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Material-UI vs Tailwind CSS: What are the differences?

Material-UI and Tailwind CSS are popular front-end frameworks used for building user interfaces in web development. Here are the key differences between Material-UI and Tailwind CSS:

  1. Styling Approach: Material-UI follows the principles of Material Design, providing pre-defined and consistent styling patterns for a visually appealing and cohesive interface. It offers a set of ready-to-use components with pre-defined styles, allowing developers to quickly create interfaces that align with Material Design guidelines. Tailwind CSS, on the other hand, takes a utility-first approach. It provides a vast utility class library that allows developers to apply specific styles directly to HTML elements, giving them more control and flexibility.

  2. Customization and Theming: Material-UI offers a theming system that allows developers to customize the appearance of their applications. It provides a variety of pre-built themes and allows for easy customization of color schemes, typography, and other design elements. Material-UI also provides options for creating custom themes. In contrast, Tailwind CSS focuses on utility classes that can be combined to create custom styles. It provides an extensive range of utility classes that cover various design aspects, allowing developers to build highly customized and unique interfaces without the need for extensive CSS customization or theming.

  3. Component Ecosystem: Material-UI provides a comprehensive set of pre-built and reusable components, covering a wide range of UI elements such as buttons, inputs, navigation menus, and more. These components follow Material Design guidelines, ensuring consistency and familiarity for users. On the other hand, Tailwind CSS takes a utility-first approach, offering utility classes for developers to create custom components and styles, granting flexibility but requiring more manual work.

  4. Learning Curve and Developer Experience: Material-UI has a steeper learning curve due to its comprehensive component library, theming system, and adherence to Material Design guidelines. Tailwind CSS, on the other hand, has a relatively shallow learning curve. Its utility class approach allows developers to quickly apply styles without the need to write extensive CSS. However, developers need to be familiar with Tailwind CSS's utility class syntax and understand how to compose and combine utility classes effectively.

In summary, Material-UI and Tailwind CSS offer different approaches to front-end development. Material-UI provides pre-built components and follows Material Design principles, allowing for faster development and a consistent user experience. Tailwind CSS, on the other hand, focuses on utility classes for maximum customization and flexibility.

Advice on Material-UI and Tailwind CSS
Ashish Sharma
Sr. UI Associate at Daffodil Software · | 5 upvotes · 679.3K views

I am a bit confused when to choose Bootstrap vs Material Design or Tailwind CSS, and why? I mean, in which kind of projects we can work with bootstrap/Material/Tailwind CSS? If the design is made up on the grid, we prefer bootstrap, and if flat design, then material design. Similarly, when do we choose tailwind CSS?

Any suggestion would be appreciated?

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Replies (4)

Hi Ashish,

If you need minimal work to be done from your end and like most of the components / design available out of the box - go with Bootstrap. This is the oldest and has the widest adoption and a whole range of components built out by others.

If you like Material design, this is a good choice too. Please note that Bootstrap also has a Material theme, though it is not as native.

Both of these above frameworks are bulky and has more than what you may need.

If you like to build micro-components in a elegant way, TailwindCSS is the way to go.

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I don't know about material design.

You would go with Bootstrap if you want to prototype / build something without bothering about the design at all and you are OK if everything looks kinda template-y, using bootstrap out of the box components.

Go with Tailwind if you need a sleek design, a user interface where building with components will be important (because tailwind strongly favors component-based UI), and you know you will need to extend the built-in classes with your own (because tailwind is very easy to extend)

I would personally recommend tailwind over bootstrap any day of the week.

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Recommends
on
Tailwind CSSTailwind CSS

Tailwind is great you don't have to mess with naming things and it is so much more flexible than the cookie cutter bootstrap, but I don't know about material UI. I recommend tailwind it's super simple to learn and has great code snippets.

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Recommends
on
Tailwind CSSTailwind CSS

Put simply, you should use Tailwind regardless. It is a great addition to whatever you use because it removes the hassle of writing CSS.

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Needs advice
on
BootstrapBootstrap
and
Tailwind CSSTailwind CSS

I am planning to redesign my entire application, which is currently in Bootstrap. I heard about Tailwind CSS, and I think its really cool to work with. Is it okay if I use Bootstrap and Tailwind together? I can't remove Bootstrap altogether, as my application is using the js dependencies of Bootstrap, which I don't want to disturb.

