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React has become one of the most popular web development frameworks. In June 2024, almost 40% of developers used React to build front-end SaaS applications. All these apps generate a boatload of data, but turning that data into visual dashboards for your app users can be challenging.
How can SaaS developers build a React dashboard quickly and easily? In this article, we’ll compare the most popular React dashboard libraries, and walk you through the steps to build an insightful dashboard for your end-users.
React.js is a front-end web development framework, developed by Facebook. It’s one of the most popular open-source JavaScript libraries for building interactive user interfaces or front-end web applications. Other examples of front-end frameworks are Angular, Vue.js, and React Native.
To create powerful web applications, developers often use React.js in combination with Node.js. While React.js is responsible for the front-end and user interface, Node.js takes care of the back-end: server-side logic, handling requests and performing operations on the server.
With React, developers can create reusable UI components, which makes it a quick and effective way to build apps. Using modular React components requires less code than developing something from scratch with vanilla JavaScript. This can save your development team tons of time.
React UI component libraries are ready-to-use, reusable pieces of code. You can use a UI component to add a specific functionality or visual element to your web app quickly.
Buttons, forms, tables, charts, and modals are all examples of specific user interfaces you can add with these components.
Imagine React components as a UI kit, similar to a Lego kit. Just like you have a bunch of Lego blocks to choose from, you can pick out the code blocks you need, and easily plug them into any web application you’re building.
Instead of coding elements from scratch, developers can speed up their work with React libraries. Without compromise – because you can adjust the styling to your liking and keep a consistent look and feel across your application.
Analytics dashboards are one of the many features you can build using React components. A React dashboard is an excellent use case, as building reporting tools for your app users can be time-consuming.
This is especially true if your users need advanced, interactive graphs and charts that align seamlessly with your platform’s branding.
Whether building an admin panel or a customer-facing e-commerce dashboard, using an off-the-shelf React.js component can save you valuable time.
Many developers today rely on open-source React libraries to streamline the development and deployment of web applications. These libraries – no matter if you're using Material UI (MUI), Tailwind CSS, or Bootstrap 4 – allow you to create responsive, consistent UI elements that integrate effortlessly into your app. They also support JavaScript, TypeScript, and Sass – which are commonly used in modern front-end development workflows.
Moreover, React admin dashboard templates simplify designing an intuitive user interface with components like widgets, forms, and charts. These templates include pre-built UI kits and layouts, making it easier to build dashboards quickly without having to code everything from scratch.
On top of that, many of these web development tools come with popular integrations, including npm plugins, GitHub repositories, and API support, reducing dependencies and further accelerating development.
From authentication and redux integration to customizing the navbar and fonts, these libraries make it easy for React developers to add functionality with minimal effort.
Whether you're using Node.js for the backend, working with Next.js for server-side rendering, or embedding charts via data visualization libraries, there's a React dashboard library or admin panel template suited for your needs.
Some options, like Material Dashboard or Pro React, even come with notifications, router modules, and full tutorial support, ensuring a user-friendly experience for both developers and end users.
So, instead of coding from scratch, consider exploring open-source solutions like Material UI, Bootstrap, or create-react-app to simplify your development process.
With support for modern features like React hooks and seamless integration of plugins, you can build dynamic web apps that are scalable, visually appealing, and easy to maintain.
Before diving into specific React dashboard libraries, it’s worth noting the difference between analytics and admin dashboards.
If you’re researching React dashboards on Google, you will likely get two different results:
In this article, we will focus on React analytics dashboards only. If you want to build an admin dashboard, the following free React libraries are open-source and worth further exploring. Some React admin dashboard libraries also have UI elements for data visualization, but they are limited.
If you want to add advanced analytics features to your web application, React data visualization libraries are the best place to start looking.
Below, you’ll find a few React components built explicitly to add charts and analytics dashboards to apps. Most of them are available through GitHub or npm packages.
If you're looking for a comprehensive analytics module for your software, Luzmo’s embedded analytics platform is the ideal solution. Luzmo offers data visualization libraries for all major front-end frameworks, including React, Next.js, and Node.js.
After installing their React.js npm package, you can quickly embed stunning visualizations in any React dashboard or admin panel with just a few lines of code. Luzmo supports customizable styling options, secure authentication, and API integration for deep interaction with other parts of your web applications.
