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A TanStack Table alternative, with the rendering built.
Last updated 30 August 2026
TanStack Table is free, MIT-licensed and the most-downloaded table library on npm. None of that is in dispute. It is also headless by design: it hands you the logic and leaves you the rendering. So the question was never what TanStack costs to download. It is what the other half costs to build.
Headless means you build the grid
A headless table gives you sorting, filtering, grouping and pagination as state and hooks. What it does not give you, on purpose, is anything you can see. Rendering, row and column virtualisation for large data, an editing pipeline with validation and undo, Excel export, the filter UI, a keyboard navigation model and the ARIA roles that make the whole thing usable by a screen reader are all yours to write, and then yours to maintain as the browsers and the requirements move. That is the right trade when you need total control of the interface. It is a poor one when you needed a grid and ended up building a grid framework to get it.
What "free" leaves you to build
| Part of a real grid | TanStack Table | Lattice Grid |
|---|---|---|
| Sorting, filtering, grouping logic | Provided | Provided |
| Rendering and markup | You build it | Built in |
| Row and column virtualisation | Separate library, you wire it | Both axes, built in |
| Editing, validation, undo | You build it | Built in, one undo stack |
| Excel and CSV export | You build it | Built in, no extra dependency |
| Filter and column UI | You build it | Built in |
| Keyboard model and ARIA | You build it | Built in |
| Charts and statistics | You build it | Built in |
| Ongoing maintenance of all the above | Yours | Ours |
Price it in developer-weeks. If building and maintaining the rendering layer is more than a few weeks of one engineer's time, it is already more than a $1,000 per-domain licence, and that is before the second time a browser update breaks your virtualisation and it is your ticket.
What we are not saying
Headless is not a mistake. If you want to own the markup and the interaction completely, have the capacity to build and keep a rendering layer, and your design genuinely cannot be reached by configuring an existing grid, TanStack Table is an excellent choice and you should use it. But if you picked headless to save a licence fee and are now maintaining a grid engine you never meant to write, that is the trade this page is worth reading for.
Common questions
Is Lattice Grid a TanStack Table alternative?
They solve different halves of the problem. TanStack Table is a headless library: it gives you the state and the logic for sorting, filtering, grouping and pagination, and you build every pixel, virtualisation, editing, export and the accessibility model yourself. Lattice Grid is the built grid, rendering included. The choice is not price, since TanStack is free; it is whether you want to build the UI or start with it built.
TanStack Table is free and Lattice Grid is not. Why pay?
Because headless is free to license and expensive to finish. The parts TanStack deliberately leaves to you, row and column virtualisation, an editing pipeline, Excel export, filter UI, a keyboard model and the ARIA to make it accessible, are weeks of engineering and then ongoing maintenance. A per-domain licence is $1,000 once. The question is whether that build and its upkeep costs you more than that.
When should I use TanStack instead?
When you want total control of the markup and the interaction, have the engineering capacity to build and maintain the rendering layer, and your design cannot be expressed by configuring an existing grid. In that case headless is the right tool and you should use it.
See how much is already built. Every feature runs free on localhost.
Compare against AG Grid or MUI X, or see all comparisons.