The Best React Libraries You Should Be Using in 2023

React has come a long way since its initial release by Facebook in 2013. What began as a simple library for building user interfaces has grown into a massive ecosystem powering some of the most popular websites and applications in the world.

According to the 2021 State of JS survey, React is used by over 80% of front-end developers, far outpacing other frameworks like Angular and Vue. And it‘s not just startups and small companies using React – tech giants like Netflix, Airbnb, Dropbox, and of course Facebook itself all rely heavily on React.

So what makes React so popular? A big part of it is the rich ecosystem of libraries and tools that have grown up around React, extending its capabilities and making developers‘ lives easier. From state management to data fetching to testing, if there‘s a common problem in front-end development, chances are there‘s a React library to help solve it.

But with so many libraries out there, it can be tough to know where to start. That‘s why we‘ve put together this list of the 10 best React libraries you should be using today. These libraries have been battle-tested in production, are actively maintained and well-documented, and can help you build better React apps faster.

Methodology

To select these top 10 libraries, we evaluated the React ecosystem across several dimensions:

• Popularity – How widely used and well-known is this library in the React community? We looked at metrics like NPM downloads, GitHub stars, and State of JS survey results.

• Maintenance – Is this library actively developed and maintained? We checked commit activity, issue tracker responsiveness, and release frequency.

• Documentation – Does this library have clear, thorough documentation with examples? We assessed the quality and completeness of docs and tutorials.

• Ease of Use – How easy is this library to learn and integrate into a React app? We considered API design, configuration overhead, and overall developer experience.

• Performance – Does this library employ best practices and optimizations? We looked at bundle size, runtime benchmarks, and performance-related features.

• Flexibility – How opinionated and prescriptive is this library? We favored libraries that are modular, composable, and adaptable to different use cases.

With those criteria in mind, let‘s dive into the top 10!

1. React Router

Category: Routing

If you‘re building any kind of non-trivial React app, chances are you‘ll need a router to handle navigation between different views and components. And in the React ecosystem, the undisputed leader in routing is React Router.

Now in its 6th major version, React Router has evolved alongside React itself to provide a declarative, component-based approach to routing. Its API is intuitive and flexible, handling everything from simple static routes to complex nested layouts with ease.

import { BrowserRouter, Routes, Route, Link } from ‘react-router-dom‘;

function App() {
  return (
    <BrowserRouter>
      <nav>
        <Link to="/">Home</Link>
        <Link to="/about">About</Link>
      </nav>
      <Routes>
        <Route path="/" element={<Home />} />  
        <Route path="about" element={<About />} />
      </Routes>
    </BrowserRouter>
  );
}

Some key features of React Router include:

• Nested routes and layouts
• Dynamic route matching with URL parameters
• Automatic route ranking and precedence
• Loaders and actions for data fetching and mutations
• Support for animated transitions

React Router also has excellent documentation with plenty of examples for common routing scenarios. And with over 47k GitHub stars and 8 million weekly NPM downloads, it‘s clear that React Router is the go-to choice for most React developers.

Whether you‘re building a simple multi-page marketing site or a complex dashboard with dozens of routes, React Router can scale to meet your needs. It‘s a must-have for any serious React project.

2. React Query

Category: Data Fetching

Another common need in modern web apps is fetching data from external APIs and services. And while React itself doesn‘t prescribe a specific approach to data fetching, there are many popular libraries that aim to make it easier.

One of the standouts in this space is React Query. Despite a relatively short history compared to some others on this list, React Query has quickly become a favorite for its powerful features and elegant API.

At its core, React Query provides a simple useQuery hook that handles the fetching, caching, synchronizing, and updating of remote data in your React components. You define a unique key for your query, and React Query takes care of the rest.

import { useQuery } from ‘react-query‘;

function Posts() {
  const { data, isLoading, isError } = useQuery(‘posts‘, fetchPosts);

  if (isLoading) return <div>Loading...</div>;  
  if (isError) return <div>Error!</div>;

  return (
    <ul>
      {data.map(post => (
        <li key={post.id}>{post.title}</li>
      ))}
    </ul>
  );
}

Some of the key benefits of React Query include:

• Automatic caching and cache invalidation
• Retry and error handling out of the box
• Pagination and infinite scroll helpers
• Optimistic updates and rollbacks
• Devtools for inspecting and managing query state

React Query has seen explosive growth recently, with over 23k GitHub stars and 1.5 million weekly NPM downloads. It‘s used in production by major companies like Walmart, Visa, Twilio, and IBM.

If you‘re looking for a powerful, flexible, and efficient way to manage server state in your React apps, give React Query a try. It might just change the way you think about data fetching.

3. Formik

Category: Forms

Forms are a necessary evil in web development. They‘re often tedious to build, with lots of repetitive boilerplate for handling input state, validation, submission, and more. But they‘re also critical for user interaction and data entry.

In the React world, one of the most popular libraries for building forms is Formik. Formik takes a simple and unopinionated approach to form management, with a minimal API that gets out of your way.

