Top 9 UI libraries and kits for React

Editor’s Note: This blog post was updated 30 July 2021 to review the list’s contents and add two more popular React UI kits: Chakra UI and Ant Design. Some information may still be out of date.

React is currently atop the JavaScript food chain. Stack Overflow’s 2021 Developer Survey shows React as the most commonly used web framework.

Due to its popularity, many UI libraries have built custom React components to facilitate easy integration and improve the developer experience.

There are countless React UI kits and libraries today. In this guide, we’ll highlight seven of the most useful kits and libraries and show how you can use them in your next React app. A few of them are popular, some are more obscure, and any of them could help address the unique needs of your next React project:

• Shards React
• React Suite
• PrimeReact
• Grommet
• Onsen UI
• Material-UI
• React Boostrap
• Chakra UI
• Ant Design

1. Shards React

Shards React is a new UI library created by DesignRevision. It was built from scratch according modern development best practices and enables blazing-fast performance.

It’s very easy to get started with Shards React:

npm i shards-react

Now, we can import the components and the required styles:

import { Button } from "shards-react"
import "shards-ui/dist/css/shards.min.css"

function ButtonsEx() {
    return (
        <div>
            <Button>Primary</Button>
            <Button theme="info">Info</Button>
        </div>
    )
}

These commands will display two buttons, each styled with Shards UI.

As you can see, Shards is simple to use. See the documentation to learn more about Shards and its components.

We made a custom demo for .
No really. Click here to check it out.

Click here to see the full demo with network requests

2. React Suite

Another awesome React UI kit, React Suite is, as its name suggests, a suite of React components. It boasts of a sensible UI design and a friendly development experience and is designed for middle-platform and backend products.

Check it out on GitHub.

The kit is quite simple to use. First, install it via npm:

npm i rsuite --save

React Suite has a massive pool of components. To use one of them, simply restructure it from rsuite.

To use a component from its huge pool of components, we just destructure it from rsuite:

import { Button } from "rsuite"

3. PrimeReact

PrimeReact is one of the most extraordinary React UI kits I’ve ever seen. It features a huge collection of more than 70 components to choose from and really accelerates frontend design and development.

This UI kit was built by PrimeTek Informatics.

In addition to a wide variety of components, PrimeReact features custom themes, premium application templates, a11y, and responsive and touch-enabled UI components to deliver an excellent UI experience on any device.

For more details, check out PrimeReact on GitHub.

The kit is easy to install and use:

npm i primereact --save

For icons, you can download the PrimeIcons library:

npm i primeicons --save

To use a component, import it at the import section of the component’s documentation:

import { Button } from "primereact/button"

function PrimeButtonEx() {
    return (
        <div>
            <Button>Button</Button>
        </div>
    )
}

4. Grommet

Part-design, part-framework, Grommet is a UI library based on React. It features a nice set of components that make it easy to get started. The library also provides powerful theming tools that enable you to tailor the component library to align with your desired layout, color, and type.

The Grommet Design Kit is a drag-and-drop tool that makes designing your layout and components a breeze. It features sticker sheets, app templates, and icons galore.

To set up Grommet, run the following command in your React app:

npm i grommet

To use a component such as Button, destructure it from the "grommet" package:

import { Grommet, Button } from "grommet"

function GrommetButtonEx() {
    return (
        <Grommet className="App">
            <Button
                label="Button" 
            />
        </Grommet>
    )
}

5. Onsen UI

If you want your web app to feel native, this UI library is for you. Onsen UI is designed to enrich the user experience with a mobile-like feel. It’s packed with features that provide the UI experience of native iOS and Android devices.

Onsen’s UI elements and components are natively designed and perfect for developing hybrid apps and web apps. The library enables you to simulate page transitions, animations, ripple effects, popup models — basically, any effect you would find in native Android and iOS devices.

It is quite easy to use Onsen in a React app. First, install the npm packages:

npm i onsenui react-onsenui --save

onsenui contains the Onsen UI core instance. react-onsenui contains the React components:

import { Page, Button } from "react-onsenui"

function OnsenButtonEx() {
    return (
        <Page>
            <Button> Click Me!!</Button>
        </Page>
    )
}

Then, import the onsen CSS.

import "onsenui/css/onsenui.css"
import "onsenui/css/onsen-css-components.css"

I fondly refer to Onsen UI as the native CSS of the web.

