refinedev/refine

A React Framework for building internal tools, admin panels, dashboards & B2B apps with unmatched flexibility.

Summary

refinedev/refine is a TypeScript React meta-framework for CRUD-heavy web applications such as admin panels, dashboards, internal tools, and B2B apps. It provides a headless core that decouples business logic from UI and routing, with connectors for more than 15 backends and integrations with several UI frameworks.

What it is useful for

The README positions Refine for data-intensive enterprise apps where most of the work is list/create/update/delete. Documented use cases include admin panels, dashboards, internal tools, B2B apps, and, with the SSR support in Next.js and Remix, customer-facing storefronts.

The headless architecture is useful when you need a custom UI but don't want to build authentication, access control, routing, networking, and state management from scratch. The core bundles React Query for data and mutations, exposes hooks for CRUD operations, and supports live/real-time apps and audit logs out of the box. It targets Next.js, Remix, React Native, and Electron through a single routing interface without additional setup.

It is less appropriate for content-heavy marketing sites or apps with little CRUD, where the framework's conventions add overhead without much payoff.

How engineers can use it

The documented way to scaffold a new project is:

npm create refine-app@latest my-refine-app

Inside the app, you wrap your routes in <Refine> from @refinedev/core, supplying a dataProvider, a routerProvider, and a resources array. The README's quick-start example uses @refinedev/simple-rest against a fake REST API and pairs @refinedev/mui with react-router and Material UI's DataGrid to render a products list. Hooks like useDataGrid and useMany provide props for the grid and resolve related records (such as categories) by id.

For the backend, pick a matching connector package. The README documents REST API, GraphQL, NestJs CRUD, Airtable, Strapi (v3 and v4), Supabase, Hasura, Appwrite, Nestjs-Query, Firebase, Sanity, and Directus. Authentication and access control are configured as additional providers passed to <Refine>.

For UI, the documented options are TailwindCSS, Ant Design, Material UI, Mantine, and Chakra UI, each as a separate @refinedev/* package.

Documented limitations: this is a CRUD-oriented framework, so it carries extra weight for apps that aren't data-intensive, and you depend on its conventions to benefit from integration updates. For deeper setup details beyond the create command, the README points readers to the project's tutorial and guides.