ReactJS Libraries to speed up development - Every developer should know

If you have created a React project from scratch, you would know the hidden frustration of building generic features repeatedly-these include navigation bars, forms, charts, or even state management. This repetitiveness not only slows down development but also makes scaling a challenge. Here come third-party libraries into the picture, in other words, React developers do not like reinventing the wheel, but rather depend on a vast ecosystem of tools that offer pre-built components, impeccable UI elements, and seamless integrations. We at CodedThemes have experienced firsthand the benefits of how these libraries decrease time-to-market, improve code quality, and enable teams to focus on building the more exciting features of the product.

What are third-party libraries?

In React development, third-party libraries are pre-written code aggregations that provide ready-made features, components, or utilities. Developers can import these libraries to save time and maintain consistency, rather than reinventing the wheel.

Suppose one wants an interactive chart. In this case, all the data visualization logic can be created from scratch. Utilize one of the best React chart libraries, which offer a refined and customizable solution, ready for the user. React form libraries also save hours of work by handling validation, error states, and submission flows when conducting complex forms. Third-party libraries serve as building blocks that accelerate development, increase efficiency, and enhance scalability.

What are the advantages of using third-party libraries?

There are several advantages that third-party libraries bring to React, beyond simply saving time and effort.

• So Faster development - because developers would rather add unique features than rebuild basics like modals, dropdowns, or form validators.
• Consistent UI/UX - Opting for the best UI library for React js for your application ensures that your design remains consistent, accessible, and responsive. 
• Reliability - Being open-sourced and widely tested, like other popular libraries, lends it fewer bugs and therefore provides long-term support.
• Scalability - Whether dealing with State Management Libraries for React JS or data visualization tools, these tools handle complex work scenarios that would otherwise require extensive coding.
• Future-ready apps - With the trend shifting, React component libraries for 2025 are already optimized for performance and modern frameworks.

The right third-party libraries, if adopted, help developers to strike a balance between speed and quality, rendering React apps functional and future-proof.

Top third-party libraries used in ReactJS

Now that we've agreed that using third-party libraries is important, the next question is: Which libraries do developers actually use in actual projects? We have used many tools throughout the years, abandoned others that were not scalable, and retained the ones that consistently provide time savings. The following are the libraries that have been consistently used in our React toolkit.

UI libraries - The first thing we install

When we start a new dashboard project, the one question we always ask is: which UI kit will save us days of styling? These libraries handle design consistency, accessibility, and responsiveness out of the box.

• Material-UI (MUI) - It is a first-class React implementation of Google's Material Design, featuring an extensive component library and intuitive theming capabilities. It is great for apps that are nowadays given a clean, modern design.
• Chakra UI - Known for simplicity, together with developer-friendly props. This Library allows for rapid prototyping while ensuring accessibility and responsiveness.
• Ant Design - Designed for the types of applications you'll find in an enterprise, it offers a comprehensive spectrum of widely used professional components, all thoroughly documented. Perfect for a dashboard or any complicated system.
• Fluent UI - Developed by Microsoft, it integrates with Office 365 and Teams, so that it would be good for enterprise apps within a Microsoft ecosystem.
• Mantine - A rising star with over 100 customizable components and hooks. Support of dark mode and SSR is what makes it great for modern apps.
• Semantic UI React - More of a classic option with clean syntax and fairly flexible to style, yet a little less 'modern' than other newer competitors.

UI component libraries - The building blocks we reuse everywhere

Sometimes, one may not want a whole design system, but rather a set of polished, reusable components to slot into their custom designs. These are lightweight and flexible React Component Libraries.

• React Bootstrap - Takes everything Bootstrap 5 stands for and brings it into React with responsive and easy-to-use components, for projects with short lead times.
• Headless UI - Completely unstyled and accessible components to which you can apply your own design system or Tailwind CSS styling. Suitable for developers who prefer flexibility.
• Evergreen - A set of polished UI components from Segment. It's light and well-suited for enterprise-ready applications.
• Blueprint - Ideal for data-heavy dashboards and admin panels, with advanced components such as tables, trees, and date pickers.
• Grommet - With respect to accessibility and theming, Grommet is ideal when your project requires responsive and inclusive design.
• Reactstrap - Bootstrap components built for React, simple and flexible for customization.

State management - The battle we all fought

We remember trying to wrestle Redux in the early days, which felt like overkill for small apps. Luckily, the State Management Libraries ecosystem for React JS has evolved with simpler and smarter options.

• Redux Toolkit - The modern approach to Redux with reduced boilerplate and built-in best practices. Best suited for scalable apps.
• Zustand - A little library doing big work - it provides a global state with little code. An excellent choice for small to medium-sized applications.
• Recoil - Made by Facebook for making shared state simple and coherent with React concurrent features.
• MobX - It is an observable-based state management system that is intuitive and automatically tracks dependencies. It is easier to learn than Redux.
• Jotai - Bare-bones atomic state management library that is very fast and flexible for React projects.
• Valtio - A proxy-based state management model that allows the mutation of objects directly, but keeps everything reactive.

API handling: Now that was a fetch nightmare!

Managing APIs in raw fetch calls is prone to errors. Modern libraries simplify caching, syncing, and handling server state.

