project.

4. React Bootstrap

React Bootstrap is based on the most popular Bootstrap framework as it includes  pre-built React components. It has different components used for navigation, layout, inputs, and more, all of which can be customized using the Bootstrap theming system.

It also includes support for accessibility features such as aria-labels and keyboard navigation. Developers can effortlessly use bootstrap in React to create beautiful interfaces.  React Bootstrap has gained 20k stars on GitHub because of its ease of use and flexibility.

5. Blueprint

Blueprint is a UI toolkit for building web applications that provides a set of pre-built components and styles based on the principles of Blueprint design system. With the help of accessibility support, you can design apps for users with disabilities. Component library, theming, and styling are some key features of Blueprint design system.

Blueprint is a strong option for applications that deal with complicated data since it also offers a collection of utilities for working with dates, times, and other data kinds. Blueprint is a good option for creating complex interfaces that need reliable data visualization and manipulation. It has over 15k stars on GitHub.

6. Grommet

Grommet has a set of pre-built components that are designed to be highly accessible and customizable. It places a strong emphasis on accessibility and includes features such as keyboard navigation, ARIA support, and high contrast mode. Grommet also includes built-in support for responsive design, making it easy to create user interfaces.

There are various components available in Grommet such as buttons, forms, inputs, data visualization which are highly customizable and easy to use.

7. Chakra UI

Chakra UI is a popular choice for developers who want to create modern, responsive, and accessible user interfaces in their React applications, while minimizing the need for custom styling and design work. It helps developers by focusing on simplicity, accessibility, and consistency. Chakra UI also provides built-in support for dark mode, making it easy to create interfaces that work well in different lighting conditions. Chakra UI is a well regarded library with over 21k rating on GitHub and is renowned for its usability and accessibility.

8. Materialize

Materialize is a UI library that provides a set of pre-built components that are based on Google’s Material Design system. It has support for features such as animations, icons, and typography, as well as a flexible grid system for building responsive layouts. Materialize also has a responsive design, which makes creation of UIs easy.

9. Carbon Design System

Carbon Design System is a Reactjs UI kit based on IBM's Carbon Design System. It provides a set of customizable and accessible components for building enterprise-grade interfaces. Carbon Design System includes components for layout, typography, forms, data visualization, and more, all of which are designed to be highly usable and accessible to all users.

With over 6k stars on GitHub, Carbon Design System is a solid choice for building enterprise-grade interfaces.

10. Shards React

Shards React is a Reactjs UI library based on the Shards UI kit. This kit is a modern and lightweight user interface toolkit for web development. It provides a set of customizable components for building modern interfaces. Shards React is an excellent choice for creating small-to-medium-sized interfaces. It is ease of use and includes components for layout, typography, forms, and more, all of which can be styled using SASS. With over 4k stars on GitHub, Shards React is a well-regarded library in the React community.

11. Evergreen

Evergreen is a Reactjs UI library that provides a set of customizable and accessible components for building modern interfaces. It features elements for typography, forms, and more that are all designed to be usable and adaptable.

Evergreen also includes a set of design resources, like as icons and color palettes, to assist you in creating a cohesive look and feel for your application. Though Evergreen is a relatively new but promising library in the React community, it has around 7k stars on GitHub.

12. Rebass

Rebass is a lightweight Reactjs UI library that provides a set of responsive, functional, and customizable components. It has elements for typography, forms, layout, and more that can all be customized using CSS-in-JS. Rebass is flexible and easy-to-use for creating small-to-medium-sized interfaces.

Rebass is a well-regarded library in the React community and has managed to gather 10k stars on GitHub.

13. React-Bootstrap-Table2

React-Bootstrap-Table2 is a Reactjs UI library that provides a set of customizable components for building data-intensive interfaces. It features table, form, pagination, and other components that are all meant to function in tandem with the Bootstrap CSS framework.

React-Bootstrap-Table2 also provides a set of utilities for working with data, such as sorting and filtering. With over 2k stars on GitHub, React-Bootstrap-Table2 is a solid choice for building data-intensive interfaces with React.

14. React Toolbox

React Toolbox provides an extensive collection of pre-designed UI components, including tables, forms, modals, and more, making it a comprehensive UI library. It is designed to provide higher response and customizations.

It has a built-in theming support for simplifying the process of personalizing your application's appearance to match your preferences.

With React Toolbox, you can quickly create stunning and practical user interfaces with ease.

15. Elemental UI

Elemental UI is a Reactjs UI framework which provides versatile set of UI components that are simple, easy to use and customizable. It includes basic components such as buttons, forms, inputs, grids, and more, and focuses on simplicity and performance. Elemental UI does not include any CSS styles by default, allowing developers to style the components as per their application's requirements.

16. PrimeReact

PrimeReact library is an open-source Reactjs UI component framework. It has customizable components for creating user interfaces such as buttons, menus, forms, tables, charts, and more.

It is built on top of the PrimeOne Design Language, which provides a consistent look and feel across all components. Developers can easily use this library for creating and managing complex UI structures.

17. Onsen UI

Onsen UI is an open-source framework that allows you to create mobile and hybrid web applications. It provides a set of UI components to help developers create native and responsive mobile apps.

Developers use a single codebase to run applications on different platforms, including iOS and Android, with its hybrid methodology. It makes use of Apache Cordova (formerly known as PhoneGap) to bridge the gap between web technologies and native device capabilities, allowing access to camera, GPS, and contacts functionalities.

18. Visx

Visx is a library for building custom, scalable, and reusable data visualizations in React. You can use its collection of expressive and modular components which makes it easy to construct dynamic and visually appealing charts and graphs.

The primary goal of Visx is to bridge the gap between D3.js and React, by leveraging the power of both libraries. It embraces the component-based architecture of React, allowing developers to create reusable visual components that can be easily composed and customized.

