Search code examples
reactjsreactstrap

React - Material UI vs Reactstrap

I'm going to start a react project. I want a little clarification about the choice of Material UI over Reactstrap. Material UI is better than Bootstrap as mentioned in another comparison of Bootstrap vs Material UI for React?. But I'm a little confused about Reactstrap after going through Pros & Cons of Material UI and Reactstrap as shown in the below images. Or should I use both of them as per requirement in the same project?

Pros of Material UI and Reactstrap Cons of Material UI and Reactstrap

I would like to use ready made UI components like Collapse-able Side Menu, Tables with pagination, Auto complete Select etc.

Solution

  • react-bootstrap is more popular than reactstrap. I will speak about react-bootstrap and Material UI.

    I have more experience with Material UI. I don't even know how Material UI became that popular while it was very bad when it was released. It used inline styling and it was a nightmare to customize anything. Its performance was very poor. Still, it became very popular and it improved a lot. I used it in my latest project and the performance was great and I used its new CSS in JS solution combined with styled-components. I think it will be a bit harder to use than react-bootstrap but it has more components out of the box.

    For most people, react-bootstrap would be an easier choice.

    I can't tell you which one to use but I can give you some things to think about and decide yourself:

    1. Which design do you prefer?
    2. If you have more experience with bootstrap, go with react-bootstrap.
    3. If you prefer sass go with react-bootstrap. If you prefer CSS in JS go with Material UI.
    4. If react-bootstrap is missing some components you would need that exists in Material UI go with Material UI but remember that you can add other external components to your project anyway so I think this may not be a limitation.