Web Dev
Server-Driven UI on the Web: Examples, Benefits & Use Cases
29 Oct 2022
The best UI frameworks: What you should build with this year
By
Arso Stojović
Read time 6 min
Posted on 4 Jun 2025
Choosing the right UI framework can make or break your development process. Whether you’re building a sleek, responsive web app or a complex enterprise solution, selecting the right toolkit is crucial.
But with so many options available, how do you decide which UI framework best fits your project?
In this guide, I’ll break down the best UI frameworks for 2025, explore their strengths, and provide a roadmap for making the right choice for your next project.
Why your choice of UI frameworks matters
UI frameworks are more than just a collection of pre-made components, they define how your app feels, performs, and evolves.
A solid UI framework can streamline development, boost performance, and scale as your application grows.
On the other hand, the wrong framework can lead to unnecessary complexity, slower development times, and a lackluster user experience.
The framework you choose will affect everything from load times and accessibility to the ease of future updates. With that in mind, it’s essential to pick a framework that fits your specific needs and the long-term goals of your project.
Key considerations for the best UI frameworks
If you wonder what makes a UI framework excellent, here are some must-have features:
Supported browsers: Compatible with major browsers like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge. It is important because it makes your project accessible from any browser.
Ease of use: It should be developer-friendly and have good documentation.
Customization: Allows easy theming and flexibility, even after project completion.
Performance: Lightweight and optimized for fast loading.
Responsiveness: Adapts well to different screen sizes.
Integration: Works well with your tech stack.
Scalability: Suitable for both small and large projects.
CSS units: Uses flexible units (px, rem, em) based on your project needs.
Number of components: Offers a complete set of essential UI components.
SSR and SSG support: Works well with Server-Side Rendering and Static Site Generation for better SEO and performance.
Best UI Frameworks list for 2025
Here are some of the best options developers should consider in 2025, each bringing something unique.
React
Why it’s still relevant: React dominates due to its flexibility, massive ecosystem, and strong developer community. Component-driven architecture and the rise of Next.js make it an ideal choice for both client-side and server-rendered applications.
Here are some of the key features of React:
Declarative UI: Describe what the UI should look like, and React handles updates
Component-based: Build reusable and modular UI elements.
React virtual DOM
Hooks and state management: Manage component state with
useState,useEffect.Cross-platform: You can use React Native to build mobile apps.
Strong ecosystem: Large community, rich libraries, and third-party tools.
Next.js
Next.js simplifies React development with features like server-side rendering (SSR), static site generation (SSG), and API routes and optimizes performance.
Hybrid rendering: Supports SSR, SSG, ISR (Incremental static regeneration), and CSR (Client-side rendering).
File-based routing: Automatically generates routes based on the project’s file structure.
API Routes: Build backend functionality within a Next.js project using serverless functions.
Image optimization: Built-in support for lazy-loading and responsive images.
SEO-friendly: Pre-renders pages for better SEO performance.
Serverless: Deploys to Vercel, AWS, and other cloud providers.
Full TypeScript support.
Vue.js
Why it’s a strong contender: Vue.js is a JavaScript framework for building interactive UIs and single-page applications (SPAs).
Features:
Component-based architecture: Reusable and modular components.
Two-way data binding: Simplifies handling user input and UI updates.
Vue Router & Vuex/Pinia: Built-in support for routing and state management.
SSR & SSG Support: Works with Nuxt.js for server-side rendering and static site generation.
Easy learning curve: Simple API with great documentation.
Nuxt.js
What Next.js does to React, Nuxt does to Vue. It improves Vue by adding features like file-based routing, API handling, and SEO optimization.
Features:
Hybrid rendering: Supports SSR, SSG, and CSR.
File-based routing: Automatically creates routes based on the project’s folder structure.
SEO Optimization: Pre-renders pages for better SEO and performance.
API routes: Built-in backend functionality using serverless functions.
Auto imports: Automatically imports components, composables, and utilities for cleaner code.
Astro
Astro is a static site generator and front-end framework designed for speed, flexibility, and minimal JavaScript. It allows developers to build fast websites using multiple frameworks like React, Vue, and Svelte while keeping the client-side JavaScript as light as possible.
Features:
Islands Architecture: Loads only essential JavaScript on the client, making sites ultra-fast.
Supports multiple frameworks: You can use React, Vue, Svelte and more in the same project.
Zero JS by default: Ships HTML & CSS only, adding JS only where needed.
SSG & SSR support
Markdown & MDX support: You can write content in Markdown or MDX with built-in processing.
SEO and performance optimized: Built-in image optimization, prefetching, and lazy loading for better SEO.
Svelte
Why it’s great: Svelte is a game-changer in the UI framework world. Unlike React or Vue, Svelte shifts much of the work to compile time, meaning there’s no virtual DOM and smaller bundle sizes.
