CleenUI as a Refine alternative — owned source, .NET 8 backend included, 14 functional modules instead of an empty admin scaffold.
Refine is an open-source React framework for building admin panels and internal tools. It's headless — you choose your UI library (Material UI, Ant Design, Chakra, or Mantine) — and pluggable for data providers. CleenUI differs in two ways: (1) it ships its own React component library so you don't have to choose-and-integrate, and (2) it includes a complete .NET 8 backend (ASP.NET Core Web API + Dapper/ADO.NET + Azure SQL with 700+ stored procedures — no EF) rather than wrapping yours. Refine and CleenUI both target the same engineer ('build a serious admin/B2B app fast') with different bills of materials.
| Concern | CleenUI | Refine |
|---|---|---|
| Frontend | React 18 SPA + 61 components in 12 categories | React framework — bring your own component library |
| Backend | ASP.NET Core 8 Web API with 524 endpoints, included | Bring your own (Refine wraps your API via data providers) |
| Database | Azure SQL + 300+ tables + 700+ stored procedures, included | Bring your own |
| Auth | Auth0 + JWT + RBAC + row-level scoping, wired | Auth provider plugin |
| Multi-tenancy | Built-in (account / company hierarchy) | Not included |
| Modules | 14 functional vertical-slice modules | None — you build them |
| Distribution | Licensed source code (one-time license) | Open-source MIT framework |
Teams replace Refine with CleenUI when they want the whole stack delivered (not a framework + integrations), when they need .NET 8 specifically on the backend, or when they want to spend their engineering budget on product differentiation rather than admin-panel plumbing.
If you're coming from Refine, the layout patterns (list view + detail view + form view, the resource convention, the breadcrumb pattern) are directly transferable. CleenUI's page templates at /ai-skills/page-templates cover the same patterns Refine's resource scaffolding does.