A standout feature of Luzmo is its user-friendly design. Non-developers can create and manage in-production dashboards using a simple drag-and-drop editor, while developers can tweak everything with minimal code.
This combination makes Luzmo more efficient than traditional chart libraries. You don’t need to build everything from scratch, like with React components or open-source tools – Luzmo saves time and effort, which makes it an attractive option for SaaS developers.
That’s not the end, though!
Luzmo Flex offers an advanced solution for creating React dashboards, providing more flexibility than traditional React.js chart libraries while minimizing data formatting and coding requirements.
Unlike open-source tools like Recharts or Nivo, Luzmo Flex integrates seamlessly into web applications with fewer npm dependencies and easier API setup. It allows developers to quickly embed data visualizations into admin panels or e-commerce dashboards with minimal code, speeding up web development.
This makes it a strong alternative to using Material UI, Bootstrap 4, or Tailwind CSS for custom charts in React components and admin dashboard templates.
Recharts offers a set of reusable components to create responsive and interactive charts. It’s built on top of D3.js, a popular JavaScript chart library, with some adjustments for React developers. Its charts are responsive, interactive, and you can choose from basic chart types like bar charts, area charts, and pie charts.
Although they have more advanced data visualizations like the Sankey diagram and radar chart, Recharts has fewer options than specialized analytics platforms like Luzmo. If you’re looking for something very lightweight to get started, Recharts is a good option.
Victory is an open-source collection of data visualization components for React. It’s designed and maintained by Formidable Labs, an engineering consulting firm. Similar to Recharts, it’s also built on top of D3.js. Victory offers great customizations: you can change the appearance, colors, and labels to match your platform’s design. It has a wide range of chart types to choose from.
Victory is a good choice if you want something more robust than Recharts. On the flipside, that means the learning curve is slightly steeper.
Nivo is another React dashboard library similar to Victory and Recharts, since it’s also built on top of D3.js. However, Nivo is probably the most feature-rich library of the three. It has the most extensive catalogue of chart widgets, with heat maps, treemaps and more.
With its customizable API, it’s more suitable for data-heavy applications and dashboards. However, its learning curve is a little steeper because of its many powerful features. For full-stack developers who are using React chart libraries for the first time, Luzmo is a great alternative that is both feature-rich and user-friendly.
This quick tutorial will show you the key steps to add customer-facing dashboards to your React apps using Luzmo. Note that you may need a few different or extra steps when using a different library.
To start using the library in your React project, you’ll first need to install the npm package. If you don’t have a Luzmo account yet, you must create one (free trials are available).
You can connect any data source using out-of-the-box connectors for popular databases like MongoDB or PostgreSQL, or data warehouses like Snowflake or BigQuery. If we don’t support your favorite data source yet, you can easily plug them in with Luzmo’s plugin API.
Once you’ve created your first dataset, you can create interactive charts and dashboards with a simple drag-and-drop interface. For developers, this is great to avoid a lot of maintenance and updates.
Instead, customer success team or account managers can easily make modifications and publish them to your app without having to touch the code.
When your dashboard is ready, you’ll use the React library to embed dashboards into your application. You can customize the fonts, colors, background, spinners, and timezone in which you want to show the dashboard.
Using Luzmo’s React library, you can also set advanced access rights to show personalized dashboards depending on the user who is logged in.
Or, if you want to make the dashboards interact with other parts of your applications, you can easily do so by adding just a few lines of code.
You can find more instructions to set these up on npm and in Luzmo’s developer documentation.
You’re all set to launch analytics dashboards for your SaaS app users in your next deploy!
The amount of options to build dashboards in React can be overwhelming. Embedded analytics tools are a great future-proof solution. As your customer base grows, you can scale up your dashboards, and add more features if your customer needs change.
Luzmo integrates seamlessly with React applications. With its easy-to-use React library, you’ll get the job done in days, not months. The intuitive BI interface is a huge advantage if you don’t want to worry about maintenance and dashboard upgrades.
Your client-facing team members can manage everything without writing a single line of code – that’s what we call a great user experience!
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Experience the power of Luzmo. Talk to our product experts for a guided demo or get your hands dirty with a free 10-day trial.
