The State of React 2025 survey results are out. This annual survey gives us a snapshot of the React ecosystem: what developers are using, what they're excited about, and where the pain points remain. Let's explore what developers said about hooks, APIs, frameworks, React Server Components, and the tools shaping the React ecosystem today.

The Big Picture

Nearly half of respondents (48%) are already using React 19 daily, with another 41% on React 18. SPAs remain dominant at 84%, though SSR (61%) and SSG (44%) adoption continues to grow.

Features: The Good and the Frustrating

Hooks Everyone Uses

The classic hooks dominate:

• useState: 98.8% usage with 51% positive sentiment
• useEffect: 98% usage, but also the hook with the lowest satisfaction ratio
• useRef: 94.7% usage
• useContext: 93.6% usage
• useMemo/useCallback: 92-93% usage

useEffect remains the top complaint in the hooks category at 37%, followed by dependency array issues (21%). The reactivity model continues to frustrate developers, especially when dealing with stale closures and effect cleanup.

New APIs: Suspense Leads, RSC Divides

Suspense has the highest adoption rate among React's newer APIs, with high satisfaction.

The survey tracks React 19 APIs like use(), useOptimistic, useActionState, useFormStatus, <form> Actions, and useTransition. These are all slowly growing in adoption. Learn more in React Concurrent Features: An Overview.

Server Components and Server Functions are more complicated. While they're slowly growing in popularity, they're also the third and fourth most disliked features respectively. For more context, see React Frameworks and Server-Side Features: Beyond Client-Side Rendering.

What Developers Want to Learn

The reading list shows what's generating curiosity:

1. <Profiler> - 57%
2. <ViewTransition> - 41%
3. <Activity> - 41%
4. React cache - 41%
5. useEffectEvent - 40%
6. useDeferredValue - 39%
7. useOptimistic - 39%
8. React Compiler - 38%
9. use() - 38%
10. useSyncExternalStore - 37%

<ViewTransition> simplifies animations without heavy libraries. <Activity> and useEffectEvent shipped stable in React 19.2. Learn more in React ViewTransition: Smooth Animations Made Simple and What's New in React 19.2.

Pain Points Worth Noting

Beyond hooks, developers called out several recurring frustrations:

• forwardRef: The bane of React developers for years. Thankfully, it's deprecated in React 19 with ref as a prop.
• act testing issues: Wrapping updates in act() for tests remains confusing, especially with async operations.
• Memoization complexity: Knowing when to reach for useMemo, useCallback, and React.memo adds mental overhead.
• <StrictMode> double-rendering confusion: Developers still get tripped up by effects running twice in development.

Memoization is a recurring pain point. Knowing when to use useMemo, useCallback, and React.memo adds mental overhead. React Compiler should hopefully solve this by handling memoization at build time. Learn more in React Compiler: No More useMemo and useCallback.

Libraries: The Ecosystem Winners and Losers

TanStack

TanStack Query continues to lead in data fetching with strong positive sentiment.

For forms, React Hook Form leads at 74% usage, with TanStack Form at 21% (+8 positions).

State Management

34% of respondents don't use any state management library. The survey notes that first-party APIs like useState and useContext are often sufficient.

Among those who do use state management:

• Redux has high awareness but also significant negative sentiment
• Redux Toolkit has grown as the modern Redux approach
• Zustand growing as a lightweight alternative
• Jotai for atomic state management

The top pain points are excessive complexity (20%) and boilerplate (15%).

Data Loading

Axios leads in HTTP client usage, followed by TanStack Query and SWR. Apollo Client and tRPC serve GraphQL and type-safe API needs. Caching issues (24%) are the top data loading pain point.

CSS and Styling

Tailwind CSS dominates at 78% usage, followed by:

• CSS Modules (65%): Scoped styles without runtime cost. Works out of the box with most bundlers.
• Sass/SCSS (59%): Still popular for variables, nesting, and mixins, though native CSS now covers many use cases.
• Styled Components (58%): CSS-in-JS with component-scoped styles. Runtime overhead is a common criticism.
• Emotion (29%): Similar to Styled Components but with more flexibility in API styles.

UI Libraries

33% of respondents don't use any component library. Those who do have tried an average of 2.3 options.

