Building React Apps with Bun: A Modern Development Experience

Bun brings a fresh approach to configuration, combining runtime, bundler and package manager into one cohesive tool—a nice option for React devs.

Bun has been making waves in the JavaScript ecosystem as an all-in-one runtime designed to be faster than Node.js while providing built-in bundling, testing and package management. For React developers, this presents an interesting opportunity to streamline the development workflow without sacrificing the tools and patterns we’re familiar with.

Instead of juggling multiple tools like webpack, Vite or Create React App, Bun provides everything you need in a single package. Today, we’ll explore what it’s like to build a React application using Bun by creating a simple blog app with Tailwind CSS styling.

Getting Started with Bun

First, you’ll need to install Bun on your system. The installation is straightforward:

curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash

You can read other installation options on the Bun installation page.

Once installed, creating a new React project with Tailwind CSS is remarkably simple. Bun provides a template that sets up everything for you with a single command: bun init --react=tailwind my-blog-app. That command creates a React project with Tailwind CSS preconfigured, using Bun’s bundler and development server. No need to manually configure Tailwind, set up build scripts or wrestle with bundler configurations.

Let’s get started building the blog. Open your terminal and run the following commands to create a new Bun project with React and Tailwind CSS:

bun init --react=tailwind my-blog-app
cd my-blog-app

Let’s examine what Bun generated for us. The project structure looks familiar to any React developer:

my-blog-app/
├── src/
│   ├── App.tsx
│   ├── frontend.tsx
│   ├── index.tsx
│   ├── index.html
│   ├── index.css
│   ├── logo.svg
│   └── APITester.tsx
├── package.json
├── build.ts
└── bunfig.toml

The package.json file reveals something interesting—there are minimal dependencies. Bun handles most of the tooling internally, so you won’t see the usual suspects like webpack, Babel or development servers cluttering your dependency list. The build script (build.ts) is responsible for handling the bundling and optimization of your application. You’d likely not need to touch this unless you want to customize the build process.

The files index.tsx and frontend.tsx are the entry points for your application, where index.tsx has the server routing information which can include API routing, while frontend.tsx is where your React components live. The index.html file is a simple template that Bun uses to inject your React app. The index.css file is where Tailwind CSS styles are imported and you can start adding your custom styles.

Start the development server with:

bun dev

You’ll notice the server starts incredibly fast. Bun’s speed isn’t just marketing hype; the development experience feels noticeably snappier than traditional React setups. You can open your browser to http://localhost:3000 to see the default Bun React app running.

Building the Blog Foundation

Let’s transform the default app into a blog. First, we’ll need some routing since we’ll have a homepage listing posts and individual post pages. For this, we’ll use wouter, a lightweight routing library perfect for our needs. Install it using Bun’s package manager:

bun add wouter

Create a components directory in src and add the blog components. First, we’ll create a BlogList component to display a list of blog posts:

// src/components/BlogList.tsx
import { Link } from "wouter";
import { Post } from "./BlogPost";

interface BlogListProps {
  posts: Post[];
}

const BlogList = ({ posts }: BlogListProps) => {
  return (
    <div className="max-w-4xl mx-auto p-6">
      <h1 className="text-4xl font-bold text-gray-900 mb-8">My Blog</h1>
      <div className="space-y-6">
        {posts.map((post) => (
          <article key={post.id} className="border-b border-gray-200 pb-6">
            <Link href={`/post/${post.slug}`}>
              <div className="block group">
                <h2 className="text-2xl font-semibold text-gray-900 group-hover:text-blue-600 mb-2">
                  {post.title}
                </h2>
                <p className="text-gray-600 mb-2">{post.excerpt}</p>
                <time className="text-sm text-gray-500">{post.date}</time>
              </div>
            </Link>
          </article>
        ))}
      </div>
    </div>
  );
};

export default BlogList;

Next, we’ll create a BlogPost component to display individual blog posts. This component will render the post content and provide a link back to the homepage:

// src/components/BlogPost.tsx
import { Link } from "wouter";

export interface Post {
  id: number;
  slug: string;
  title: string;
  excerpt: string;
  date: string;
  content: string;
}

interface BlogPostProps {
  post: Post | undefined;
}

const BlogPost = ({ post }: BlogPostProps) => {
  if (!post) {
    return (
      <div className="max-w-4xl mx-auto p-6">
        <p className="text-gray-600">Post not found</p>
        <Link href="/">
          <div className="text-blue-600 hover:underline">← Back to home</div>
        </Link>
      </div>
    );
  }

  return (
    <div className="max-w-4xl mx-auto p-6">
      <Link href="/">
        <div className="text-blue-600 hover:underline mb-6 inline-block">
          ← Back to home
        </div>
      </Link>
      <article>
        <h1 className="text-4xl font-bold text-gray-900 mb-4">{post.title}</h1>
        <time className="text-gray-500 mb-6 block">{post.date}</time>
        <div className="prose prose-lg prose-gray max-w-none text-gray-900">
          <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: post.content }} />
        </div>
      </article>
    </div>
  );
};

export default BlogPost;

Now, let’s update our main App.tsx to handle routing:

// src/App.tsx
import { Route, Switch } from "wouter";
import BlogList from "./components/BlogList";
import BlogPost, { Post } from "./components/BlogPost";
import "./App.css";

