What is this?
Refine is an open-source React framework for building internal tools, admin panels, dashboards, and B2B applications with a high degree of flexibility.
Is this a UI library or a headless framework?
Refine is headless: it provides hooks and logic for data fetching, routing, auth, and CRUD operations, but ships no pre-built UI, so you pair it with Ant Design, Material UI, Mantine, or your own components.
How do I start a new refine project?
The monorepo includes a create-refine-app CLI package used to scaffold a new project, after which you build pages with your chosen UI library and data provider.
Do I need a specific backend to use refine with?
No single backend is required — refine supports multiple data providers including REST, GraphQL, and NestJS, so it can connect to virtually any API.
What's the catch with the headless approach?
Since refine doesn't bundle its own UI, you have to wire up a UI kit yourself before you get a working interface; contributing to the repo itself also requires Node.js 18+ and pnpm 9+ in its lerna-managed monorepo.
Which UI frameworks can I plug into refine?
Because of its headless design, refine works with Ant Design, Material UI, Mantine, Chakra UI, or fully custom components for the visual layer.
Does refine generate CRUD screens for me?
Refine's core hooks and routing are built around CRUD operations, so you can quickly wire up list, create, edit, and show views for each resource instead of writing that logic from scratch.
Can I use refine with Next.js or NestJS backends?
Yes, refine has first-class support and examples for Next.js on the frontend and NestJS (including NestJs Query/CRUD) as a backend data source.
Is refine free to use?
Yes, refine is fully open source and released under the MIT license.
What are similar projects?
react-admin, appsmith, twenty, amis, gentelella, amplication, illa-builder, umi
Which topics is it in?
open-source-project, admin-ui, ant-design, internal-tools, crud, react-hooks, nestjs, good-first-issue, admin, headless, low-code, frontend-framework