Top 6 React Frameworks / UI Component Libraries for 2021

This article is maintained and updated frequently. Latest update: 27 May 2021

Why use an open source component library

If you landed here you probably took into consideration writing the front end of your application by yourself or hiring a professional front end developer to take that burden.

We understand the insecurities towards someone else’s work - it’s not written in the same way as we want or maybe it does not compete with our level of quality, but the truth is, your users don’t care, they only experience the end product. Using an open-source framework assures the quality, performance and experience your users need without investing your time into development, decisions and the UI. From a business perspective the sooner you have a working application the better.

That’s why our products aim to deliver the best experiences at a fraction of the cost.

So why a framework? Because the only metric you need to worry about is time.

So here is an unordered list whatsoever of 5 React Frameworks to build the front-end of your application.

1. Material UI

We decided to go with this framework as our first product just because of it’s popularity and the volume of ready-to-use components. The components are well-written and very easy work with.

React Material Dashboard GitHub here

• Great for seed or MVP projects
• Flexible theming, you can customize pretty much how you’d like
• Great community support
• Not quite the best for heavy data applications, unless you are using the paid Data Grid

2. Palantir’s Blueprint

This is clearly the best framework for heavy-data applications, and here why:

GitHub Repo

This framework is engineered for metrics, data and tables. There’s nothing more powerful than Blueprint at the moment. So if you are building an app in the fin-tech sector for trading, cryptocurrency is your top choice. And it’s free.

• Best for data-heavy interfaces
• Requires high level experienced developers
• The UI looks really nice as well

3. Segment’s Evergreen

GitHub Repo

I think Evergreen is the best looking framework at the moment, especially with their new v6 update. It’s not the most popular though, my guess is because of the relatively small number of components (33 compared to 40+ from Material UI). Even so, it is still a solid choice for applications that ought to stand out aesthetically.

Here is an example of a table from Evergreen from a client project:

• Really nice-looking and well-written documentation
• Easy to work with - junior developers should not have a hard time working with Evergreen

4. Ant Design

GitHub Repo

Ant is the least favourite for me personally but I may be biased because of the aesthetic design system. Leaving my subjectivity aside, we cannot overlook the fact that it has almost 70k+ stars on GitHub which makes it one of the most popular and most backed-up and supported frameworks for React. The entire Alibaba front end uses this framework if I’m not mistaken.

• Requires high level experienced developers
• Hard to customize the theme
• It is built for the Chinese market so one would encounter difficulties

5. React Bootstrap

GitHub Repo

This should play the role of good old bootstrap but in a react environment. Looks just like the bootstrap you are used to, nothing fancy, easy to use. Just like a Toyota, you don’t expect much but it works and it is reliable.

• Easiest framework to implement
• Not so great aesthetics
• Reliable & great support from the community

6. Geist UI

GitHub Repo

Geist UI is a React implementation which uses design languages from Vercel. The design of Vercel is concise and aesthetic, this is an important reason for the popularity of Vercel. Now you can implement the styles in your own React project.

• Lightweight, simple and modern
• Not the best choice for heavy-data applications
• Relatively new, might encounter some bugs

The end

So what’s your favourite framework? Let us know!