React survey shows TanStack gains, doubts over server components

Developers struggle with React complexity

Devographics released its 2025 State of React survey today, revealing a developer community increasingly frustrated by the complexity of the React ecosystem. More than 3,700 developers participated in the study, which tracks the tools, libraries, and frameworks built around Meta’s JavaScript library.

React remains a library rather than a full-featured framework, forcing developers to choose their own build tools and testing harnesses. This flexibility creates significant integration hurdles for professional engineering teams. One respondent described the process of making IDE tools and CI systems work together as a reliable nightmare.

The survey highlights a growing divide between React’s massive market share and the daily experience of writing code. While React remains the dominant choice for web development, the overhead of managing its fragmented ecosystem weighs on senior engineers. Many developers now spend more time configuring their environment than building features.

Generative AI may further entrench React despite these technical headaches. Survey author Sacha Greif noted that AI models rely on massive existing codebases to generate new snippets. Because React has the largest footprint of any modern UI library, it has become the default output for nearly all AI-assisted coding prompts.

Nextjs faces a sentiment crisis

Next.js serves as the primary framework for 80 percent of the surveyed developers, but its popularity is currently decoupling from developer satisfaction. While it remains the industry standard for full-stack React applications, 17 percent of respondents now report a negative sentiment toward the framework. Only 27 percent of users maintain a purely positive outlook on the tool.

Critics of Next.js frequently cite its increasing complexity and its aggressive integration with Vercel, the company that sponsors its development. Developers expressed concerns over vendor lock-in and APIs that feel overly abstracted. Some respondents claimed the ecosystem now contains too much noise to remain a viable long-term choice for independent projects.

The tension stems from the framework's shift toward server-side features that require specific hosting configurations. While Vercel provides a seamless experience for Next.js, deploying the framework on competing platforms often requires additional work. This perceived "Vercel-first" approach has alienated a vocal segment of the React community.

Despite the complaints, Next.js remains the most used React framework by a wide margin. Its deep feature set and established documentation make it difficult for teams to migrate away. However, the survey suggests that its position as the undisputed default is beginning to erode.

TanStack emerges as a competitor

As frustration with Next.js grows, the TanStack ecosystem has emerged as a high-satisfaction alternative. TanStack Query, a tool used for data fetching, currently enjoys 68 percent usage with a remarkably low 1 percent negative sentiment. Developers praised the tool for its focus on type-safety and developer experience.

The ecosystem is now expanding into a full-stack framework called TanStack Start. Although only 15 percent of developers currently use the tool while it sits in its release candidate phase, nearly half of the respondents who have heard of it expressed interest. This framework uses the Vite build tool and Solid.js influences to offer a lighter alternative to Next.js.

The TanStack project includes several specialized tools:

• TanStack Query: A powerful asynchronous state management tool for TS/JS.
• TanStack Start: A full-stack React framework currently in a release candidate phase.
• TanStack DB: A high-performance data store currently in beta.
• TanStack AI: An alpha-stage project for integrating LLMs into applications.
• TanStack CLI: A command line interface that includes a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for AI agents.

Netlify began sponsoring TanStack in March 2025, positioning it as a response to frameworks that have become "bloated." Tanner Lindsey, the creator of TanStack, focused the project on TypeScript integration and file-based routing. This modular approach allows developers to opt into specific features without adopting a massive, opinionated framework.

Server Components fail to impress

The introduction of React Server Components (RSC) has met significant resistance from the developer community. Both Next.js and TanStack Start have implemented these APIs, but many respondents remain unconvinced that React belongs on the server. The survey authors called the cool response to these features troubling for the future of the library.

One respondent stated they had zero interest in moving React logic away from the browser. The complexity of managing two different execution environments—the server and the client—within a single file has proven confusing for many. Developers reported that the mental overhead of tracking where code runs outweighs the performance benefits RSCs provide.

The survey indicates that the "Next Big Evolution" of React may be out of sync with what developers actually want. While Meta and Vercel view server-side execution as the solution to web performance, many engineers prefer the simplicity of traditional client-side rendering. This disconnect could lead to a further fracturing of the ecosystem as teams choose different architectural paths.

Server functions, another recent addition, also received a lukewarm reception. These tools allow developers to call server-side code directly from client components, but the implementation has been criticized for being unintuitive. The survey suggests that React's core team still needs to bridge the gap between their technical vision and the practical needs of the workforce.

The React Compiler offers hope

While server-side features struggle, the React Compiler has become a rare point of consensus. 62 percent of survey respondents expressed enthusiasm for the tool, which automates performance optimizations. The compiler aims to eliminate the need for manual memoization, a task that has long been a source of bugs and boilerplate code.

React educator Aurora Scharff noted that the compiler allows developers to stop "littering" their code with useMemo and useCallback hooks. By handling these optimizations at the build step, the compiler makes React code easier to read and maintain. This shift represents a move back toward the "UI as a function of state" simplicity that originally made React popular.

The organizational structure of the project is also changing to improve community trust. The React Foundation, introduced in October 2025, will now oversee React's infrastructure and the annual ReactConf event. This move aims to provide a more neutral governing body for the library, reducing the influence of any single corporate sponsor.

This organizational shift comes at a critical time as the industry moves toward AI-driven development. Because React is the default output for UI prompts in large language models, its popularity is effectively locked in for the foreseeable future. The React Foundation will be responsible for ensuring that this dominance leads to a more stable and less fragmented experience for the next generation of developers.