Features:
Compile-time framework: Unlike React and Angular, Svelte compiles code ahead of time, reducing browser workload for faster performance.
Simplified Reactivity & State Management: No need for hooks or watchers; Svelte tracks dependencies automatically, updating the DOM efficiently.
JavaScript & TypeScript support: Supports both JS and TS, with an easy setup (node scripts/setupTypeScript.js) for TypeScript projects.
Angular
Why enterprises still use it: Angular provides a fully integrated solution with TypeScript, RxJS, and dependency injection.
Key features of Angular include:
Enables developers to build high-performance single-page applications
Incredible MVC architecture
Highly customizable
Open source
Easy to test
Easy to extend
Supported by Google
Easy to learn. No Pre-requisite knowledge required
Tailwind CSS
Why Tailwind Doesn't Suck: Tailwind CSS revolutionized how developers approach styling by focusing on utility-first design. It is great for fast prototyping, scalable design systems, and fully custom UI styling without writing extra CSS, but still providing design consistency.
Put it simply: It gives developers full control over design without writing CSS files.
Features:
Utility-first approach: Style elements directly in HTML with small, reusable classes.
Highly customizable: Configure colors, spacing, typography, and more via
tailwind.config.js.Responsive design: Mobile-first classes like
sm:,md:,lg:for breakpoints.No CSS Bloat
Flexbox and grid support: Built-in utilities for complex layouts.
Bootstrap 5
Why it’s still relevant: Bootstrap is still one of the most popular UI frameworks due to its simple, flexible design system. With its responsive grid system, pre-designed components, and utilities, Bootstrap enables developers to create visually appealing and functional web apps with minimal effort.
Key Features:
Easy to use
responsive out-of-the-box
minimal setup
No dependency on jQuery anymore, making it more lightweight.
Semantic UI
Semantic UI is a front-end development framework that uses human-friendly HTML to create responsive user interfaces. It provides a set of pre-designed components with intuitive class names, making it easier to build modern web applications.
Features:
Human-readable HTML: Uses descriptive class names, making the code more understandable (e.g., ui button, ui grid).
Responsive design: Built with a grid system and responsive utilities to make apps work across all screen sizes.
Customizable themes: Easily customize themes and components using a built-in theming system.
Integration with jQuery: Works seamlessly with jQuery for additional functionality.
Sencha Ext JS
Sencha Ext JS is a JavaScript framework for building feature-rich, cross-platform web applications. It provides a rich set of UI components and tools designed for enterprise-level applications.
Features:
Cross-platform support: Build apps that run across multiple platforms, including desktops, tablets, and mobile devices.
Data management: Includes powerful data stores, models, and proxies to easily handle large datasets.
MVVM & MVC architecture: Supports both Model-View-ViewModel and Model-View-Controller patterns for app structure.
Touch support: Optimized for mobile and tablet touch interfaces.
UI Frameworks vs UI Libraries
UI frameworks and UI libraries are not the same.
A UI framework provides a full structure for building an interface, including layout systems, design patterns, and pre-built components, while a UI library is a collection of reusable components (buttons, modals, tables) that you can use in any project without enforcing a structure. It offers flexibility but requires more setup.
Put it simply: Frameworks provide a full system, while libraries offer modular components to integrate into any project.
Which one should you use?
If you need a full design system and structure, use a UI framework.
If you need modular components to plug into your project, use the UI library.
If you want full control over styling without pre-built components, use a utility-first framework like Tailwind instead of a UI library.
💡 Bonus Tip: You can combine both! For example, using Tailwind CSS (a framework) along with Chakra UI (a component library) gives you the best of both worlds: flexibility and pre-built elements.
Why are UI libraries important?
As I said, UI library is a collection of pre-built, reusable components and styles that help developers create consistent user interfaces without starting from scratch. These libraries typically include elements like:
buttons
modals
forms
navigation bars
typography
Types of UI libraries
Component-Based UI Libraries: Include both styles and functional UI components built for specific frameworks.
CSS Frameworks: Provide styles and layouts but minimal JavaScript functionality.
Headless UI Libraries: Provide unstyled, logic-driven components, allowing full customization of the UI.
Can you style without UI libraries?
If developers don’t use UI libraries, they would need to manually style and build every UI component, which is time-consuming and can lead to inconsistent design and maintenance headaches.
So since I am trying to help you choose a specific UI framework for your project, I should suggest a UI library that fits best!
Component-Based UI libraries
Since component-based UI libraries include both styles and functional UI components built for specific frameworks, here’s the ultimate list of libraries for each framework.
Top 8 React-based UI Component libraries
React developers have access to an enormous ecosystem of libraries, each catering to different needs, from rapid development to enterprise-grade applications.
