Add React to a New Application

The easiest way to get started on a new React project is by using a starter kit.

Note:

This page describes setting up a single-page application with everything you need for a comfortable development workflow, including linting, testing, production optimizations, and more. Full-featured tools like these require some time and disk space to install.

If you are looking for a lightweight environment to experiment with React, check out the Try React page instead. A single HTML file is enough to get you started!

Finally, if you’re not building a single-page application, you can either add React to your existing build pipeline or use it from CDN and without a build step.

Create React App

Create React App is the best way to start building a new React single page application. It sets up your development environment so that you can use the latest JavaScript features, provides a nice developer experience, and optimizes your app for production. You’ll need to have Node >= 6 on your machine.

npm install -g create-react-app
create-react-app my-app

cd my-app
npm start

If you have npm 5.2.0+ installed, you may use npx instead.

npx create-react-app my-app

cd my-app
npm start

Create React App doesn’t handle backend logic or databases; it just creates a frontend build pipeline, so you can use it with any backend you want. It uses build tools like Babel and webpack under the hood, but works with zero configuration.

When you’re ready to deploy to production, running npm run build will create an optimized build of your app in the build folder. You can learn more about Create React App from its README and the User Guide.

Other Starter Kits

We have created a curated list of third-party starter kits that we officially recommend.

They slightly differ in their focus but are all production-ready, well-maintained, and don’t require configuration to get started.

You can also check out a list of other kits contributed by the community.

Advanced

If you prefer to configure a project manually, see Installing React in the next section.