Introduction

This article will be short and sweet. In the recent flow of things, we have been covering the Next.js framework for modern web development.

Today, we will briefly explore useful React libraries that every developer should know in 2025.

Some of these libraries are commonplace and if you are familiar with React.js, you may have even worked with them.

Whether it is data fetching, forms, or graphing, the React ecosystem has grown quite a bit in recent years.

The following list consists of libraries that we will cover today:

• React-Hook-Form – Seamlessly integrate forms into your web applications
• Recharts – Effective graphing for your web applications out of the box
• React-Query – Get fast and efficient data fetching, caching, and revalidating out of the box
• Axios – An enhanced data fetching library similar to the Fetch API
• Vercel AI SDK – Integrate different AI models into your web applications, effortlessly

Honourable Mentions:

• Firecrawl – Curate LLM-ready data from a simple web scrape of any site
• React-Router – Enable users to view multiple pages from SPAs using this library
• React-Helmet – Enhance SEO for SPAs by adding metadata and more to your application web pages

React Libraries In Detail

For each of these libraries, I will provide a brief description, a scenario where you can use it, and official links to their docs so you can view each of these libraries in greater detail.

React-Hook-Form

The first one we will explore is the React-Hook-Form library. When working with forms in a Next.js application, we can make use of some new features such as server actions and custom hooks for working with form state and form status (useFormState, useFormStatus).

With React-Hook-Form, you get a built-in custom hook known as useForm that can assist with all your form needs. The library can also take care of input handling and processing data for a form submission.

There is no need for adding any configurations or functionality. If you are implementing this in a Next.js application, you can simply assign a client component that has a form embedded in it and have a server component that wraps the client component as we have seen in previous tutorials.

The following example illustrates a very basic implementation of the React-Hook-Form library in a React.js application:

import { useForm } from "react-hook-form";

// Custom example of working with a form component using React-Hook-Form
const MyForm = () => {
  const { register, handleSubmit, formState: { errors } } = useForm();

  const onSubmit = (data) => {
    console.log(data);
  };

  return (
    <form onSubmit={handleSubmit(onSubmit)}>
      <input {...register("name", { required: "Name is required" })} />
      {errors.name && <p>{errors.name.message}</p>}

      <button type="submit">Submit</button>
    </form>
  );
};

Feel free to explore more about the React-Hook-Form library in the official docs here.

Recharts

Now we will explore the Recharts library.

As you saw in the previous tutorial, we incorporated the Recharts library for effective charting in a Next.js application.

There are several charting libraries out there, but this one produces the most accurate and beautiful ones.

The library comes with its own custom components that you can integrate into your own React components.

These include components that let you handle labels, tooltips, data, x/y axis configurations as well as selecting from tens of different chart types. Recharts offers you quite a bit of flexibility as a developer.

In that last tutorial, we saw how we could effectively graph live cryptocurrency data using Recharts.

If you would like to see a sample implementation of the Recharts library, please refer to the previous tutorial.

You can learn more about the Recharts library by reading their official docs here.

React Query

Data fetching is a major part of web applications.

In the past, we would fetch data as the React component would mount and conditionally render the component based on the data fetch status.

We would incorporate the useEffect hook provided by the React.js library. Ideally, the hook would consist of a nested function that makes the API call and we would call that function inside the hook.

That all changed when React-Query burst on the scene. Everything related to data fetching such as data validation, error handling, and caching was so much easier using React-Query.

It is a standard library that every React.js developer should know about.

The library is owned by TanStack and it comes with its own custom hooks most notably, useQuery (data fetching) and useMutation (data variations).

TanStack also offers support for working with other common components such as tables, forms, and so on.

We explored React-Query when we covered methods of state management in React.js development.

You can view that article here.

Feel free to explore React-Query in greater detail by reading their official docs here.

Axios

One of the more interesting and widely used packages out there is Axios. You get an enhanced version of the built-in Fetch API out of the box when working with this library.

The package comes with its own built-in functions for handling GET, POST, PUT, DELETE requests.

It also has its own options parameter which takes in an object which users can set to further customize a request. It also allows users to run many requests concurrently to obtain results at once.

Axios is clean and easy to use. With its added enhancements, you no longer need to worry about converting data to a JSON format.

There is no need for that extra step as is the case with the Fetch API. Axios does this for you out of the box.

There is a lot more to Axios than what is described here so feel free to explore their official docs here.

Vercel AI SDK

In the present era of development, AI is increasingly becoming a must-have skill.

You can now develop web applications without going through the hassle of creating, refining, and deploying your own models.

Vercel, the team that backs Next.js (React framework), built an awesome SDK that allows developers to seamlessly integrate the world’s famous models into their web apps.

The AI SDK has access to several providers so you have the flexibility to choose from a variety of models without the risk of vendor lock-in.

I used this SDK for curating live market insights while also incorporating the Firecrawl API when I refactored the Ethereum dashboard.

The library is fairly new and Vercel routinely adds features to enhance developer experience.

