React is a popular JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It is used by many companies, including Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, Airbnb, and Uber. React is also used by many open-source projects, such as WordPress, Drupal, and Magento.
When building many interfaces, it's essential to choose an appropriate React component library. These libraries can help us quickly build user interfaces. They also provide many reusable components, such as buttons, forms, charts, tables, etc. These libraries offer many features, including themes, animations, routing, state management, and more.
There are many React component libraries on the market. Each library has its own features, pros and cons, and price. In this blog post, we will review the top 5 React component libraries in 2024 and compare them based on their features, ease of use, compatibility.
Why Choose a Component Library?
Typically, companies choose component libraries to build web applications to simplify repetitive tasks. Component libraries provide a range of ready-to-use components, such as dropdowns, input boxes, checkboxes, etc. These components come with customizable styles or attractive built-in styles, allowing for the rapid development of visually appealing websites without starting from scratch.
In summary, we usually use component libraries in two scenarios:
- External tools: Directly facing company users, often consistent with the company's style, more aesthetically pleasing, and more responsive.
- Internal tools: For internal use by company employees, emphasizing design aesthetics and rapid feature implementation.
Next, we will analyze component libraries based on the following aspects:
- Advantages
- Disadvantages
- How to make a choice
Best Choice for Internal Tool Scenarios
ILLA Cloud is an out-of-the-box low-code tool that allows for the rapid construction of internal tools using simple JS, without the need for complex frontend projects. It offers drag-and-drop UI building.
- Web and application management panels
- Data dashboards
- Custom B2B tools
Compared to building with component libraries, ILLA Cloud can achieve tool construction 10 times faster and supports collaborative editing within teams.
MUI
⭐ GitHub Stars: 90k
⏬ NPM Downloads: 3,263,852 per week
💪🏼 Initial Release Date: November 6, 2014
Advantages
MUI's components are comprehensive, consisting of:
- MUI Core: Core components, including buttons, forms, icons, charts, tables, etc.
- MUI X: Advanced components, including data tables, complex charts, etc.
Using MUI can cover all scenarios without the need for other component libraries for complex data handling and presentation.
If you like the style of Material Design, MUI is your best choice. You can build a complete Google-style application without any modifications.
Disadvantages
Complex data handling components in MUI X require payment.
MUI, as an implementation of Material Design, has a rigorous design style, which may require extra work for scenarios needing custom design styles.
MUI's custom Style system uses EmotionJs for overall layout style adjustments, which may have a learning curve and might not be suitable for direct development without consulting documentation.
If you dislike the CSS-IN-JS approach, MUI might not be your best choice.
Shadcn UI
⭐ GitHub Stars: 37k
⏬ NPM Downloads: 23,962 per week
💪🏼 Initial Release Date: March 8, 2023
Advantages
As a relatively new project, Shadcn UI has quickly gained recognition in the open-source community. Being newly built without historical baggage, it can adapt better to new technology stacks.
Shadcn UI's design style is more business-oriented, with a clean user interface suitable for internal tools and serious application scenarios. Shadcn UI supports custom themes and some preset styles, allowing for quick application builds without the need for custom design styles.
Shadcn UI's biggest advantage is that it is not a library distributed by npm. Integrating Shadcn UI involves building directly with code, meaning you can modify its code without additional effort.
Disadvantages
Shadcn UI's theme is based on CSS variables, which means it does not support IE11. If you need IE11 support, Shadcn UI might not be the best choice.
Shadcn UI's theme customization uses CSS variables or Tailwind CSS utility classes, so additional work may be needed for CSS-IN-JS users.
Being relatively new, Shadcn UI may lack support for complex components like DataGrid and Chart, requiring other solutions, meaning you can't rely on a single component library for all tasks.
Chakra UI
⭐ GitHub Stars: 35.8k
⏬ NPM Downloads: 534,188 per week
💪🏼 Initial Release Date: December 7, 2019
Advantages
Chakra UI is a commercially styled component library, not bound to any specific style, making it aesthetically pleasing for most users.
As a library, Chakra UI has a vast template market, offering complete templates for mainstream scenarios like e-commerce and SaaS websites. These templates can be used directly or modified.
Chakra UI's features mostly require no configuration, helpful for rapid prototyping, and natively supports responsiveness for previews on different devices.
Chakra UI is SEO-friendly, essential for products requiring SEO optimization.
Disadvantages
Chakra UI lacks component richness for complex scenarios like data handling and charts, requiring additional solutions.
It's best not to use Chakra UI for complex tool or SaaS products due to its limited component customization capabilities. Using Chakra UI for Landing Pages is the best choice.
Although Chakra UI has a rich template market, these templates are not free, and additional costs are required for purchases.
Ant Design
⭐ GitHub Stars: 89.1k
⏬ NPM Downloads: 1,264,151 per week
💪🏼 Initial Release Date: July 21, 2015
Advantages
As a library maintained by a mature billion-dollar public company, Ant Design offers the best richness, covering all scenarios with stable components.
If you need to unify React and Vue styles in your workspace, Ant Design is your best choice, supporting both React and Vue.
Ant Design includes not only basic components but also Web3 components, allowing for direct Web3 application development.
Ant Design also customizes component libraries for data charts, big data scenarios, and maps, supporting complex data screen scenarios.
Disadvantages
Ant Design's extensive support comes with historical baggage, such as poor performance in the Table component, requiring additional solutions.
Although Ant Design excellently covers component breadth, it lacks depth in component satisfaction.
All dependencies in Ant Design are maintained by Ant Design, requiring extra work to adapt your build and CSS schemes, which is unfriendly for scenarios wishing to use other open-source libraries.
Fluent UI
⭐ GitHub Stars: 17.3k
⏬ NPM Downloads: 191,170 per week
💪🏼 Initial Release Date: September 17, 2020
Advantages
Maintained officially by Microsoft, Fluent UI's style is completely consistent with Microsoft's, helpful for scenarios needing to align with Microsoft's style.
Fluent UI supports many platforms, including Web, React Native, iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows, allowing for the development of cross-platform applications.
Disadvantages
Not everyone likes Microsoft's style, so if you dislike it, Fluent UI might not be the best choice.
Fluent UI lacks component richness for complex scenarios like data handling and charts, requiring additional solutions.
Fluent UI's documentation could be improved, as documentation construction is crucial for developers.
Conclusion
If you need a comprehensive component library and are willing to pay for it, MUI is recommended. If you don't want to pay, Ant Design is recommended.
If you are developing a Landing Page, Chakra UI is recommended.
If you want to use the Microsoft style, Fluent UI is recommended.
If you don't want to introduce a component library and only want to integrate the source code, Shadcn UI is recommended.