UI Component Libraries and Frameworks Comparison
tailwindcss vs bootstrap vs @material-ui/core vs @chakra-ui/react
1 Year
tailwindcssbootstrap@material-ui/core@chakra-ui/reactSimilar Packages:
What's UI Component Libraries and Frameworks?

UI component libraries and frameworks provide pre-designed and pre-styled components that help developers create user interfaces more efficiently. They encapsulate design principles, responsive layouts, and interactive elements, allowing developers to focus on functionality rather than design from scratch. These libraries often come with a set of utilities and customization options, enabling developers to build visually appealing and consistent applications quickly. The choice of a UI library can significantly impact the development speed, maintainability, and user experience of a web application.

NPM Package Downloads Trend
Github Stars Ranking
Stat Detail
Package
Downloads
Stars
Size
Issues
Publish
License
tailwindcss11,647,83483,8265.73 MB1108 days agoMIT
bootstrap4,561,978171,0499.67 MB65110 months agoMIT
@material-ui/core1,225,25094,1965.96 MB1,896-MIT
@chakra-ui/react624,84338,1141.94 MB127 days agoMIT
Feature Comparison: tailwindcss vs bootstrap vs @material-ui/core vs @chakra-ui/react

Design Principles

  • tailwindcss:

    Tailwind CSS adopts a utility-first approach, allowing developers to compose styles directly in their markup. This promotes a more flexible design process, enabling rapid prototyping and customization without leaving the HTML.

  • bootstrap:

    Bootstrap is built on a mobile-first approach, ensuring that applications are responsive and work well on various devices. It provides a grid system and pre-styled components that help maintain consistency and speed up development, focusing on utility and ease of use.

  • @material-ui/core:

    Material-UI follows Google's Material Design principles, focusing on visual hierarchy, bold colors, and responsive animations. It provides a comprehensive set of components that adhere to these design guidelines, ensuring a cohesive user experience across applications.

  • @chakra-ui/react:

    Chakra UI emphasizes accessibility and simplicity, providing components that are built with ARIA attributes to ensure they are usable by everyone. It promotes a consistent design language through its theming capabilities, allowing developers to customize the look and feel of their applications easily.

Customization

  • tailwindcss:

    Tailwind CSS is highly customizable, allowing developers to define their own utility classes in a configuration file. This means that developers can create a tailored design system that fits their needs without writing custom CSS for every component.

  • bootstrap:

    Bootstrap allows for customization through its Sass variables and mixins, enabling developers to tweak the default styles to fit their branding. However, it may require overriding styles for more complex customizations, which can lead to larger CSS files.

  • @material-ui/core:

    Material-UI provides a powerful styling solution through its makeStyles and withStyles APIs, allowing for component-level styling. It also supports theme customization, enabling developers to define a theme that can be applied globally or to specific components.

  • @chakra-ui/react:

    Chakra UI offers a theming system that allows for easy customization of component styles. Developers can create themes that define colors, fonts, and spacing, ensuring a consistent look across the application while maintaining the ability to override styles on individual components.

Learning Curve

  • tailwindcss:

    Tailwind CSS has a unique learning curve due to its utility-first approach. Developers need to become accustomed to using many utility classes in their markup, which can feel verbose at first. However, once mastered, it can lead to faster development and more maintainable code.

  • bootstrap:

    Bootstrap is relatively easy to learn, especially for those new to web development. Its grid system and pre-defined classes allow for quick layout design, but customizing beyond the basics may require additional CSS knowledge.

  • @material-ui/core:

    Material-UI has a moderate learning curve due to its extensive component library and adherence to Material Design principles. While it provides a lot of functionality out of the box, understanding its theming and styling system may take some time for new users.

  • @chakra-ui/react:

    Chakra UI has a gentle learning curve, especially for those familiar with React. Its straightforward API and focus on accessibility make it easy to adopt, even for beginners. The documentation is comprehensive, providing examples and guidelines for effective usage.

Community and Ecosystem

  • tailwindcss:

    Tailwind CSS has rapidly gained popularity, leading to a vibrant community and ecosystem. There are numerous plugins, themes, and resources available, making it easier for developers to find solutions and inspiration for their projects.

  • bootstrap:

    Bootstrap boasts one of the largest communities among UI frameworks, with a wealth of resources, themes, and plugins available. Its long-standing presence in the web development space means that developers can find extensive documentation and community support.

  • @material-ui/core:

    Material-UI has a large and active community, with extensive resources, tutorials, and third-party libraries built around it. Its popularity ensures that developers can find support and solutions to common issues easily.

  • @chakra-ui/react:

    Chakra UI has a growing community and ecosystem, with a focus on accessibility and modern React practices. It is actively maintained and has a variety of plugins and extensions available to enhance its functionality.

Performance

  • tailwindcss:

    Tailwind CSS promotes performance by encouraging the use of utility classes, which can lead to smaller CSS files when purged correctly. Its approach minimizes the need for custom CSS, resulting in faster load times and improved performance.

  • bootstrap:

    Bootstrap is generally performant, but the inclusion of its entire library can lead to larger file sizes. Developers can mitigate this by customizing their Bootstrap build to include only the components and styles they require.

  • @material-ui/core:

    Material-UI components are designed to be performant, but the complexity of the library can lead to larger bundle sizes if not managed properly. Developers can optimize performance by using tree-shaking to include only the components they need.

  • @chakra-ui/react:

    Chakra UI is optimized for performance, with a focus on minimizing the bundle size and ensuring that components are lightweight. It leverages React's lazy loading features to improve load times and overall application performance.

How to Choose: tailwindcss vs bootstrap vs @material-ui/core vs @chakra-ui/react
  • @chakra-ui/react:

    Choose Chakra UI if you prioritize accessibility, theming, and a modular approach to building React applications. It offers a set of accessible components and a flexible styling solution that integrates well with React's component model.

README for tailwindcss

Tailwind CSS

A utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom user interfaces.

Build Status Total Downloads Latest Release License


Documentation

For full documentation, visit tailwindcss.com.

Community

For help, discussion about best practices, or any other conversation that would benefit from being searchable:

Discuss Tailwind CSS on GitHub

For casual chit-chat with others using the framework:

Join the Tailwind CSS Discord Server

Contributing

If you're interested in contributing to Tailwind CSS, please read our contributing docs before submitting a pull request.