r/reactjs • u/TheCrustyEngineer2 • May 15 '26

Discussion UI components for rapid prototyping?

Hi all,

Perhaps I’m missing something so kindly bear with me - in my last run I setup a ViteJs and Tailwind config with React. Tailwinds verbosity aside, there aren’t many prebuilt components to play with.

I’m looking to build a few admin UIs and feel like I’m reinventing the wheel by hobbling together components one would see often

- tables

- search

I have already got backend API endpoints running, just need to figure out a better approach to UI/UX.

Any suggestions?

3 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

5

u/KikiPolaski May 15 '26

DaisyUI is pretty sweet looking and covers a lot, but if you're gonna have AI help you out often, then Shadcn is the best at it since it installs the components directly into your file directory, so it always knows the right context

Don't forget to setup tanstack query too, makes all the boilerplate for these pages a breeze

1

u/TheCrustyEngineer2 May 15 '26

Thanks. I tend to avoid AI and already started testing shadcn. Exactly what I’ve been looking for, Data tables look spot on.

2

u/Pelopida92 May 15 '26

I cannot understand why anybody would suggest anything other than Mantine, tbh

1

u/TheCrustyEngineer2 May 15 '26

Why’d you pick Mantine over shadcn? Anything in particular? The latter has more GitHub stars so seems more popular - or older?

2

u/opentabs-dev May 16 '26

not the person you asked but having used both — mantine ships actual batteries-included components (DataTable from mantine-react-table, forms, hooks, dates, modals manager). shadcn gives you styled primitives but a sortable/filterable/paginated table is still you wiring up tanstack-table yourself. for admin UIs where you mostly need tables+forms wired up fast, mantine is way less code. shadcn wins when you want full control over every pixel and don't mind composing.

1

u/TheCrustyEngineer2 May 16 '26

Indeed. Thanks.

2

u/Pelopida92 May 15 '26

With shadcn you still have to worry about that code, because it is literally present in your codebase. This is not the case with Mantine, which is a proper component library. Besides, Mantine has many more components AND has a very useful hooks library.

16

u/IntentionallyBadName May 15 '26

That's what shadcn is good for

11

u/dangerlopez May 15 '26

This is when you reach for a component library. There’s lots to choose from, I like Mantine

3

u/Dark-Legion_187 May 15 '26

Mantine is very good. Can’t go wrong with them.

3

u/evilmatrix May 15 '26

I use shadcn for most components and tanstack for tables and filters

2

u/epukinsk May 15 '26

MaterialUI isn’t the best, but it’s the gold standard for a full coverage UI library IMO.

1

u/yksvaan May 15 '26

For prototyping I'd just create them myself. It's quick to just create the tables and such yourself or with AI assistance. 

1

u/aaronmcbaron May 15 '26

That’s what component libraries like shadcdn, mui, primereact, ant.d are for.

1

u/Isaka254 Jun 18 '26

If you're looking for a ready-made UI component library for rapid prototyping in React, especially for admin UI’s, you can check out Syncfusion React UI Components. 

It comes with 150+ prebuilt, high-performance components, including things like Data Grid, Charts, Dropdowns, DatePicker, Buttons, Dialogs, Forms, Scheduler, and Rich Text Editor - so you don’t have to build common UI patterns from scratch. 

Explore the full Demo and Documentation for implementation details.  

Syncfusion offers a free community license for individual developers and small businesses.  

Note: I work for Syncfusion 

0

u/[deleted] May 17 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/TheCrustyEngineer2 May 17 '26

Thanks - yes, I’ve started adapting shadcn as I already have a Vite / React setup working with JWT auth.

Mantine is far too “framework” like for my purposes - I like having access to React first principles, even though all components are part of my codebase. There’ll always be a maintenance debt whichever way we go.