Is it possible to use react without JSX?

Yes, JSX is not mandatory for using React. Actually it is convenient when you don’t want to set up compilation in your build environment. Each JSX element is just syntactic sugar for calling React.createElement(component, props, ...children).

For example, let us take a greeting example with JSX,

    class Greeting extends React.Component {
      render() {
        return <div>Hello {this.props.message}</div>;
      }
    }

    ReactDOM.render(
      <Greeting message="World" />,
      document.getElementById("root")
    );
    

You can write the same code without JSX as below,

    class Greeting extends React.Component {
      render() {
        return React.createElement("div", null, `Hello ${this.props.message}`);
      }
    }

    ReactDOM.render(
      React.createElement(Greeting, { message: "World" }, null),
      document.getElementById("root")
    );
    

> Modern React Note (React 18/19): ReactDOM.render was deprecated in React 18 and removed in React 19. In modern applications, always use createRoot from react-dom/client:
>

> import { createRoot } from 'react-dom/client';
> const root = createRoot(document.getElementById('root'));
> root.render(<App />);
>