ionicons vs font-awesome vs material-icons
Icon Libraries for Web Development Comparison
Search packages..
1 Year
ioniconsfont-awesomematerial-iconsSimilar Packages:
What's Icon Libraries for Web Development?

Icon libraries are collections of scalable vector icons that can be easily integrated into web applications to enhance user interfaces. They provide a consistent visual language across applications, allowing developers to incorporate icons that represent actions, objects, or concepts. These libraries not only improve aesthetics but also contribute to better user experience by providing intuitive visual cues. Each library has its unique style and features, catering to different design philosophies and project requirements.

Package Weekly Downloads Trend
Github Stars Ranking
Stat Detail
Package
Downloads
Stars
Size
Issues
Publish
License
ionicons1,958,32317,6916.44 MB29010 months agoMIT
font-awesome839,42474,661-4,1158 years ago(OFL-1.1 AND MIT)
material-icons208,6193252.23 MB116 days agoApache-2.0
Feature Comparison: ionicons vs font-awesome vs material-icons

Design Style

  • ionicons:

    Ionicons features a modern and sleek design, focusing on simplicity and clarity. The icons are designed to be easily recognizable, making them ideal for mobile applications where space is limited and clarity is crucial.

  • font-awesome:

    Font Awesome offers a diverse range of icons in various styles, including solid, regular, and light. This flexibility allows developers to choose icons that best fit their design aesthetic, whether it’s a bold or minimalist approach.

  • material-icons:

    Material Icons are designed to align with Google's Material Design principles, emphasizing a clean and flat aesthetic. The icons are simple and intuitive, ensuring they are easily understood by users.

Customization

  • ionicons:

    Ionicons allows for some customization, but it is primarily focused on providing a consistent look and feel. Developers can adjust size and color through CSS, but the design philosophy emphasizes uniformity over extensive customization.

  • font-awesome:

    Font Awesome provides extensive customization options through CSS, allowing developers to change colors, sizes, and even add animations to icons. This level of flexibility makes it easy to integrate icons seamlessly into any design.

  • material-icons:

    Material Icons are designed to be used as is, with limited customization options. They can be styled with CSS for size and color, but the emphasis is on maintaining the integrity of the Material Design aesthetic.

Performance

  • ionicons:

    Ionicons is lightweight and optimized for performance, making it suitable for mobile applications where load times are critical. Its SVG format ensures that icons are crisp and scalable without sacrificing performance.

  • font-awesome:

    Font Awesome can impact performance if not optimized, especially with large icon sets. However, it offers options to include only the icons you need, which can help mitigate performance issues.

  • material-icons:

    Material Icons are also lightweight and designed for optimal performance. They are available in multiple formats, including SVG and font, allowing developers to choose the best option for their use case.

Community and Support

  • ionicons:

    Ionicons, while not as widely used as Font Awesome, has a dedicated community, especially within the Ionic ecosystem. Documentation is available, but support may be less extensive compared to larger libraries.

  • font-awesome:

    Font Awesome has a large community and extensive documentation, making it easy to find support and resources. It is widely used, ensuring that developers can easily find solutions to common issues.

  • material-icons:

    Material Icons benefit from Google's backing, providing robust documentation and community support. Being part of the Material Design system, it is widely adopted, ensuring ample resources for developers.

Integration

  • ionicons:

    Ionicons is designed to work seamlessly with the Ionic Framework, but it can also be used in standard web projects. It provides easy integration options, especially for mobile development.

  • font-awesome:

    Font Awesome integrates easily with various frameworks and libraries, including Bootstrap and React. It offers both CDN and npm installation options, making it versatile for different project setups.

  • material-icons:

    Material Icons can be easily integrated into projects following Material Design guidelines. They work well with frameworks like Angular and React, providing a consistent design language across applications.

How to Choose: ionicons vs font-awesome vs material-icons
  • ionicons:

    Choose Ionicons if you are developing mobile applications or projects that require a modern, clean aesthetic. Ionicons is particularly designed for use with Ionic Framework but can be used in any web project. It offers a set of beautifully crafted icons that are optimized for mobile interfaces.

  • font-awesome:

    Choose Font Awesome if you need a comprehensive set of icons with extensive customization options, including the ability to style icons with CSS. It is well-suited for projects that require a wide variety of icons and support for both solid and outline styles.

  • material-icons:

    Choose Material Icons if you are following Google's Material Design guidelines. This library provides a set of icons that are consistent with Material Design principles, making it ideal for projects that aim for a cohesive look and feel across web and mobile platforms.

