31, May 2025

|

nextjsui librarytop 10

Top 10 Next.js UI Libraries in 2025

Using UI libraries can significantly speed up your development. In this article, we will explore the top 10 for your Next.js project.

Imran Hossain

Imran Hossain

@faraazhossainimran

Share on X

Next.js has become the go-to React framework for building modern, full-stack web applications. But great functionality alone isn't enough. Your app needs a beautiful, fast, and accessible user interface. That’s where UI libraries come in.

Using UI libraries can dramatically streamline your development workflow. The good news is that there’s no shortage of high-quality UI libraries that work seamlessly with Next.js. Below are the top 10 UI libraries in 2025 that can help you build modern, user-friendly interfaces more efficiently in your next Next.js project.

1. RetroUI

If you are bored with generic looking UI libraries, you should check out RetroUI. It brings a combination of retro and modern design elements to create a unique and memorable user experience. The library is built with React and Tailwind CSS, making it easy to integrate into your existing projects.

RetroUI comes with 100+ utility components, including buttons, cards, modals, and more that you can just copy-paste into your projects.

Why use RetroUI in 2025?

• Unique Design: RetroUI's unique design elements make it stand out from other UI libraries.
• Easy to Use: RetroUI's components are easy to use and can be customized with Tailwind CSS.
• Bold Design System: For websites that aims to look bold, RetroUI can be a perfect fit.

Drawbacks

• Bold Design System: RetroUI's biggest benefit can also be it's biggest drawback, If you are looking for a more subtle design, RetroUI might not be the best fit.
• Smaller Community Size: As a new UI library, RetroUI doesn't have a large community yet compared to other mainstream libraries.

Use Case

Perfect for someone looking to combine old school and modern design!

2. Shadcn/ui

Shadcn/ui has quickly become one of the most talked-about UI libraries in the React and Next.js ecosystem. It blends the power of Tailwind CSS, Radix UI, and modern design principles to provide a customizable and production-ready set of components.

Why shadcn/ui in 2025?

• Modern Aesthetic: Components follow sleek, minimal, and accessible design standards, fitting perfectly with modern UI trends.
• Composable & Customizable: Built on Tailwind CSS and Radix UI primitives, giving developers full control over styles and behavior.
• TypeScript Friendly: All components are fully typed, providing a great developer experience with auto completion and safety.
• Great for Next.js: Designed with app directory support in mind, making it a natural fit for modern Next.js projects.

Copyimport { Button } from "@/components/ui/button";
 
<Button variant="outline">Click me</Button>

Drawbacks

• Manual Setup: Unlike Chakra or Material UI, you don’t install it as a complete package. You copy and paste components into your project, which can be tedious for some developers.
• Learning Curve: Requires some familiarity with Tailwind CSS and Radix UI to fully unlock its potential.

Use Case

Ideal for developers who want full control over styling and component behavior while maintaining a modern design system. Especially great for teams building custom design systems or wanting highly optimized Next.js apps without the bloat.

3. Chakra UI

Chakra UI is a popular React component library known for its simplicity, accessibility, and developer-friendly API. It provides a comprehensive set of pre-styled components that speed up the development of clean, responsive UIs.

Why Chakra UI in 2025?

• Large Selection of Components: Comes with a wide range of ready-to-use components like modals, forms, alerts, icons, cards, and more.
• Prop-Based Styling: Uses a utility prop system that makes styling components intuitive and efficient without writing separate CSS.
• Theming Support: Fully customizable theme system with support for dark mode and a live theme playground.
• Accessibility Built-in: All components follow WAI-ARIA standards and are keyboard-navigable by default.
• Helpful Utilities: Includes extra helper components and hooks such as useDisclosure, useToast, and more for managing UI state easily.

Copyimport { FormatNumber } from "@chakra-ui/react";
 
<FormatNumber value={1234.45} style="currency" currency="USD" />;

Drawbacks

• Bundle Size: The total package size exceeds 2MB (unpacked), and when combined with dependencies, it can add notable weight to your application.
• Less Tailwind-Friendly: Chakra’s styling system differs from utility-first frameworks like Tailwind, which may be limiting for some teams.

Use Case

Perfect for developers who want to move fast without worrying about styling from scratch. Great for dashboards, admin panels, and apps where accessibility and design consistency are important out-of-the-box.

4. MUI (Material UI)

**MUI (Material UI)**is one of the most established and feature-rich UI libraries for React. Based on Google's Material Design, it offers a large set of components, robust customization options, and strong community support, making it a go-to choice for many production apps.

Why MUI in 2025?