Material-UI (MUI)
Material-UI (MUI) is a popular React UI library that follows Google's Material Design principles. It provides a collection of pre-built, customizable components to speed up web development.
Key Features:
Pre-styled components: Ready-to-use Material Design elements like buttons, cards, and modals.
Customizability: Supports theming, styling overrides, and CSS-in-JS.
Performance: Optimized for fast rendering with minimal reflows.
Accessibility: Built-in ARIA attributes and best practices.
SSR support: Works well with Next.js for server-side rendering.
Component variants: Includes rich UI elements like DataGrid, autocomplete, and pickers.
Chakra UI
React component library focused on simplicity, accessibility, and customization. It offers a set of modular components that can be easily styled and adapted to fit your needs.
Chakra UI features:
Modular and accessible components: Reusable components built with accessibility in mind, following WCAG standards.
Style props: Style components directly in JSX using built-in props like
padding,color,fontSize.Color mode support: Built-in light and dark mode toggle for user or system preferences.
Theming system: Customize global design tokens (colors, fonts) for consistent styling.
TypeScript support: Fully typed with TypeScript for better development experience.
Ant Design
Ant Design provides a wide range of high-quality components, built with enterprise-level design in mind. It follows the Ant Design System and focuses on creating a consistent, clean user interface.
Features:
120+ pre-built components: Ready-to-use UI elements like tables, forms, and charts.
Dark mode and theming: Built-in support for customizable themes, including dark mode.
Hook-based API: Provides powerful utilities for managing UI state and handling interactions.
Customizable themes – Easily adjust the look and feel to fit your brand.
Internationalization – Supports multiple languages and locales.
Responsive design – Adapts components for all screen sizes.
TypeScript Support – Fully typed for a better developer experience.
Mantine
Mantine provides a wide range of high-quality, customizable UI components and hooks for development.
Features:
UI Components: Includes buttons, modals, tables, notifications, and more.
Customizable: Easily change themes with built-in support for light and dark modes.
Hooks for UI: Provides useful hooks like
useMediaQuery,useDebouncedValue, and more for efficient state management.TypeScript support
SSR & A11Y support
Blueprint UI
Blueprint.js is a React-based UI toolkit designed for building complex, data-dense web applications. It provides a set of components optimized for a desktop-centric interface.
Features:
Data-dense components: Optimized for building complex, data-heavy interfaces like tables and forms.
Customizable: Offers flexibility to adjust colors, typography, and other styles.
Extensive component library: Includes components like date pickers, tree views, and modals.
Responsive design: Although focused on desktop, it provides some responsiveness features for mobile.
Icon library: Includes a large set of customizable icons to enhance your UI.
Radix UI
Radix UI is a low-level, unstyled library for building fully accessible, customizable user interfaces in React. It provides the building blocks for UI components without enforcing any specific design system.
Features:
Unstyled components: Provides functional components without any default styles, giving full control over UI design.
Composable architecture support: Components are designed to be easily composable, so you can mix and match them to build a complex UI.
Focus on interactivity: Includes components like modals, tooltips, and dropdowns with built-in focus management and keyboard navigation.
No opinionated styling: Gives you the freedom to apply your own styles, making it ideal for custom designs.
Evergreen UI
Evergreen UI is specifically built for React enterprise-grade applications.
Features:
Pre-built components: Includes components like buttons, tables, forms, modals, and notifications, ready for production use.
Customizable: Offers theme customization options to tailor the look and feel to your brand.
Focused on UX: Prioritizes creating intuitive and user-friendly components for the best experience.
Lightweight: Minimalistic design and small footprint, ensuring fast loading times.
Rebass
Rebass is a simple library for React. It is built on top of the styled-system library, enabling easy theme customization and layout styling with a focus on minimalism and performance.
Features:
Minimalist design: Provides a small, focused set of components with a clean and simple default design.
Customizable: Built with styled-system, so it's easy to apply your own design system, themes, and styles.
Responsive: Components are designed to work well across different screen sizes without requiring complex media queries.
Lightweight: Focuses on a small bundle size, ensuring fast performance for React applications.
Vue-Based UI Libraries
If Vue is your framework choice, check out these libraries:
Vuetify
Vuetify is based on Google's Material Design principles, offering a wide range of customizable components for building responsive Vue applications with ease.
Features:
Material design-based: Built according to Google’s Material Design guidelines.
Wide range of components: Includes a full set of components like buttons, cards, forms, modals, and data tables.
Responsive layouts: Automatically adjusts for mobile, tablet, and desktop screen sizes.
Vue.js integration: Seamless integration with Vue.js.
Quasar
Quasar is ideal for building full-stack applications. It includes a CLI, routing, state management, and other utilities, making it a complete solution for developing Vue.js applications across various platforms.
