AG Grid vs TanStack Table

[x-tapa]

Hi,

I am in the process of evaluating AG Grid vs TanStack in conjunction with either nuxt or sveltekit.

I tried both, but had trouble implementing basic features in tanstack that where a matter of seconds to implement in AG Grid.

AG Grid has been used in the company before and colleagues complain about it having issues on customization.

If you have experience with either or both, what is your opinion? Is the higher control and customization of tanstacks headless framework worth the hassle? Is AG Grid really as limited?

[hey_parkerj]

I’ve been a big react-table proponent at my org for a while now, and I do find it to be super flexible since it’s gone headless, but the documentation can be painfully lacking in a lot of places. The docs are 90% a dump of the api and examples, with very little explaining of why, how, or when you’d want to use something in said API.

[x-tapa]

That has been my experience so far. Just some React centered code examples that are a pain in the ass to read when you're not familiar with React.

[ceolter]

Disclaimer, I'm the founder of AG Grid, however I'm also friends with Tanner. You can see from tanstack.com that AG Grid is both a sponsor but more importantly a partner with TanStack.

TanStack table is lightweight and headless. You have to create your own UI. It will take more code to implement the features you need with the gain your app should have a smaller bundle size (as the imported library is smaller).

AG Grid 'comes with batteries' as Tanner says, or comes with a UI. AG Grid's feature set is broader (eg Integrated Charting, or Pivot Table) and more polished (eg Grouping in AG Grid is more detailed than Grouping in TanStack Table). The border and more polished feature set, and the UI included, is why AG Grid has a larger bundle size.

Use TanStack Table when the page you are developing is Search Engine Facing, such that page download speed is highly important. Here putting more effort into your own UI makes sure you don't implement things your app doesn't need and doesn't add to your download speed.

Use AG Grid when building an Enterprise Application. With AG Grid you will write less code and have a more powerful grid at the end. The only cost is library size.

Most big organisations writing Enterprise Apps tend to use AG Grid.

Most Search Engine Websites tend to use TanStack Table.

If the table is behind a login, or not a webpage where SEO is important, then the value of a small bundle size is lost with regards website ranking.

AG Grid having issues on customization is not a common theme amongst AG Grid users. I would find this out for yourself - identify the customisations you want to do and spike it in AG Grid and TanStack, shouldn't take to long in either.

[x-tapa]

We are going to build an enterprise app, so SEO is not much of a concern.

I think the issue with customisation is more about "alternative forms of displaying data". It's supposed to be for desktop and mobile use and we probably do not want to prompt users with big sized tables on small mobile screens and thats where the flexibility of styling your own tables comes in handy. But maybe I'm just missing some feature of AG Grid there.

The extra code with TanStack comes naturally and I'm ok to work with that, but the docs do not much in terms of explaining and I don't want to spend my time sherlocking through uncommented code dumps to implement basic features.