• Comprehensive Component Library: Offers 100+ high-quality components including tables, date pickers, data grids, and more.
• Material Design Compliance: Implements Google's Material Design out-of-the-box for a professional, polished look.
• Theming & Customization: Advanced theming system allows deep customization to fit any design system.
• Powerful Layout Tools: Includes responsive Grid and Box components that simplify layout creation.
• Strong Ecosystem: Comes with official add-ons like MUI X for data-rich components and design kits for Figma.

Copyimport Button from "@mui/material/Button";
 
<Button variant="contained" color="primary">Click Me</Button>

Drawbacks

• Large Bundle Size: MUI’s component richness comes at the cost of performance — it can significantly increase bundle size.
• Style Customization Can Be Verbose: Overriding styles using the sx prop or styled() can be less intuitive for Tailwind or Chakra users.

Use Case

Best for enterprise-level applications or teams that want a robust, scalable, and production-ready UI solution with built-in accessibility and design consistency. Ideal for admin dashboards, CRMs, and SaaS platforms.

5. Radix UI

Radix UI is a low-level UI component library that provides unstyled, accessible primitives for building custom and highly flexible interfaces. Rather than giving you styled components, it offers logic and behavior, allowing complete control over design.

Why Radix UI in 2025?

• Unstyled by Design: Gives you complete styling freedom using any CSS approach — Tailwind, CSS Modules, Styled Components, etc.
• Accessibility First: Every component adheres to WAI-ARIA standards and comes with built-in accessibility logic.
• Composability: Components are built as primitives, allowing you to compose and extend them to suit your design needs.
• Framework-Agnostic: While optimized for React, Radix UI is modular enough to be integrated into various setups, including modern Next.js apps.
• Consistent API: Offers a unified API across all components, making it predictable and easy to use once you're familiar with one.

Copyimport * as Switch from '@radix-ui/react-switch';
 
<Switch.Root className="...">
  <Switch.Thumb className="..." />
</Switch.Root>

Drawbacks

• No Styling Included: Beginners may find it harder to use, as it requires pairing with a styling solution (e.g., Tailwind CSS).
• Not a Full UI Kit: Radix UI doesn’t provide all the components you'd find in traditional UI libraries (e.g., tables, charts, etc.).

Use Case

Perfect for developers and teams who want full control over their UI design and behavior. Ideal for custom design systems and projects where flexibility and accessibility are top priorities.

6. Mantine

Mantine is a modern React component library that offers a rich set of customizable and accessible UI components, combined with powerful hooks and utilities. It focuses on developer experience and performance, making it a great choice for building scalable Next.js applications.

Why Mantine in 2025?

• Extensive Component Library: Includes over 100 components such as modals, notifications, inputs, and advanced data display elements.
• Flexible Styling: Supports multiple styling approaches including CSS-in-JS, Tailwind CSS integration, and theme overrides.
• Built-in Dark Mode: Offers easy dark/light theme switching with seamless theming capabilities.
• Rich Utility Hooks: Provides handy hooks for common tasks like form handling, modals, and media queries.
• TypeScript Support: Fully typed components for excellent developer experience and safer code.

Copyimport { Button } from '@mantine/core';
 
<Button variant="outline">Click me</Button>

Drawbacks

• Smaller Community: Compared to Chakra UI or MUI, Mantine’s community is growing but still smaller, meaning fewer third-party resources.
• Less Established: Being relatively newer, some components or integrations might be less battle-tested.

Use Case

Ideal for developers looking for a comprehensive and flexible UI toolkit with great developer ergonomics. Perfect for building both small projects and complex apps that require a customizable design system.

7. Hero UI

Hero UI is a lightweight, Tailwind CSS-based component library that focuses on delivering clean, accessible, and modern UI components out-of-the-box. It emphasizes simplicity and responsiveness, making it an excellent choice for developers who prefer a utility-first CSS approach like Tailwind.

Why Hero UI in 2025?

• Tailwind-First Design: Built entirely with Tailwind CSS, ensuring consistency and ease of customization for Tailwind users.
• Accessible Components: Prioritizes accessibility with keyboard navigation and screen-reader-friendly components.
• Simple Integration: Easy to plug into any Tailwind + React or Next.js project without heavy configuration.
• Well-Designed Defaults: Offers visually appealing default styles that align with modern UI trends without overwhelming customization.
• Fast Prototyping: Perfect for building UIs quickly with pre-designed, responsive components.

