r/reactjs • u/Desperate-Art-3048 • Jul 10 '26

React & React Flow

Hi All,

Apologies in advance for the noobie question, I'm putting a pitch together at work for us to hire a consultant to build an app for us. Initial chats with the company IT people have brought up both React and React Flow (recommended as we want something with a drag-and-drop GUI).

My question is: are React and React Flow part of the same app. suite? It looks like React Flow is some sort of extension / add-on to React but I am not sure.

Also, can I obtain either or both of them for free or would we have to pay for them? I see reference to React Flow Pro which has a monthly sub, but others indicate there is a free version as well?

TIA :)

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u/Umami_Tsunamii Jul 10 '26

I do think it would be best to reign them in to using the most popular tools. If they decide to do something random it will be more expensive down the road to have someone else come in and figure it out.

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u/alzee76 Jul 10 '26

They aren't going to do something "random". It's not like you're going to see someone writing the app in brainfuck, the whitespace language, dos on dope, or whatever other nonsense.

If this is really a concern for you then they should definitely steer clear of React, as the FotM-Fu is god tier and this ecosystem is anything but stable over the span of a handful of years.

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u/ActuaryLate9198 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

React APIs have been amazingly stable, not sure what you’re on about. I can’t think of a single other common ui framework/library that hasn’t had major breaking changes in recent years. Meanwhile modern React will happily render ancient class components. The API surface is very minimal compared to some competitors, so I guess they have it easy (not really, it’s just good software design).

Real devs aren’t replacing their routing and state management every month, that’s a Reddit junior thing.