The leaders:

• MUI - High usage but polarizing. Known for its comprehensive Material Design components, but criticized for bundle size and styling constraints.
• shadcn/ui - Strong positive sentiment. Copy-paste components built on Radix primitives, giving developers full ownership of the code.
• Radix - Growing as a headless primitive layer. Provides accessible, unstyled components for building custom design systems.
• Base UI - 22% as an alternative to Radix. MUI's headless library offering similar primitives.
• Ant Design, Chakra UI, Headless UI - all maintaining their niches with enterprise, accessible, and Tailwind-focused approaches respectively.

For more on the difference between shadcn/ui and headless primitives like Radix and Base UI, see Starting a React Project? shadcn/ui, Radix, and Base UI Explained.

For animations, Motion (ex-Framer Motion) leads at 55%.

Back-End and Infrastructure

Meta-Frameworks

The framework landscape is shifting as CRA sunsets and new options emerge:

• Create React App: Most developers have used it, but negative sentiment reflects its sunset in February. The official React docs now recommend frameworks instead.
• Next.js: The dominant full-stack React framework, though some cite lock-in fears and complexity.
• create-vite: Growing as the CRA replacement. Fast, minimal, and focused on client-side apps.
• React Router: The standard for client-side routing, with v7 bringing framework features.
• TanStack Start: Emerging as a client-first alternative. Built on TanStack Router with SSR capabilities.
• Remix: Steady, though moving away from React for v3. Its innovations influenced React Router v7.

Build Tools

Vite leads at 92%. webpack (84%) is still common in legacy projects. Turbopack (44%) is growing among Next.js users, and Bun (31%) is on the rise.

Hosting

Vercel leads at 62%, followed by AWS (50%), GitHub Pages (40%), Netlify (36%), and Cloudflare (26%).

Backend Languages for React Devs

TypeScript dominates at 75%, with JavaScript at 52%. Python (27%), Java (22%), PHP (20%), and Go (19%) round out the list.

Other Tools

Testing: Vitest (60%) is catching up to Jest (62%). Playwright (52%) is overtaking Cypress (34%).

Schema Validation: Zod dominates at 78%.

Authentication: Auth0 (38%) and Auth.js (36%) lead, though 30% roll their own.

Mobile: React Native (45%) and Expo (41%) are nearly equal now.

Usage Patterns and Sentiment

What Developers Build With React

Web apps dominate at 96%. Design systems (48%), static sites (44%), and hybrid sites (37%) follow. Mobile apps (35%) and desktop apps (21%) round out the use cases.

Meta, Vercel, and the React Foundation

Meta involvement: Mostly neutral (58%) to positive (22%).

Vercel involvement: 39% neutral, but negative opinions (23% negative + 13% very negative = 36%) outweigh positive ones (19% positive + 6% very positive = 25%). Lock-in fears and unwanted features are cited.

React Foundation: Overwhelmingly positive. The newly-announced foundation receives 32% positive and 18% very positive sentiment.

Overall Happiness

The average happiness score is 3.6 out of 5. Developers are generally satisfied with React's direction.

Resources: How Developers Learn

Learning Methods

1. Documentation - 84%
2. Self-directed learning (Google, Stack Overflow) - 78%
3. AI Tools (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) - 54% (+2 positions)
4. Videos & screencasts - 49%
5. On-the-job training - 44%

AI tools at third place shows the shift toward interfacing with documentation through AI rather than consulting it directly. This is already impacting some projects.

Top Resources

The community's go-to sources for staying current:

• This Week in React - now #1 for React news (+2 positions). Sébastien Lorber's weekly roundup covers releases, articles, and ecosystem updates.
• Theo Browne - top video creator at 50%. Known for hot takes and framework deep-dives.
• Josh W. Comeau - top individual to follow. In-depth interactive tutorials on React and CSS.
• Dan Abramov - influential for his RSC explanations. His mental models shape how developers understand React internals.
• Tanner Linsley - the TanStack creator. His libraries (Query, Router, Form) power much of the ecosystem.

Demographics Snapshot

The survey paints a picture of React's developer community:

• Average age: 33.5 years.
• Experience: Average 8 years (34% have 5-9 years).
• Average salary: $83,647 USD.
• Top countries: USA (14%), France (8%), Germany, UK.
• Gender: 90% men, 8% women.
• Education: 80% have higher education degrees.

Where React Is Heading

When asked what excites them most, developers chose React Compiler (62%), ref as a prop (26%), React cache (25%), the use hook (25%), and React Server Components (20%). Ergonomic improvements top the list.

I wrote the conclusion for this year's survey, so check that out for the full takeaway. And if you want to dig deeper into any of these topics, explore the full survey results yourself.