Copyimport { Button } from '@hero-ui/react';
 
<Button variant="primary">Click me</Button>

Drawbacks

• Limited Component Set: Compared to larger libraries like MUI or Mantine, Hero UI has a smaller set of components.
• Tailwind Dependency: Not suitable if you don’t want to use Tailwind CSS, as it relies heavily on Tailwind utility classes.
• Minimal Ecosystem: Fewer plugins or extended tools compared to more mature libraries.

Use Case

Best for developers working with Tailwind CSS who want clean, ready-to-use components with minimal setup. Ideal for small to mid-sized projects, landing pages, and startups looking to ship quickly with a modern design.

8. Ant Design

Ant Design is a comprehensive and enterprise-grade UI library built for React. Developed by Alibaba, it is widely used in production-level applications, especially in enterprise and admin dashboards, due to its vast component set and professional design system.

Why Ant Design in 2025?

• Rich Component Library: Offers a large number of well-crafted components, including complex UI elements like tables, trees, timelines, and charts.
• Design System: Follows a well-defined design philosophy that promotes consistency, usability, and responsiveness.
• Internationalization (i18n): Built-in support for multiple languages and locale settings out of the box.
• Enterprise Features: Comes with features like form validation, data tables, permission controls, and icon packs that are ideal for large-scale apps.
• Custom Theming: Allows advanced theming using Less variables or CSS-in-JS with full control over visual style.

Copyimport { Button } from 'antd';
 
<Button type="primary">Click Me</Button>

Drawbacks

• Heavy Bundle Size: One of the heaviest UI libraries in terms of bundle size, which might affect performance in smaller apps.
• Overhead for Simple Projects: The complexity and richness may be overkill for lightweight or minimal UIs.
• Less Tailwind-Friendly: Not designed with utility-first frameworks like Tailwind CSS in mind.

Use Case

Ideal for enterprise dashboards, internal tools, admin panels, and data-intensive applications. Best suited for teams who need robust components and built-in business-level features without building from scratch.

9. DaisyUI

DaisyUI is a plugin for Tailwind CSS that adds pre-styled, customizable UI components. It allows developers to build beautiful interfaces quickly while keeping the flexibility and utility-first approach of Tailwind intact. Lightweight and beginner-friendly, DaisyUI is a popular choice for rapid development.

Why DaisyUI in 2025?

• Tailwind Native: Built directly on top of Tailwind CSS, making it seamless to integrate and customize using Tailwind classes.
• Theme Support: Comes with multiple pre-built themes and easy dark mode toggling, customizable via Tailwind config.
• Component-Rich: Provides a wide range of components like buttons, cards, modals, navbars, dropdowns, and more.
• Minimal Setup: Easy to install and integrate into any Tailwind + Next.js project with zero JavaScript bloat.
• Open Source & Community Driven: Actively maintained with a growing contributor base and real-world usage.

Drawbacks

• Basic Functionality: Most components are presentational and don’t come with built-in interactivity like form validation or dropdown logic.
• Not Framework-Specific: Unlike MUI or Chakra UI, DaisyUI is just styled HTML classes — you'll still need to handle component behavior yourself.
• Limited Advanced Components: Lacks complex or enterprise-level components (e.g., data grids, sortable tables, etc.).

Use Case

Perfect for beginners or developers who want to prototype quickly using Tailwind CSS with a pre-styled component set. Ideal for marketing pages, landing pages, blogs, and simple dashboards in Next.js apps.

10. Ark UI

Ark UI is a headless, accessible component library built by the creators of Chakra UI. It offers composable, unstyled components that give developers complete control over the UI while handling accessibility and interaction logic internally. It's perfect for custom design systems.

Why Ark UI in 2025?

• Headless Components: Ark UI provides the functionality and accessibility of components without imposing styles, allowing full design freedom.
• Accessibility by Default: All components are WAI-ARIA compliant, keyboard navigable, and screen-reader friendly out of the box.
• Framework-Agnostic: Works not only with React/Next.js but also with Vue, Solid, and other frontend frameworks.
• Composable Architecture: Encourages flexibility and reusability by breaking components into primitives that can be composed freely.
• Ideal for Design Systems: Perfect for teams building custom UI libraries or fully branded interfaces.

Drawbacks

• No Styling Provided: Unlike Chakra UI or Mantine, you must style everything yourself using Tailwind, CSS-in-JS, or your preferred method.
• Steeper Learning Curve: Beginners may find it harder to use because it requires more setup and an understanding of headless component architecture.
• Fewer Out-of-the-Box Components: Still expanding its library — may not yet have all the components found in more mature kits.

Use Case

Ideal for teams or developers who want total styling control and need accessible, composable building blocks for custom UI systems in React or Next.js projects. Great for products with a unique brand identity or when building a design system from scratch.