ionicons vs font-awesome vs material-icons vs boxicons vs feather-icons vs heroicons vs line-awesome
Icon Libraries for Web Development Comparison
1 Year
ioniconsfont-awesomematerial-iconsboxiconsfeather-iconsheroiconsline-awesomeSimilar Packages:
What's Icon Libraries for Web Development?

Icon libraries are collections of scalable vector icons that can be easily integrated into web applications. They provide developers with a wide range of icons that can be customized in terms of size, color, and style, enhancing the visual appeal and usability of web interfaces. These libraries help streamline the design process by offering pre-designed icons that adhere to design principles and improve user experience.

Package Weekly Downloads Trend
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ionicons1,623,46617,7026.44 MB29210 months agoMIT
font-awesome827,32074,728-4,1298 years ago(OFL-1.1 AND MIT)
material-icons210,9983292.23 MB1121 days agoApache-2.0
boxicons137,0363,0363.75 MB844-(CC-BY-4.0 OR OFL-1.1 OR MIT)
feather-icons113,96725,290625 kB48710 months agoMIT
heroicons41,09922,087700 kB54 months agoMIT
line-awesome30,6541,266-455 years agoMIT
Feature Comparison: ionicons vs font-awesome vs material-icons vs boxicons vs feather-icons vs heroicons vs line-awesome

Design Style

  • ionicons:

    Ionicons provide both outline and filled icons, allowing for greater versatility in design. Their style is modern and suitable for both web and mobile applications, ensuring a cohesive look across platforms.

  • font-awesome:

    Font Awesome offers a diverse range of icon styles, including solid, regular, and light versions. This variety allows for flexibility in design, catering to different visual preferences and project requirements.

  • material-icons:

    Material Icons adhere to Google's Material Design guidelines, ensuring consistency and usability across applications. Their design is functional and straightforward, making them suitable for a variety of web and mobile projects.

  • boxicons:

    Boxicons feature a modern and flat design style, making them suitable for contemporary web applications. They are designed to be simple yet visually appealing, fitting well with various UI designs.

  • feather-icons:

    Feather Icons are characterized by their minimalist and clean design, focusing on simplicity and clarity. They are perfect for applications that prioritize a light and airy aesthetic.

  • heroicons:

    Heroicons are hand-crafted icons that emphasize aesthetics and usability. They come in both outline and solid styles, making them versatile for different design contexts, especially in Tailwind CSS projects.

  • line-awesome:

    Line Awesome focuses on line icons, providing a clean and modern aesthetic. This style is particularly effective for minimalist designs and applications that require a lightweight icon solution.

Customization

  • ionicons:

    Ionicons are customizable through CSS, offering options to change colors and sizes. This adaptability makes them suitable for various design contexts, including both web and mobile applications.

  • font-awesome:

    Font Awesome provides extensive customization options, including the ability to animate icons and change their size and color. This makes it a powerful choice for projects that require dynamic icon usage.

  • material-icons:

    Material Icons can be customized using CSS, enabling developers to change their size and color to fit the application's design. This customization is essential for maintaining consistency with Material Design principles.

  • boxicons:

    Boxicons are highly customizable, allowing developers to easily change colors, sizes, and styles using CSS. This flexibility makes them suitable for various design needs without compromising on performance.

  • feather-icons:

    Feather Icons can be easily styled with CSS, enabling developers to adjust colors and sizes to fit their application's design. Their simplicity allows for quick customization without extensive overhead.

  • heroicons:

    Heroicons can be customized through CSS, allowing developers to adjust their appearance to match the overall design of the application. Their clean design ensures that customizations remain visually appealing.

  • line-awesome:

    Line Awesome icons can be easily styled with CSS, allowing for quick adjustments to size and color. This makes them a flexible choice for projects that require a modern and clean aesthetic.

Performance

  • ionicons:

    Ionicons are optimized for performance, providing a balance between quality and load times. Their SVG format ensures that icons remain sharp and clear on all screen sizes, enhancing user experience.

  • font-awesome:

    Font Awesome can be heavier than other icon libraries due to its extensive collection of icons. However, developers can optimize performance by selectively importing only the icons they need, reducing the overall footprint.