Similar Npm Packages to ionicons

ionicons is a popular icon set designed specifically for use in web and mobile applications. Developed by the Ionic Framework team, ionicons provides a comprehensive collection of beautifully crafted icons that can be easily integrated into projects. The icons are designed to be simple, clean, and scalable, making them suitable for various applications, from mobile to desktop. While ionicons is a great choice for many developers, there are several alternatives available that offer similar functionality. Here are a few notable options:

  • bootstrap-icons is a free, open-source icon set created for Bootstrap, but can be used in any project. It includes a wide range of icons that are designed to work seamlessly with Bootstrap components. The icons are vector-based, ensuring they are scalable and customizable. If you are already using Bootstrap in your project, bootstrap-icons is an excellent choice for consistent iconography.
  • feather-icons is a collection of open-source icons that are designed to be simple and minimalistic. Each icon is designed on a 24x24 grid, ensuring a consistent look and feel across the set. Feather icons are easily customizable, allowing developers to change the stroke width and color to fit their design needs. If you prefer a lightweight and minimalist approach to icons, feather-icons is a great option.
  • font-awesome is one of the most widely used icon libraries in the world. It offers a vast collection of icons, including both solid and outline styles. Font Awesome is highly customizable and can be easily integrated into any web project. If you need a comprehensive icon set with extensive options, font-awesome is a reliable choice.
  • heroicons is a set of free, MIT-licensed SVG icons designed for use with Tailwind CSS. The icons are available in both outline and solid styles, making them versatile for various design needs. If you are using Tailwind CSS or prefer SVG icons, heroicons is a fantastic choice.
  • line-awesome is a fork of Font Awesome that provides a line-style icon set. It offers a similar range of icons but with a more modern and minimalistic design. If you want a clean and elegant look for your icons, line-awesome is an excellent alternative.
  • material-icons is a set of icons created by Google as part of the Material Design guidelines. These icons are designed to be simple and effective, ensuring a consistent user experience across platforms. If you are developing applications that follow Material Design principles, material-icons is the ideal choice.

To explore how ionicons compares with these alternatives, check out the comparison: Comparing bootstrap-icons vs feather-icons vs font-awesome vs heroicons vs ionicons vs line-awesome vs material-icons.

Similar Npm Packages to font-awesome

font-awesome is a popular icon library that provides a vast collection of scalable vector icons that can be easily customized with CSS. It is widely used in web development to enhance user interfaces with visually appealing icons. While Font Awesome is a go-to choice for many developers, there are several alternatives available that also offer icon sets. Here are a few notable options:

  • ionicons is an open-source icon set crafted for use with Ionic applications, but it can also be used in any web project. Ionicons provides a comprehensive collection of beautifully designed icons that are specifically tailored for mobile and web applications. With a focus on simplicity and usability, Ionicons is a great choice for developers looking for modern and clean icons that integrate seamlessly into their designs.

  • material-icons is a set of icons developed by Google as part of the Material Design guidelines. These icons are designed to be consistent, visually appealing, and easy to use across various platforms. Material Icons offer a wide range of icons that can be easily customized and styled, making them a great choice for developers who want to adhere to Material Design principles in their applications.

To see how Font Awesome compares with Ionicons and Material Icons, check out the comparison: Comparing font-awesome vs ionicons vs material-icons.

Similar Npm Packages to material-icons

material-icons is a popular icon library that provides a comprehensive set of Material Design icons for web and mobile applications. Developed by Google, these icons are designed to be simple, clean, and easily recognizable, making them a great choice for modern user interfaces. While material-icons is widely used, there are several alternatives that also offer icon sets suitable for various projects. Here are a few notable options:

  • @material-ui/icons is a package that provides Material Design icons specifically for use with Material-UI, a popular React UI framework. This package allows developers to easily integrate Material Design icons into their React applications while maintaining consistency with the Material-UI design system. If you are already using Material-UI for your project, this package is an excellent choice for adding icons seamlessly.
  • @mui/icons-material is the successor to @material-ui/icons, designed for the latest version of Material-UI (MUI). It offers a wide range of Material Design icons optimized for use with the MUI framework. This package is ideal for developers looking to leverage the latest features and improvements in MUI while incorporating Material Design icons into their applications.
  • font-awesome is one of the most popular icon libraries available, offering a vast collection of icons that can be easily customized and styled. Font Awesome provides both free and premium icons, making it a versatile choice for developers who need a wide variety of icons for their projects. Its extensive documentation and community support make it a reliable option for any web application.
  • material-design-icons is another implementation of Google's Material Design icons. This library provides a comprehensive set of icons that adhere to the Material Design guidelines. While it may not be as widely used as material-icons, it offers a similar aesthetic and can be a suitable alternative for developers looking for Material Design icons.
  • react-icons is a versatile library that provides a collection of popular icon sets as React components. It includes icons from various libraries, including Font Awesome, Material Design, and others. This flexibility allows developers to choose from multiple icon sets while maintaining a consistent API for usage in their React applications. If you want a single library that aggregates icons from different sources, react-icons is an excellent choice.

To see how these icon libraries compare, check out the comparison: Comparing @material-ui/icons vs @mui/icons-material vs font-awesome vs material-design-icons vs material-icons vs react-icons.

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.

Related

npm-compare.com is an independent website designed to help developers choose the most suitable npm packages. We are not affiliated with npm, Inc or npmjs.com, the official website for the npm registry. Please note that npm is a registered trademark of npm, Inc. For more details, please refer to our Terms & Privacy.