• React Query (TanStack Query) - Like the skyline of New York, an almost-finished notion to API data fetching, Caching, and synchronization. It handles retry, loading state, and others.
• SWR - Focuses on simplicity and real-time updates through stale-while-revalidate mechanism, devised by Vercel.
• Axios - Most popular HTTP client with in-built support for interceptors, cancellation, and error handling.
• Apollo Client - The perfect candidate for GraphQL APIs. It has been specially designed to handle caching, queries, and mutations effortlessly.
• Relay - Another option from Facebook for GraphQL. Built with performance and scaling in mind for big apps.

Forms: From frustration to relief

Without the right tools, forms can be painful. At least React form libraries make validation, submission, and nested fields easier.

• React Hook Form - Lightweight and performant, working seamlessly with React hooks. Perfect for more complex forms.
• Formik - Possibly the most common form library used to ease validation and form state management. Goes well with both small and large forms.
• Final Form - The flexible and minimal alternative when you want to take care of form state but have a simpler app.
• Redux Form - Well integrated with Redux, but has fallen out of favor compared to newer options. Great for apps already making use of Redux.
• Formik + Yup - These are typically used together to provide schema-based validation, making complex rules much easier to manage.
• Uniforms - A schema-driven form library suitable for working with GraphQL and projects based on JSON schema.

Styling + Animations: Where apps come alive

Styling and animations add character to React apps: while the UI remains static, the experience remains engaging.

• Styled Components - One of the better-known CSS-in-JS libraries for scoped styling, great for large projects.
• Emotion - Another CSS-in-JS library that offers a fast runtime and theming capabilities.
• Framer Motion - The most developer-friendly React animation library, supporting gestures and elaborate transitions.
• GSAP (via React bindings) - A robust animation library that goes beyond CSS for advanced effects.
• Tailwind CSS (with Twin.macro) - Not strictly a component library but very popular in the utility-first approach to styling with React.
• Radix UI + Motion - Provides low-level accessible components with motion-enabled features.

Testing

Testing is no longer optional, and modern libraries make it an easy task to test apps for reliability and user-friendliness.

• Jest - The usual unit and integration testing framework for React.
• React Testing Library (RTL) - Centers on testing components in the way a real user would use them.
• Cypress - A very well-liked and powerful end-to-end testing tool that has an easy-to-use UI.
• Mocha - A flexible test framework that plays very well with assertion libraries such as Chai.
• Enzyme - Once a very popular library for testing components, it is much less used than RTL today.
• Playwright - A new E2E testing tool by Microsoft, which runs across browsers even more quickly than Cypress.

Charts: Because dashboards without data are boring

A good dashboard focuses on data visualization. This is where the best React charting libraries will come to the rescue. Here are a few of the best dashboard-charting libraries that React offers.

• Recharts - One of the most well-known is the widely used, very simple-to-use API, offering a comprehensive suite of customizable chart types.
• Chart.js (using react-chartjs-2) - A very popular library for bar charts, line charts, and pie charts; very flexible and a widely used library as well.
• Victory - A very well-built, simple, modular charting library that will help you create beautiful data visualisations.
• Nivo - Offers rich representations with strong interactivity, and theme and animation options for charts.
• D3.js (using the React wrappers) - Offers a tremendous amount of power, but the learning curve can be steep, especially for highly customized metric charts.
• Apexcharts - it's easy to create great interactive, large-scale charts, and it is widely used in dashboards.

How do we pick libraries?

With so much available to us, it's easy to be tempted by every shiny installation. But over the years, we have learned that some libraries are ultimately just not worth it. Along with the package, there is always maintenance, updates, and possibly technical debt to consider.That's why, for the year 2025, our thumb rules are simply: ask ourselves, does this library solve a real pain point for us, or is it likely to become a regretful dependency?

When considering third-party libraries, here are the filters we use:

• Maintenance and updates - The library should be actively maintained and updated. We won't use tools without commits or releases for years. If the dependencies are outdated, they normally become repositories of security holes. 
• Community adoption - Strong adoption typically means that documentation is available, tutorials are provided, and fixes are quicker. A strong community shows the library is not going to disappear overnight. 
• Will it help us? - We wonder if we will actually speed up our workflow; do the best tools move redundant work from us and open up time to create specific features?
• Will it scale with my project? - Some libraries lend themselves to prototyping, but falter when confronted with an enterprise-level application. We seek solutions that evolve in tandem with the product.

For readers who will choose their stack in 2025, our advice is to choose libraries that solve real usability problems, create efficiencies in your code, and provide long-term reliability.

Wrapping up

Ultimately, it is the use of third-party libraries that creates such a great ecosystem for React. Whether it is the best React component libraries have to offer, dedicated React form libraries, charting libraries, or State Management Libraries for React JS, it is our secret sauce to helping us build faster, smarter, and with more polish. Third-party libraries add value by eliminating friction, reducing repetitive coding, and allowing you to focus on delighting your users and creating value.

These are the libraries we found most valuable as we approach 2025 - but the React ecosystem is enormous and constantly evolving. What are the React libraries you cannot live without? We would love to hear your must-use libraries, tips, or undiscovered libraries that made the project easier.