Refine

Refine is the React meta-framework for building admin panels and internal tools without drowning in boilerplate. It gives you data hooks, auth, routing, and CRUD operations — you bring the UI library (Ant Design, Material UI, or headless). Think of it as the backend-for-your-frontend-admin.

If you're building a dashboard, CMS, or internal tool and don't want to wire up data fetching and state management for the hundredth time, Refine saves weeks. Retool is the commercial drag-and-drop alternative but locks you into their platform. AdminJS does similar things for Node.js backends. React-admin (Marmelab) is the direct competitor — more mature but heavier and more opinionated.

Best for indie hackers building B2B SaaS who need an admin panel yesterday. The headless approach means you control the look completely.

The catch: the learning curve is real. Refine's abstractions (data providers, resource definitions) take time to understand. Documentation has gaps. And if your admin panel is simple enough, you might be faster just building it with plain React and TanStack Query.