  • material-icons:

    Material Icons are optimized for performance and designed to load quickly, ensuring a smooth user experience. Their SVG format allows for high-quality rendering across various devices.

  • boxicons:

    Boxicons are lightweight and optimized for performance, ensuring that they do not significantly impact page load times. Their SVG format allows for scalability without loss of quality, making them ideal for responsive designs.

  • feather-icons:

    Feather Icons are designed to be lightweight and performant, ensuring quick load times. Their SVG format allows for easy scaling without pixelation, making them suitable for high-resolution displays.

  • heroicons:

    Heroicons are lightweight and designed for performance, ensuring that they load quickly and do not hinder application responsiveness. Their SVG format allows for high-quality scaling across devices.

  • line-awesome:

    Line Awesome is lightweight and optimized for performance, making it suitable for applications that require fast load times. Its SVG format allows for easy scaling without compromising quality.

Community and Support

  • ionicons:

    Ionicons has a supportive community and offers comprehensive documentation, making it easy for developers to utilize the icons effectively. Its integration with Ionic Framework enhances its usability for mobile applications.

  • font-awesome:

    Font Awesome boasts a large community and extensive documentation, providing ample resources for developers. Its popularity ensures that developers can find support and solutions to common issues easily.

  • material-icons:

    Material Icons is widely used and supported by Google, ensuring a robust community and extensive documentation. Developers can find numerous resources and examples to help with implementation.

  • boxicons:

    Boxicons has a growing community and provides good documentation, making it easier for developers to find support and resources. Its simplicity and ease of use contribute to its popularity among developers.

  • feather-icons:

    Feather Icons has a supportive community and offers clear documentation, making it easy for developers to implement and customize icons. Its minimalist design approach has garnered a dedicated user base.

  • heroicons:

    Heroicons is part of the Tailwind CSS ecosystem, benefiting from a strong community and excellent documentation. Developers can find numerous resources and examples to help integrate Heroicons into their projects.

  • line-awesome:

    Line Awesome has a growing community and provides decent documentation, making it accessible for developers. Its focus on line icons has attracted users looking for a modern aesthetic.

Integration

  • ionicons:

    Ionicons can be integrated into web and mobile applications with ease, providing a consistent look across platforms. Their versatility makes them suitable for various development environments.

  • font-awesome:

    Font Awesome offers multiple integration options, including CDN and npm packages, making it versatile for different project setups. Its extensive icon library ensures that developers have access to a wide range of icons.

  • material-icons:

    Material Icons can be easily integrated into web applications, especially those following Material Design principles. Their compatibility with various frameworks ensures a smooth setup process.

  • boxicons:

    Boxicons can be easily integrated into any web project, requiring minimal setup. Their straightforward usage makes them a great choice for developers looking for quick implementation.

  • feather-icons:

    Feather Icons are simple to integrate into web applications, requiring just a few lines of code. Their lightweight nature ensures that they fit seamlessly into various projects.

  • heroicons:

    Heroicons can be easily integrated into projects, especially those using Tailwind CSS. Their design complements Tailwind's utility-first approach, making them a natural choice for developers in that ecosystem.

  • line-awesome:

    Line Awesome is easy to integrate into projects, requiring minimal setup. Its focus on line icons allows for quick implementation without extensive configuration.

How to Choose: ionicons vs font-awesome vs material-icons vs boxicons vs feather-icons vs heroicons vs line-awesome
  • ionicons:

    Choose Ionicons if you need a versatile icon set that includes both outline and filled icons, suitable for mobile and web applications. It is particularly useful for projects that require a consistent look across different platforms.

  • font-awesome:

    Opt for Font Awesome if you require a comprehensive icon library with a vast selection of icons and additional features like icon animations and accessibility support. It is ideal for larger projects that need a wide variety of icons and styles.

  • material-icons:

    Use Material Icons if you are developing applications that follow Material Design principles. This library provides a wide range of icons that are optimized for use in web and mobile applications, ensuring consistency with Google's design guidelines.