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Replies (3)
Ivo Pereira

Factually talking about systems, we gotta make two bold headlines about each one: Bootstrap has been around for a while, has a vast community and much probably will not be gone in a while. Tailwind in the other hand, is the trendy framework starting from the past year. Referring to UI, I really prefer Tailwind, however I can't ignore the fact that a lot of libraries that emerged felt short in the end after a few years (a point where Bootstrap kept his status).

You are able to use both them together but I advise you — it will be a mess. And you gotta hope that you won't have any kind of conflicts between class naming and other general styling.

My recommendation would be to use one and only one. Perhaps rebuild the UI with a specific framework in mind, otherwise you will start to workaround things of both frameworks to contradict each other - and your team (if you work with one) will hate you.

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Arslan Ameer
Sr. Software Engineer at Forenax Technologies · | 5 upvotes · 592.5K views
Recommends
on
BootstrapBootstrap

You might have heard about bootstrap 5. Bootstrap is now totally jQuery free. i have tried foundation and bulma too. but eventually fall again for bootstrap, as it is most convenient and stable. i use bootstrap with less or sass.

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Barry Hylton
Recommends
on
BootstrapBootstrap

I use both of these regularly. If you're going to have to use Bootstrap due to your js dependencies, stick with Bootstrap. I actually prefer Tailwind, but trying to use both of them and make them "play nice" feels like making things more complex with no real benefit.

EDIT: Sorry for the late response, I just noticed how old this is. StackShare sent me this in an email for some reason so I assumed it was relatively fresh.

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Needs advice
on
BootstrapBootstrapTailwind CSSTailwind CSS
and
UIkItUIkIt

We are re-modifying the existing portal to the new one. Looking out for a CSS framework where over-rides are possible, the performance of page loading, extendable, etc Please suggest between tailwind, UIkit and bootstrap frameworks explaining in detail on different factors. I request your help on the same.

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Replies (2)
Collins Ogbuzuru
Front-end dev at Evolve credit · | 3 upvotes · 555.3K views
Recommends
on
Tailwind CSSTailwind CSS

Hey Sai, My thoughts on UIkit - It's beautiful, fast, and it has good animation too. Why would I choose it ? Nothing other than giving the internet a new look .

My thoughts on Bootstrap - it's beautiful, if used well. It's very fast and has clean class naming convention unlike Uikit. Why I would choose it ? It's been tested and trusted, I can find a whole lot of resources and a community around it. Also with the type of project you working on I bet Bootstrap would do the job .

Now, considering Tailwind, it's seen as a classic, simple-to-set-up tool with clean utilities. I wouldn't think of tailwind the way I would to Bootstrap or UIkit. What do I mean ? Tailwind is more like a tool set to create your own design flow. Tailwind allows you to build unique design elements, offering you a level of customization that may be unmatched by the other frameworks.

My final thoughts.

If you have the time , setup and use tailwind it will give you a great chance when it comes to customization and performance.

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Brett Stevenson
Recommends
on
BootstrapBootstrap

I'm a big proponent of Tailwind and I personally use it whenever I get the chance, mostly because it's not really a UI-kit, but it sounds like in this case a UI-kit like Bootstrap with pre-defined components is more what you are looking for. Bootstrap is (relatively) extendable and overridable and makes it really simple to make a decent looking UI using a handful of pre-defined classes, whereas with Tailwind you configure the classes and create your own components. My main reason for replacing Bootstrap in my workflow is that it feels like the component creation has become so abstracted from the developer that any meaningful customization becomes a chore, resulting in many websites having the generic "Bootstrap-look". Nonetheless, it is effective for creating a pleasant and responsive UI. Though, I don't have any experience with UIkit.

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Decisions about Material-UI and Tailwind CSS
Kexin Lin
at University of Toronto · | 8 upvotes · 264.2K views

I replaced Bootstrap with Material-UI during the front-end UI development, because Material-UI adopts a component-based importing style, making it suit well in a "React programming style". This makes me comfortable when programming because I can treat importing UI components as other React components I define.

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Xinyi Liu
Software Developer at BigClarity · | 6 upvotes · 337.7K views

As our team will be building a web application, HTML5 and CSS3 are one of the standardized combinations to implement the structure and the styling of a webpage. Material-UI comes with all sorts of predesigned web components such as buttons and dropdowns that will save us tons of development time. Since it is a component library designed for React, it suits our needs. However, we do acknowledge that predesigned components may sometimes cause pains especially when it comes to custom styling. To make our life even easier, we also adopted Tailwind CSS. It is a CSS framework providing low-level utility classes that will act as building blocks when we create custom designs.

