Tab Navigation vs Route-Based Navigation in React: My Experience with Large Datasets

Today I want to share my journey with a common React challenge: choosing between tab navigation and route-based navigation for dashboards with large datasets.

The Problem I Faced

Last month, I was working on a dashboard project that displayed around 1000 user records across multiple views. I needed to decide: should I use tabs within a single page or create separate routes for each view?

It wasn't an easy decision. I had to think about:

• Performance with large datasets
• User experience and navigation flow
• Memory management
• Code organization

What The Documentation Says

According to React Router documentation, route-based navigation is recommended for complex applications with distinct views, while component-based tab navigation works well for related content that needs to maintain shared state.

The React community generally agrees that route-based navigation provides better code organization and supports the web's natural linking and history capabilities. However, this is just general guidance - we need real metrics for our specific use case.

My Experience with Both Approaches

Tab Navigation: The Good and Bad

function Dashboard() {
  const [activeTab, setActiveTab] = useState(0);
  
  return (
    <div>
      <div className="tabs">
        <button onClick={() => setActiveTab(0)}>Products</button>
        <button onClick={() => setActiveTab(1)}>Users</button>
        <button onClick={() => setActiveTab(2)}>Orders</button>
      </div>
      
      {activeTab === 0 && <ProductsPanel />}
      {activeTab === 1 && <UsersPanel />}
      {activeTab === 2 && <OrdersPanel />}
    </div>
  );
}

Strengths:

• Fast switching between views (felt instant to users)
• Preserved state between tab switches
• Simpler implementation initially
• No need to handle route management

Weaknesses:

• Memory usage increased dramatically with dataset size
• Initial load time was longer since all tabs needed to initialize
• Testing became more complicated
• No direct URLs for specific views

Route-Based Navigation: The Trade-offs

function App() {
  return (
    <BrowserRouter>
      <Routes>
        <Route path="/" element={<Dashboard />}>
          <Route index element={<Navigate to="products" />} />
          <Route path="products" element={<ProductsView />} />
          <Route path="users" element={<UsersView />} />
          <Route path="orders" element={<OrdersView />} />
        </Route>
      </Routes>
    </BrowserRouter>
  );
}

Strengths:

• Better memory management
• Cleaner architecture and separation of concerns
• Support for direct links to specific views
• Better code splitting possibilities

Weaknesses:

• Slightly slower navigation experience
• Extra work to maintain state between route changes
• More complex implementation initially

Measuring Real Performance

To make a data-driven decision, I measured both approaches using Chrome DevTools with a dataset of 1000 records:

The tab navigation approach used nearly twice as much memory and had significantly more DOM elements, which explained the occasional freezing issues.

Making Route-Based Navigation Better

To address the slower navigation of route-based approach, I implemented:

1. Optimistic UI updates - Show the new view immediately while data loads
2. Data caching with React Query - Store previously fetched data

function UsersView() {
  const [page, setPage] = useState(1);
  
  const { data, isLoading } = useQuery(
    ['users', page],
    () => fetchUsers(page),
    { 
      keepPreviousData: true,
      staleTime: 5 * 60 * 1000 // 5 minutes
    }
  );
  
  if (isLoading && !data) return <LoadingSpinner />;
  
  return (
    <div>
      {/* User data display */}
      <Pagination currentPage={page} onChange={setPage} />
    </div>
  );
}

With these optimizations, the navigation delay became barely noticeable but we kept the memory benefits.

What I Learned

From my perspective, here's what I recommend:

Use tab navigation when:

• Your dataset is small (under 200 records)
• Users need to frequently compare data between tabs
• Immediate switching is critical to your UX

Use route-based navigation when:

• You're dealing with large datasets (500+ records)
• Memory issues are appearing in your app
• You need bookmarkable URLs
• Your app architecture needs to scale

Remember, these recommendations come from my specific experience - your mileage may vary depending on your exact requirements and constraints!

What navigation approach has worked best for your projects? I'd love to hear your experiences in the comments!