React is simply a library that renders your UI to the DOM. It doesn’t have any opinions on how your data is fetched, or how many roundtrips it takes. That’s an

React is simply a library that renders your UI to the DOM. It doesn’t have any opinions on how your data is fetched, or how many roundtrips it takes. That’s an orthogonal concern. People have been using XMLHTTPRequest with CGI since the 00s, way before React was a twinkle in Zuck’s retinal sensors. You can send your initial data for React with the HTML response if you want to eliminate the extra round trip on startup. Depending on the geographical distribution of your users it may or may not be worth it.