It has gained popularity in the development space and with AI continuing to be at the forefront in 2025, I expect this library to grow much more in the coming months.

You can find an implementation of the AI SDK by reading this GitHub repo section.

You can also learn more about the SDK by reading their official docs here.

Honourable Mentions

With all this out of the way, we will briefly look at three commendable libraries that you can also use in your React applications.

Of course, none of these are required (although you will likely always use React-Router when developing SPAs), but nonetheless, it is good to know about them.

React Router

The first one we will explore is React-Router. When developing SPAs, you always work with one page.

If the web application you are developing has multiple pages (as is the case for 99.9% of apps out there), you will need a way to render the different pages.

This is where React-Router comes in. With its built-in components, you can quickly wrap your application and conditionally render different components based on the route path.

Now, you might be wondering if it is always required, why emphasize about it here?

React-Router is an evolving library so it is important to keep up to date with its latest features. Especially, if you plan on using React as a standalone library for your front-end.

If you are using advanced frameworks that incorporate React such as Next.js, you will not need to worry about React-Router because you rely on file-based routing.

Nonetheless, routing has become quite a focal point in modern web frameworks so it is important to keep tabs on React’s own popular routing library.

The following code box highlights the React-Router in action:

import './App.css';
import Navbar from './Components/Navbar/Navbar';
import AboutPage from './Components/AboutPage/AboutPage';
import SearchPicturesPage from './Components/SearchPicturesPage/SearchPicturesPage';
import MyPicturesPage from './Components/MyPicturesPage/MyPicturesPage';
import HomePage from './Components/HomePage/HomePage';
import LoginPage from './Components/LoginPage/LoginPage';
import LogoutPage from './Components/LogoutPage/LogoutPage';
import SignupPage from './Components/SignupPage/SignupPage';
import UploadPicturePage from './Components/UploadPicturePage/UploadPicturePage';
import Footer from './Components/Footer/Footer';
import { BrowserRouter as Router, Route, Routes } from 'react-router-dom';
import ForgotPasswordPage from './Components/ForgotPasswordPage/ForgotPasswordPage';

const App = () => {
  
  return ( 
    <div className="App">
      <Navbar />
      <Router>
        <Routes>
          <Route exact path="/" element={<HomePage />}></Route>
          <Route exact path="/about" element={<AboutPage />}></Route>
          <Route exact path="/forgot-password" element={<ForgotPasswordPage />}></Route>
          <Route exact path="/login" element={<LoginPage />}></Route>
          <Route exact path="/logout" element={<LogoutPage />}></Route>
          <Route exact path="/my-pictures" element={<MyPicturesPage />}></Route>
          <Route exact path="/search-pictures" element={<SearchPicturesPage />}></Route>
          <Route exact path="/signup" element={<SignupPage />}></Route>
          <Route exact path="/upload-pictures" element={<UploadPicturePage />}></Route>
        </Routes>
      </Router>
      <Footer />
    </div>
  );
}

export default App;

I used this route file for implementing a site template for working with the DALLE API.

Feel free to learn more about React-Router in their official docs here.

Firecrawl

Web crawling websites for curating data has become quite popular.

Of course, there are several web scraping APIs out there that you can use to collect data, but Firecrawl is slightly different.

It goes beyond your average web scraper API. With this library, you can curate LLM-ready data from any site and feed it in your custom models.

You have the flexibility to scrape or crawl sites and generate data in different formats such as text, markdown, JSON, and much more.

While strictly not a React library, it can come handy if web scraping is a part of your React application.

As mentioned earlier, I used this library in conjunction with the AI SDK to generate live market insights so feel free to explore the link to the codebase above.

The Firecrawl library is also growing in popularity. You can read more about it in their official docs here.

React-Helmet

Are you developing SPAs, but do not have a clue how to add metadata to your pages? React-Helmet can help with that.

Seamlessly integrate metadata and other important information for SEO in your SPAs.

You can add in styles, scripts, links, and title information to the document head section in each of your pages.

We explored adding metadata to Next.js apps using Vercel’s built-in Metadata API.

SPAs do not have that luxury and since pages are rendered client-side (as is the case with React), you miss out on some key features for effective SEO optimization.

React-Helmet takes care of all that and more.

Feel free to learn more about it by reading their official docs here.

Conclusion

We looked at some key libraries you can use when you are developing your own React applications.

Whether it is using React as a standalone library for developing SPAs or using React for developing full-stack apps using Next.js, understanding when and how to use these libraries can make you a well-rounded developer.

Of course, every developer is different so lists for everyone could be slightly different. However, I strongly feel that in 2025, these are some of the libraries you should be familiar with.

Linked below are the eight libraries we covered in this article. You will also find a link to the GitHub repository associated with this article containing the different codebases we looked at (Demo57_Top_React_Libraries).

• Axios
• Firecrawl
• GitHub Repository
• Recharts
• React-Helmet
• React-Hook-Form
• React-Query
• React-Router
• Vercel AI SDK

I hope you found this article informative and look forward to more in the future.

Thank you!