At the heart of Formik is the useFormik hook, which provides a way to manage form state and submission without having to write a lot of manual event handlers and state updates.

import { useFormik } from ‘formik‘;

function SignupForm() {
  const formik = useFormik({
    initialValues: {
      email: ‘‘,
      password: ‘‘,
    },
    onSubmit: values => {
      alert(JSON.stringify(values, null, 2));
    },
  });
  return (
    <form onSubmit={formik.handleSubmit}>
      <label htmlFor="email">Email</label>
      <input
        id="email"
        type="email"
        {...formik.getFieldProps(‘email‘)}
      />
      <label htmlFor="password">Password</label> 
      <input
        id="password"
        type="password"
        {...formik.getFieldProps(‘password‘)}
      />
      <button type="submit">Submit</button>
    </form>
  );
}

Formik also integrates seamlessly with popular validation libraries like Yup, and provides helpers for displaying error messages and handling complex structures like arrays and nested objects.

With over 31k GitHub stars, 2 million weekly NPM downloads, and usage by companies like Airbnb, Lyft, and NASA, Formik is a proven and reliable choice for building forms in React.

4. React Table

Category: Tables & Data Grids

Another common UI pattern in web apps is the humble data table. From admin dashboards to e-commerce product grids, most apps eventually need to display some tabular data.

But as anyone who‘s tried to build a feature-rich data table from scratch knows, it‘s not as simple as just rendering some HTML. There are many subtle challenges around performance, sorting, filtering, pagination, and more.

Enter React Table, a powerful and flexible library for building data tables and grids in React. React Table provides a set of composable hooks and components that handle all the hard parts of rendering tabular data.

import { useTable } from ‘react-table‘;

function DataTable({ columns, data }) {
  const {
    getTableProps,
    getTableBodyProps,
    headerGroups,
    rows,
    prepareRow,
  } = useTable({ columns, data })

  return (
    <table {...getTableProps()}>
      <thead>
        {headerGroups.map(headerGroup => (
          <tr {...headerGroup.getHeaderGroupProps()}>
            {headerGroup.headers.map(column => (
              <th {...column.getHeaderProps()}>
                {column.render(‘Header‘)}
              </th>
            ))}
          </tr>
        ))}
      </thead>
      <tbody {...getTableBodyProps()}>
        {rows.map(row => {
          prepareRow(row)
          return (
            <tr {...row.getRowProps()}>
              {row.cells.map(cell => {
                return (
                  <td {...cell.getCellProps()}>
                    {cell.render(‘Cell‘)}
                  </td>
                )
              })}
            </tr>
          )
        })}
      </tbody>
    </table>
  )
}

React Table supports all the features you‘d expect from a modern data table, including:

• Sorting, filtering, and pagination
• Row selection and expansion
• Column ordering, sizing, and visibility
• Grouping and aggregation
• Virtualized rendering for performance

It also has a plugin system for extending its functionality, and integrates well with other libraries like React Query for server-side data.

With 19k GitHub stars and 500k weekly NPM downloads, React Table is one of the most popular libraries in the React ecosystem. It powers data-heavy apps for companies like Netflix, Amazon, and American Express.

5. Honorable Mentions

As hard as it was to narrow down this list to just 10 libraries, there are many other excellent options worth considering for various use cases. Here are a few more that deserve an honorable mention:

• Styled Components – CSS-in-JS library for styling React components
• React Testing Library – Lightweight toolset for testing React components
• Framer Motion – Animation library for React with a declarative API
• Redux Toolkit – Opinionated toolset for efficient Redux development
• React Hook Form – Performant, flexible, and extensible forms with ease
• Storybook – Tool for developing and documenting UI components in isolation
• React Virtualized – Components for efficiently rendering large lists and tabular data
• React DnD – Drag and drop toolkit for React with multiple backends
• React Spring – Spring-physics based animation library for React
• Zustand – Small, fast, and scalable state management solution

Each of these libraries has its own strengths and tradeoffs, so be sure to evaluate them in the context of your specific needs and constraints.

Conclusion

As this list demonstrates, the React ecosystem is incredibly rich and diverse, with libraries and tools for nearly every use case imaginable. Whether you‘re building a simple prototype or a complex production app, chances are there‘s a React library out there that can help you do it better and faster.

Of course, this is just a small sampling of what‘s available. New libraries are being created and open-sourced all the time, and the landscape is constantly evolving. As a professional React developer, it‘s important to keep an eye on these emerging trends and continuously evaluate how they might fit into your toolkit.

But it‘s also important not to get too caught up in chasing the latest and greatest. The most valuable libraries are those that have stood the test of time, with proven track records of reliability, performance, and maintainability.

When in doubt, look for libraries that are:

• Actively developed and maintained
• Thoroughly documented with clear examples
• Widely adopted in the community
• Modular, composable, and adaptable
• Well-tested and optimized for performance

By focusing on these core qualities, you can build a React stack that is both cutting-edge and battle-tested, capable of handling whatever challenges your app might face.

And if you find a library that you truly love and rely on, consider giving back to the community by contributing documentation, bug fixes, or new features. Open source is a two-way street, and the health of the React ecosystem depends on the participation of developers like you.

So go forth and build amazing things with React! With the right libraries in your toolkit, there‘s no limit to what you can create.