That's true but if you're concerned about payload sizes then 10k records is way too much to pre-send, and in general I think it's safer to depend on the server

That's true but if you're concerned about payload sizes then 10k records is way too much to pre-send, and in general I think it's safer to depend on the server sending a known max size of html than it is to pre-send all the json every time. Unless you're using tailwind or some other variation of inline styles, I don't think a typical formatted <tr> is going to be much bigger than a json record anyway. It might even be smaller if the json includes extra attributes that don't make it out to the html. But I agree that if you know you have a tiny amount of data and you don't want to involve a server then it would be better to do the entire interaction client side. But nothing prevents you from plugging in a small client side lib (not react) and using server-side for everything you can.