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Bridget Sarah
Full Stack Developer at Bridget Sarah · | 10 upvotes · 642.7K views

I do prefer to write things from scratch however when it came to wanting to jump-start the frontend, I found that it was taking me a lot longer hence why needing to use something very fast.

Bootstrap was the boom when it came out, I didn't like it, to be honest, set in its way and a pain to over-ride and in addition, you can tell from a distance if you're using boostrap and as everything looks the same.

I came across Tailwind CSS as I wanted more dynamic features, you could say, I've been now doing it for a few days and I love it a lot. I've been practising with the full stack part installed but I an't we wait until I do a new project, and I'll e able to select exactly what I want. Much faster.

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Fonts and typography are fun. Material Design is a framework (developed by Google) that basically geeks out on how to assemble your typographical elements together into a design language. If you're into fonts and typography, it's fantastic. It provides a theming engine, reusable components, and can pull different user interfaces together under a common design paradigm. I'd highly recommend looking into Borries Schwesinger's book "The Form Book" if you're going to be working with Material UI or are otherwise new to component design.

https://www.amazon.com/Form-Book-Creating-Printed-Online/dp/0500515085

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Pros of Material-UI
Pros of Tailwind CSS
  • 141
    React
  • 82
    Material Design
  • 60
    Ui components
  • 30
    CSS framework
  • 25
    Component
  • 14
    Looks great
  • 12
    Responsive
  • 12
    Good documentation
  • 9
    LESS
  • 8
    Ui component
  • 7
    Open source
  • 6
    Code examples
  • 6
    Flexible
  • 5
    JSS
  • 3
    Angular
  • 3
    Very accessible
  • 3
    Fun
  • 3
    Supports old browsers out of the box
  • 2
    Typescript support
  • 2
    # of components
  • 2
    Interface
  • 2
    Designed for Server Side Rendering
  • 1
    Support for multiple styling systems
  • 1
    Css
  • 1
    Easy to work with
  • 1
    Accessibility
  • 44
    Highly customizable
  • 33
    Quick setup
  • 30
    Utility first styles, its amazing
  • 24
    Versatile
  • 23
    Great docs
  • 16
    Customizable
  • 16
    Fast
  • 15
    Consistent
  • 11
    Very light
  • 11
    Semantic
  • 11
    Open source
  • 9
    Responsive
  • 1
    Easy Tree shaking with Tailwind CLI

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Cons of Material-UI
Cons of Tailwind CSS
  • 35
    Hard to learn. Bad documentation
  • 28
    Hard to customize
  • 21
    Hard to understand Docs
  • 8
    Bad performance
  • 7
    Extra library needed for date/time pickers
  • 7
    For editable table component need to use material-table
  • 2
    Typescript Support
  • 1
    # of components
  • 14
    Priced
  • 5
    Cluttered html structure

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What is Material-UI?

Material UI is a library of React UI components that implements Google's Material Design.

What is Tailwind CSS?

Tailwind is different from frameworks like Bootstrap, Foundation, or Bulma in that it's not a UI kit. It doesn't have a default theme, and there are no build-in UI components. It comes with a menu of predesigned widgets to build your site with, but doesn't impose design decisions that are difficult to undo.

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What companies use Material-UI?
What companies use Tailwind CSS?
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What are some alternatives to Material-UI and Tailwind CSS?
Kendo UI
Fast, light, complete: 70+ jQuery-based UI widgets in one powerful toolset. AngularJS integration, Bootstrap support, mobile controls, offline data solution.
Flat UI
Flat UI is a beautiful theme for Bootstrap. We have redesigned many of its components to look flat in every pixel.
Ant Design
An enterprise-class UI design language and React-based implementation. Graceful UI components out of the box, base on React Component. A npm + webpack + babel + dora + dva development framework.
react-md
React MD is Google's Material Design specifications implemented with Sass and React. The goal of the project is to create components that adhere to the Material Design specifications.
Angular Material
Sprint from Zero to App. Hit the ground running with comprehensive, modern UI components that work across the web, mobile and desktop. It allows to create material styled angular apps fast and easy.
See all alternatives