Buefy vs Vuetify: What are the differences?

Buefy and Vuetify are both popular UI component libraries built on top of Vue.js, but they have some key differences that set them apart.

1. Design Philosophy: Buefy aims for a lightweight and minimalistic design, focusing on simplicity and ease of use. On the other hand, Vuetify follows a more robust and feature-rich approach, offering a wide range of pre-built components and customization options.

2. Component Selection: Buefy provides a limited set of essential components out of the box, such as buttons, modals, and dropdowns. Vuetify, on the other hand, offers a vast array of components, including advanced data tables, wizards, and calendars, making it suitable for complex applications with diverse requirements.

3. Styling Options: Buefy primarily relies on Bulma, a popular CSS framework, for styling its components. It allows easy integration with the existing Bulma-based projects and offers various customization options. In contrast, Vuetify has its own custom Material Design System, providing extensive theming capabilities, predefined color palettes, and advanced theming options.

4. Community Support: Vuetify enjoys a larger and more active community compared to Buefy. This translates to a broader range of online resources, tutorials, and community-driven plugins and extensions. Buefy, while also having community support, may have fewer resources and plugins available.

5. Development Activity and Maintenance: Vuetify has a larger team of developers actively maintaining the library and providing regular updates, bug fixes, and security patches. Buefy, while still maintained, may not have the same level of development activity as Vuetify.

6. Size and Performance: Due to its minimalist approach, Buefy has a smaller file size and fewer dependencies, making it a more lightweight option and potentially resulting in better performance. Vuetify, being a more feature-rich library, has a larger file size and may have more dependencies, which can impact performance in certain cases.

In Summary, Buefy is a lightweight and minimalistic component library with a limited set of components, primarily relying on the Bulma CSS framework. Vuetify, on the other hand, is a feature-rich library with a wide range of components, its own Material Design System, and a larger community.