Features:
Cross-platform support: Build apps for web, mobile (via Cordova/Capacitor), desktop (via Electron), and PWA.
High performance
CLI tools: Provides a CLI for building projects.
PrimeVue
PrimeVue features:
Customizable themes: Built-in themes and easy theme customization to match your app’s style.
Responsive: Automatically adjusts for different screen sizes.
Premium features: Offers advanced features and components available with a commercial license.
Best Ui solutions for Svelte
Here are some of the best UI solutions for Svelte:
Carbon Components Svelte
Carbon Components Svelte is a set of Svelte components based on IBM’s Carbon Design System. It provides ready-to-use UI elements for building modern, enterprise-level applications.
Key features:
Enterprise-grade design: Based on the Carbon Design System, ideal for building complex, enterprise applications.
Svelte integration: Fully optimized for Svelte, making use of its reactivity and simplicity.
Example components: Buttons, modal dialogs, data tables, grid systems, forms, and side navigation.
Svelte UI
Svelte UI features:
Svelte-native approach: Designed specifically for Svelte.
Scoped styling: Ensures styles are encapsulated, preventing conflicts with global CSS.
Tree-Shakable: Only the components you actually use are included in the final build.
Smelte
Smelte is combining Material Design with the power of Tailwind CSS. It provides pre-styled, customizable components for building modern, responsive apps.
Key Features:
Material design components: Buttons, forms, modals, and more, styled according to Google's Material Design.
Tailwind CSS integration: Uses Tailwind's approach for styling and customization.
Dark mode and theming: Easily switch themes and customize styles.
Which library to use with Angular?
Here are the best UI libraries for Angular:
Angular Material: Google’s Official UI Kit
Angular Material is the go-to choice for Angular applications needing a consistent Material Design look.
Features:
Fully integrated with Angular CDK for best practices.
Themed components with Material Design principles.
Supports accessibility, animations, and form controls.
NG Bootstrap
NG Bootstrap brings the power of Bootstrap components to Angular applications without requiring jQuery.
Features:
No jQuery dependency: Fully written in TypeScript and optimized for Angular.
Customization: Supports Bootstrap’s CSS variables for easy styling.
Lightweight: Use Angular directives instead of manipulating the DOM manually.
Clarity Design System
Clarity is a great choice for teams building enterprise Angular applications or needing framework-agnostic web components.
Features:
UI Components include buttons, modals, tables, forms, and more.
Built for Angular: Offers native Angular components with reactive support.
Clarity Core (Web Components): Provides framework-agnostic Web Components that work with React, Vue, or Svelte.
Taiga UI
Taiga UI is ideal for complex applications that require a scalable, enterprise-grade UI solution in Svelte or Angular.
Features:
Rich component set: Over 150+ UI components, including buttons, modals, tables, and forms.
Fully modular: Import only the components you need to keep the bundle size small.
Full a11y support.
Reactive forms and state management: Supports advanced form handling and state management solutions.
Advanced decision-making: How to pick the right framework
Here’s a quick guide to help you choose the best framework based on your project requirements.This table outlines key factors when it comes to faster development and the best design practices.
Use this as a shortcut to match your project’s needs with the strengths of each framework, so you can pick the right one for your goals.
Conclusion: You are ready to make the right choice
When choosing a framework, there's no "one-size-fits-all" solution. Prioritize what matters most: performance, maintainability, or ecosystem strength.
Using frameworks gives you a lot of power to build fast and scalable apps. But to make the most out of these frameworks, you need a Headless CMS. Here’s why:
Keep content and design separate: Manage content independently from your front-end framework, allowing for focused development.
Content everywhere: Deliver content to websites, apps, and IoT devices through APIs.
Easy scaling
Boost performance
Simpler development: Focus on front-end features while the CMS handles content through an easy-to-use API.
To better understand headless CMS benefits, check out BMCS integrations with different frameworks:
BCMS + Next.js: Combine BCMS with Next.js for fast, SEO-optimized static and dynamic content rendering.
Useful links:
BCMS + Nuxt: Leverage BCMS with Nuxt for Vue.js projects, ensuring smooth, API-driven content management.
Useful links:
BCMS + Astro: Build lightning-fast static sites with Astro and BCMS, delivering content through a powerful API.
Useful links:
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Content
- Why your choice of UI frameworks matters
- Best UI Frameworks list for 2025
- UI Frameworks vs UI Libraries
- Component-Based UI libraries
- Top 8 React-based UI Component libraries
- Vue-Based UI Libraries
- Best Ui solutions for Svelte
- Which library to use with Angular?
- Advanced decision-making: How to pick the right framework
- Conclusion: You are ready to make the right choice
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