// Mock blog data
const blogPosts: Post[] = [
  {
    id: 1,
    slug: "getting-started-with-bun",
    title: "Getting Started with Bun",
    excerpt:
      "Exploring the new JavaScript runtime that's changing how we build applications.",
    date: "December 15, 2025",
    content: `
      <p>Bun is revolutionizing JavaScript development with its incredible speed and built-in tooling. Unlike traditional setups that require multiple tools, Bun provides everything you need in one package.</p>
      <p>The development experience is remarkably smooth, with near-instant startup times and excellent TypeScript support out of the box.</p>
      <p>Whether you're building React applications, APIs, or full-stack projects, Bun's unified approach simplifies the entire development workflow.</p>
    `,
  },
  {
    id: 2,
    slug: "react-performance-tips",
    title: "React Performance Optimization Tips",
    excerpt:
      "Learn practical techniques to make your React applications faster and more efficient.",
    date: "December 10, 2025",
    content: `
      <p>Performance optimization in React doesn't have to be complicated. Start with these fundamentals:</p>
      <ul>
        <li>Use React.memo for expensive components</li>
        <li>Implement proper key props in lists</li>
        <li>Lazy load components with React.lazy</li>
        <li>Optimize re-renders with useMemo and useCallback</li>
      </ul>
      <p>Remember, premature optimization is the root of all evil. Measure first, then optimize based on actual performance bottlenecks.</p>
    `,
  },
  {
    id: 3,
    slug: "tailwind-design-patterns",
    title: "Tailwind CSS Design Patterns",
    excerpt:
      "Common design patterns and best practices when working with TailwindCSS.",
    date: "December 5, 2025",
    content: `
      <p>Tailwind CSS encourages a utility-first approach that can feel overwhelming at first. Here are some patterns that help:</p>
      <p>Create component classes for repeated patterns, use @apply directive sparingly and leverage Tailwind's design tokens for consistency.</p>
      <p>The key is finding the right balance between utility classes and component abstractions for your team and project.</p>
    `,
  },
];

export function App() {
  return (
    <div className="min-h-screen bg-gray-50">
      <Switch>
        <Route path="/" component={() => <BlogList posts={blogPosts} />} />
        <Route path="/post/:slug">
          {(params) => {
            const post = blogPosts.find((p) => p.slug === params.slug);
            return <BlogPost post={post} />;
          }}
        </Route>
      </Switch>
    </div>
  );
}

export default App;

We used mock data to keep things simple. You can replace it with actual data fetching from a CMS or use Markdown. You can try the application by running bun dev and navigating to http://localhost:3000. You should see the blog list and clicking on a post will take you to the individual post page.

Adding Content and Styling

The beauty of this setup is how Tailwind CSS works seamlessly with Bun’s bundler. You don’t need to worry about CSS processing—it just works. The utility classes are automatically purged in production builds, keeping your CSS bundle small.

If you want to use Markdown files instead of the hardcoded content, you could add a markdown parser like marked:

bun add marked

Then process your markdown content in the BlogPost component. For this tutorial, the mock data works perfectly to demonstrate the concepts without getting bogged down in file processing details.

The Tailwind CSS integration deserves special mention. Bun’s bundler uses a Tailwind plugin bun-plugin-tailwind, so features like JIT compilation and CSS purging work without additional configuration. This is particularly nice when you’re prototyping—you can use any Tailwind class and trust that unused styles won’t bloat your final bundle.

Development Experience with Bun

Working with Bun feels refreshingly simple. Module resolution is fast and intuitive, supporting both CommonJS and ES modules without the usual configuration headaches. TypeScript works out of the box—no need for additional configuration or compilation steps.

Hot reloading is nearly instantaneous when you save files, making the development feedback loop incredibly tight. Unlike other setups where you might wait several seconds for changes to reflect, Bun’s development server updates your browser almost immediately.

The built-in package manager is another nice touch. The bun add and bun install commands are noticeably faster than npm or yarn, and the lockfile format is more efficient. For React development, this means less time waiting for dependencies to install and more time building features.

Building for Production

When you’re ready to deploy, building for production is straightforward:

bun run build

Bun’s bundler creates optimized builds with automatic code splitting, tree shaking and minification. The build process is fast—often completing in seconds for small to medium applications.

The bundler is intelligent about React optimizations, automatically applying production builds of React, removing development warnings and optimizing bundle sizes. You get all the benefits of modern bundlers without the configuration complexity.

If you’re building a full-stack application with API routes, you can use bun start to run both your frontend and backend in production. This command starts the API server and serves both frontend and backend together in a single process, making deployment simpler for full-stack applications.

For static-only deployments, the build output from bun run build works with any static hosting provider. The generated files are standard HTML, CSS and JavaScript that can be served from CDNs, Netlify, Vercel or traditional web servers.

When to Choose Bun for React

Bun shines in several scenarios. If you’re starting a new React project and want minimal configuration overhead, Bun’s templates get you productive immediately. The speed improvements are particularly noticeable on larger codebases or when working with slower development machines.

For teams wanting to reduce their tooling complexity, Bun consolidates many separate tools into one cohesive experience. No more juggling webpack configs, babel presets and multiple CLIs—everything works together seamlessly.

However, Bun is still relatively new. If you’re working on a large enterprise application with complex build requirements, you might want to stick with more established toolchains until Bun’s ecosystem matures further.

Wrapping Up

Building React applications with Bun offers a glimpse into a simpler future for JavaScript development. The speed, simplicity and built-in tooling create a developer experience that feels both modern and approachable.

Our simple blog app demonstrates how quickly you can get productive with Bun. From project initialization to production builds, the entire workflow feels streamlined and fast. While Bun may not be ready for every use case yet, it’s definitely worth exploring for new React projects.

The JavaScript ecosystem moves fast, but Bun’s approach—combining runtime, bundler and package manager into one cohesive tool—feels like a natural evolution. For React developers tired of configuration fatigue, Bun offers a refreshing alternative that lets you focus on building great applications.