React Router
Shares rank 25 of 63 web frameworks by recommenders
People recommend it as a free, popular React framework whose modes are easier to explain than alternatives. The most common caveat is frequent breaking upgrades.
People recommend it as a free, popular React framework whose modes are easier to explain than alternatives. The most common caveat is frequent breaking upgrades.
34 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 13
- criticize it
- 21
- approval share
- 38%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 13 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Solves full-stack framework needs
“React Router mostly solves what I expect a modern framework to solve”
Comment from 30 Apr 2026 in “Remix 3 Beta Preview” “using React Router as the full-stack framework”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “Why we migrated from Python to Node.js” Works well with Claude
“ReactRouter works fine and Claude uses it fine”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Karpathy: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks” “ask Claude to port it to react-router”
Comment from 26 Feb 2026 in “How we rebuilt Next.js with AI in one week” Faster deployments after migrating
“when we migrated from OpenNext on CF to React Router 7”
Comment from 24 Feb 2026 in “How we rebuilt Next.js with AI in one week” “saw my deployment times drop to 1-2 minutes”
Comment from 8 Apr 2026 in “We moved Railway's front end off Next.js. Builds went from 10 minutes to under 2”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Frequent breaking upgrades and churn
“I went through approximately 2 major version upgrades of react router then decided I was done with it”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “React and Remix choose different futures” “it was often that I just hated NextJS enough to deal with the schlep of the Remix/RR churn”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “React and Remix choose different futures” “If they churn it the way that other web frameworks churn, like react-router”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Tailwind lays off 75% of 4-person engineering team, citing brutal impact of AI” - Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “React and Remix choose different futures”
- Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “React and Remix choose different futures”
Overly complex abstractions
“accidental complexity is a common theme among react devs, not just ui libs, but also react-router”
Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “The Overcomplexity of the Shadcn Radio Button” “to avoid dealing with the insanity that is react-router”
Comment from 29 Nov 2025 in “Build Your Own Router with URLPattern()” “they make bad abstractions and then get trapped by them”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “React and Remix choose different futures” - Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Marko – A declarative, HTML‑based language”
Bugs, instability and vulnerabilities
“The React Router is bad and people don't spend extra time configuring it against its own bugs.”
Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “A new spam policy for "back button hijacking"” “"react router" and all the other unstable crap in the ecosystem”
Comment from 1 Nov 2026 in “The AI cost of JavaScript frameworks” “react router has had RCE vulnerabilities.”
Comment from 23 Oct 2026 in “PHP 8.2.35”
Other web frameworks people recommend
The four most recommended other web frameworks, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ruby on Rails | 337 | 145 | 70% | 12 | 14 yrs38 owners | Approved |
| Django | 277 | 97 | 74% | 12 | 15 yrs38 owners | Approved |
| Next.js | 127 | 256 | 33% | 12 | 3 yrs6 owners | — |
| Phoenix Framework | 85 | 11 | 89% | 12 | 8 yrs7 owners | Approved |
| React RouterThis page | 13 | 21 | 38% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
30 of the 34 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“"react router" and all the other unstable crap in the ecosystem”
“react router has had RCE vulnerabilities.”
“if you ever tried to go all the way (e.g. RR v7 w/ full SSR) in a not-a-toy project, is not easy to set up”
“React router duo would be a great example of known clowns”
“multiple annoying RR breaking changes”
“React Router mostly solves what I expect a modern framework to solve”
“The React Router is bad and people don't spend extra time configuring it against its own bugs.”
“frameworks like Tanstack and React Router only really adopted them”
“one of the most popular JS libraries of all time”
“saw my deployment times drop to 1-2 minutes”
“ask Claude to port it to react-router”
“when we migrated from OpenNext on CF to React Router 7”
“If they churn it the way that other web frameworks churn, like react-router”
“ReactRouter works fine and Claude uses it fine”
“at least those guys _tried_ to stay closer to existing web standards”
“accidental complexity is a common theme among react devs, not just ui libs, but also react-router”
“got me close enough for my purposes”
“too important to be wasted on a lesser quality project (looking at you react-router)”
“the "modes" distinction within React Router is easier to understand and explain than a separate framework wrapping RR”
“builds on those failed iterations of React Router”
“each update of react-router has been a pain”
“they make bad abstractions and then get trapped by them”
“I went through approximately 2 major version upgrades of react router then decided I was done with it”
“it was often that I just hated NextJS enough to deal with the schlep of the Remix/RR churn”
“I went through the same pain with React Router. I would never consider using Remix or anything else from this team.”
“being left with huge upgrade tech debt time and time again”
“to avoid dealing with the insanity that is react-router”
“Supports Types, but every type is a string because, well, they technically are, but this isn't useful in practice in my opinion.”
“tremendously better than the monsters of Next or RR”
“using React Router as the full-stack framework”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.