  • boxicons:

    Choose Boxicons if you need a simple, customizable icon set that is lightweight and easy to use. It is particularly suitable for projects that require a modern and clean aesthetic without the overhead of a larger library.

  • feather-icons:

    Select Feather Icons if you prefer a minimalist design with a focus on simplicity and clarity. Feather Icons are great for projects that aim for a sleek and modern look, especially when using a limited color palette.

  • heroicons:

    Use Heroicons if you are looking for a set of beautifully designed, hand-crafted icons that fit well with Tailwind CSS. They are perfect for projects that prioritize aesthetics and require a cohesive design language.

  • line-awesome:

    Select Line Awesome if you want a lightweight alternative to Font Awesome that focuses on line icons. It is ideal for projects that need a clean and modern design without the bulk of a larger library.

README for ionicons

Ionicons

Ionicons is a completely open-source icon set with 1,300 icons crafted for web, iOS, Android, and desktop apps. Ionicons was built for Ionic Framework, so icons have both Material Design and iOS versions.

Note: All brand icons are trademarks of their respective owners. The use of these trademarks does not indicate endorsement of the trademark holder by Ionic, nor vice versa.

We intend for this icon pack to be used with Ionic, but it’s by no means limited to it. Use them wherever you see fit, personal or commercial. They are free to use and licensed under MIT.

Contributing

Thanks for your interest in contributing! Read up on our guidelines for contributing and then look through our issues with a help wanted label.

Using the Web Component

The Ionicons Web Component is an easy and performant way to use Ionicons in your app. The component will dynamically load an SVG for each icon, so your app is only requesting the icons that you need.

Also note that only visible icons are loaded, and icons which are "below the fold" and hidden from the user's view do not make fetch requests for the svg resource.

Installation

If you're using Ionic Framework, Ionicons is packaged by default, so no installation is necessary. Want to use Ionicons without Ionic Framework? Place the following <script> near the end of your page, right before the closing tag, to enable them.

<script src="https://unpkg.com/ionicons@latest/dist/ionicons.js"></script>

Basic usage

To use a built-in icon from the Ionicons package, populate the name attribute on the ion-icon component:

<ion-icon name="heart"></ion-icon>

Custom icons

To use a custom SVG, provide its url in the src attribute to request the external SVG file. The src attribute works the same as <img src="..."> in that the url must be accessible from the webpage that's making a request for the image. Additionally, the external file can only be a valid svg and does not allow scripts or events within the svg element.

<ion-icon src="/path/to/external/file.svg"></ion-icon>

Variants

Each app icon in Ionicons has a filled, outline and sharp variant. These different variants are provided to make your app feel native to a variety of platforms. The filled variant uses the default name without a suffix. Note: Logo icons do not have outline or sharp variants.

<ion-icon name="heart"></ion-icon> <!--filled-->
<ion-icon name="heart-outline"></ion-icon> <!--outline-->
<ion-icon name="heart-sharp"></ion-icon> <!--sharp-->

Platform specificity

When using icons in Ionic Framework you can specify different icons per platform. Use the md and ios attributes and provide the platform specific icon/variant name.

<ion-icon ios="heart-outline" md="heart-sharp"></ion-icon>

Size

To specify the icon size, you can use the size attribute for our pre-defined font sizes.

<ion-icon size="small"></ion-icon>
<ion-icon size="large"></ion-icon>

Or you can set a specific size by applying the font-size CSS property on the ion-icon component. It's recommended to use pixel sizes that are a multiple of 8 (8, 16, 32, 64, etc.)

ion-icon {
  font-size: 64px;
}

Color

Specify the icon color by applying the color CSS property on the ion-icon component.

ion-icon {
  color: blue;
}

Stroke width

When using an outline icon variant it is possible to adjust the stroke width, for improved visual balance relative to the icon's size or relative to the width of adjacent text. You can set a specific size by applying the --ionicon-stroke-width CSS custom property to the ion-icon component. The default value is 32px.

<ion-icon name="heart-outline"></ion-icon>
ion-icon {
  --ionicon-stroke-width: 16px;
}

Migrating from v4

See the 5.0 release notes for a list of icon deletions/renames.

License

Ionicons is licensed under the MIT license.

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