19. Mantine

Mantine is an open-source React component library that offers a collection of customisable and accessible UI components for developing modern online applications. Using its flexible user interfaces, you can achieve ready-to-use components that prioritize simplicity, performance, and developer experience.

It includes a variety of components like as buttons, forms, modals, notifications, tables, tooltips, and more. Developers can easily change their appearance, behavior, and styles with the help of these components.

20. Fluent

Fluent was created by Microsoft as a design system tool, providing a collection of rules, principles, and components for building user interfaces across several Microsoft products and platforms. It delivers a consistent user experience across on desktop, web, mobile, and mixed reality.

Fluent has spread throughout the Microsoft ecosystem, affecting the design of products such as Windows, Office, Microsoft Edge, and Microsoft Teams.

21. Headless UI

Headless UI is a collection of completely accessible and customizable UI components designed to serve as the foundation for creating user interfaces. Unlike traditional UI component libraries, Headless UI does not provide any pre-styled components or visual styles. Instead, it focuses on providing the underlying functionality and accessibility features, giving developers complete control over the styling and rendering of the components.

Here, developers have the freedom to define their own styles, apply their own CSS or CSS-in-JS solutions, and integrate the components seamlessly into their existing design systems or UI libraries. This allows for consistent branding and UI coherence throughout an application or project.

22. React-admin

React-admin is a popular open-source library for building administration dashboards and management interfaces using React. You can use its reusable UI components, data management tools, and hooks for creating data-driven applications.

It simplifies the development of CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) interfaces by offering pre-built components for handling data querying, editing, validation, and navigation. The component-based architecture is used to create a modular and customizable admin interface.

23. Retool

Retool is a low-code development platform that enables developers to build internal tools, dashboards, and workflows with a visual interface and minimal coding. It aims to empower developers to rapidly create custom applications and interfaces by abstracting away the complexity of front-end development.

With Retool, developers can create fully functional applications by dragging and dropping pre-built UI components, connecting to various data sources, and defining custom logic using a visual interface. It also supports integration with popular databases, APIs, and third-party services where you can easily connect and interact with their existing data sources and systems.

24. React Router

For building single-page applications (SPAs), react router is a popular routing library to work with. It has a set of components and utilities to manage the navigation and routing of their application.

Developers can create a declarative routing system where different components are rendered based on the URL. It allows for the creation of many routes, each with its own component, and handles the rendering and updating of those components based on the current URL.

25. Gestalt

Gestalt is a design system and component library developed by Pinterest. It provides a set of reusable UI components and styling guidelines to create visually appealing and consistent user interfaces. Gestalt is primarily designed for building web applications and focuses on simplicity, accessibility, and performance.

It follows a minimalist and clean aesthetic, with a focus on clarity and usability. It includes a wide range of UI components like as buttons, forms, grids, cards, modals, typography elements, and more.

26. Theme UI

Theme UI is a Reactjs UI library for building custom and theme-able user interfaces in React. It includes a set of tools and components for creating and managing themes, styles, and design systems in React applications.

The core concept of Theme UI revolves around the idea of "System UI," which promotes the use of a centralized theme object to manage the visual styles and design tokens of an application. The theme object can include values such as colors, typography, spacing, breakpoints, and more.

27. React Motion

React Motion is a library for creating smooth, interactive, and animated transitions in React applications. It provides a declarative API for defining animations and managing the physics-based motion of components.

React Motion focuses on creating animations that respond to user interactions or changes in component state. It uses the principles of spring physics to create realistic and visually appealing animations that simulate natural movements.

28. React Redux

React Redux is a library that integrates the Redux state management pattern with React applications. Redux is a predictable state container for JavaScript applications, and React Redux serves as the official binding library between Redux and React.

It includes a set of components and functions that let React components to interact with the Redux store, as well as access the application's state and dispatch actions. It connects the Redux store to the React component tree, allowing data to flow and components to be displayed efficiently based on state changes.

29. React Virtualized

React Virtualized is a library that helps optimize the rendering and performance of large lists or grids in React applications. It provides a set of reusable components and utilities for efficiently rendering large datasets by dynamically rendering only the visible portion of the list, thereby reducing the memory usage and improving overall performance.

When dealing with large lists or grids, rendering all the items at once can lead to performance issues, especially when there are frequent updates or interactions. React Virtualized solves this problem by employing techniques like windowing and virtualization.

Other types of React libraries you should know about

By now, we have looked at some UI libraries, but did you know there are other types of React libraries as well, which you can use to speed up your React development? Let’s check them out:

1. React table libraries: React table libraries are commonly used when developers need to display and manage tabular data in a React application.
2. React testing libraries: Now and then developers need to write tests for React components to ensure their functionality, behavior, and user interface is working as expected. In this scenario, React testing libraries can a great option.
3. React charting libraries: You can use React charting libraries to represent complex and data rich information in a visually format. These libraries help you create interactive charts and graphs in React applications.

Just in you are interested in machine learning, you can also explore machine learning libraries for JavaScript.

These libraries are capable of a lot of heavy lifting, and can take care of state management, UI components, form handling, and even routing.

Try these libraries and take your React development to the next level.

Conclusion

The popularity of React UI libraries is directly proportional to the popularity of React. These libraries bring on the table a plethora of options to build beautiful and functional user interfaces.

It can be overwhelming in the start to pick a library among these. We would advice, if you are new to React development, Material UI would be a good option to start with. And if have spent some time working with React, then Bootstrap, PrimeReact, Ant Design, or Chakra UI can be decent options to explore.

Before we wind up, since you are in to React development we encourage you explore React testing libraries. They will transform your world!

Happy Coding!