6. Material-UI

Material-UI is based on Google’s Material Design. It provides React components built with Material Design.

To install, run the following command:

npm i @material-ui/core

Next, import the component you want to use from the @material-ui/core:

import Button from "@material-ui/core/Button"

function MatButtonEx() {
    return (
        <div>
            <Button color="primary">
                Button
            </Button>
        </div>
    )
}

Material-UI also provides beautiful premium themes and templates you can purchase to jumpstart your project.

Find the source code for Material-UI on GitHub.

7. React Bootstrap

As the name suggests, React Bootstrap provides React components built with the world’s most popular CSS framework, Bootstrap.

React Bootstrap did well to remove most dependencies from the Bootstrap JavaScript, such as jQuery, and it was built with compatibility and a11y in mind. It also comes with a wide variety of components.

To install React Bootstrap in your project, run the command below:

npm i react-bootstrap

You can import individual components:

import Button from "react-bootstrap/Button"

function BootstrapButtonEx() {
    return (
        <div>
            <Button>
                Click Me
            </Button>
        </div>
    )
}

See the source code for React Bootstrap on GitHub.

8. Chakra UI

I am so proud of my fellow Nigerian Segun Adebayo for developing Chakra UI. It has a clean and neat UI. It is one of the most complete React UI kits I have ever seen, its APIs are simple but composable, and the accessibility is great.

Chakra UI has over 19.8K GitHub stars and has over 450K downloads per month. It is very extensible and customizable.

Chakra UI is easy to get started with. Inside your React project, run the below command to install it:

npm i @chakra-ui/react @emotion/[email protected]^11 @emotion/[email protected]^11 [email protected]^4
# OR
yarn add @chakra-ui/react @emotion/[email protected]^11 @emotion/[email protected]^11 [email protected]^4

Chakra UI has a ChakraProvider that we must provide at the root of our application when we want to use Chakra components:

import * as React from "react";

// 1. import `ChakraProvider` component
import { ChakraProvider } from "@chakra-ui/react";

function App({ Component }) {
  // 2. Use at the root of your app
  return (
    <ChakraProvider>
      <Component />
    </ChakraProvider>
  );
}

To use a component — for example, a Button — we will have to import it from @chakra-ui/react:

import { Button, ButtonGroup } from "@chakra-ui/react";

Then we can render the Button like this:

function ChakraUIButtonEx() {
  return (
    <div>
      <Button>Click Me</Button>
    </div>
  );
}

For more info and components in Chakra UI, visit the Chakra docs here.

9. Ant Design

Ant Design is regarded as one of the best React UI kits in the world. With over 17K stars on GitHub, it tops the list as one of the most used and downloaded React UI kits.

Ant Design incorporates and promotes global design patterns. Ant Design also has a lot of features:

• Powerful theme customization
• High-quality React components
• Internationalization support

Ant Design is quite simple to install and use in our React project:

npm install antd
# OR
yarn add antd

We can import the style sheets manually:

import 'antd/dist/antd.css';

We can import any component we want to use from antd. For example, to use a Button, we do this:

import { Button } from "antd";

function AntdEx() {
  return <Button type="primary">Primary Button</Button>;
}

Visit this page to see all components in Ant Design. Ant Design also has a spin-off for Angular and one for Vue.js.

Honorable mentions for React UI Kits and Libraries

Below are some UI libraries that are less popular but worth mentioning.

• React Semantic UI
• AtlasKit
• Belle
• Blueprint UI
• Elemental UI
• Fabric React
• ReaKit
• Rebass

Conclusion

In this guide, we covered a comprehensive list of React UI kits — everything from innovative newcomers such as Shard, to popular stalwarts such as Google’s Material Design and Twitter’s Bootstrap. We also listed other React UI kits that are not quite popular but still pack a huge punch.

Now you should have the basic, foundational knowledge you need to select the right UI kit for your next React project.