Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Ant Design VS Semantic UI

Compare Ant Design VS Semantic UI and see what are their differences

Ant Design logo Ant Design

An enterprise-class UI design language and React implementation with a set of high-quality React components, one of best React UI library for enterprises

Semantic UI logo Semantic UI

A UI Component library implemented using a set of specifications designed around natural language
  • Ant Design Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-17
  • Semantic UI Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-10-20

Ant Design features and specs

  • Comprehensive Component Library
    Ant Design offers a rich set of customizable UI components that follow modern design principles, making it easier to build visually appealing and consistent user interfaces.
  • Design System
    It comes with a robust design system that provides guidelines and best practices for developing user interfaces, ensuring coherence and efficiency in design.
  • Responsive and Adaptive
    Ant Design's components are designed to be responsive, ensuring that applications look good on various screen sizes and devices.
  • Internationalization Support
    Built-in support for internationalization allows developers to easily localize their applications for different languages and regions.
  • Extensive Documentation
    Ant Design provides comprehensive documentation, examples, and tutorials to help developers quickly get started and effectively use the library.
  • Active Community and Support
    It has an active community and regular updates, which means continuous improvements, bug fixes, and support.

Possible disadvantages of Ant Design

  • Large Bundle Size
    Ant Design can contribute to a larger bundle size, which may impact performance, particularly in low-bandwidth environments.
  • Steep Learning Curve
    The extensive features and components can be overwhelming for beginners, requiring time to learn and adapt to the framework.
  • Opinionated Styling
    Ant Design follows specific design guidelines, which may not align with all projects’ design requirements or preferences, limiting customization options.
  • Dependency on Less
    It relies heavily on Less for styling, which may be a drawback for teams who prefer or are more proficient in other CSS pre-processors like Sass or plain CSS.
  • Limited Flexibility with Custom Themes
    While customization is possible, creating a custom theme can be complex and time-consuming compared to other UI frameworks.
  • Compatibility Issues
    Occasional compatibility issues may arise, especially when integrating with other libraries or tools that haven’t been designed to work with Ant Design.

Semantic UI features and specs

  • Intuitive Class Names
    Semantic UI uses human-readable class names that describe their purpose, making it easy to understand and write code without consulting documentation frequently.
  • Customizability
    Semantic UI allows for deep customizability with its theming, letting developers adjust the default designs to match specific project requirements.
  • Comprehensive Components
    Semantic UI provides a wide range of pre-built components like buttons, forms, and modals, which can significantly speed up development time.
  • Flexibility
    The framework offers flexibility in terms of its modular structure, enabling developers to import only the components they need.
  • Detailed Documentation
    Semantic UI has detailed and well-organized documentation, which helps developers quickly resolve issues and understand how to use various features.

Possible disadvantages of Semantic UI

  • Large File Size
    The framework's comprehensive nature can lead to larger file sizes, which might affect the load times of web applications.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite its intuitive naming conventions, the breadth of components and features can result in a steep learning curve for new developers.
  • Community Support
    Unlike more popular frameworks like Bootstrap, Semantic UI has a smaller community, which can mean fewer third-party plugins and community support.
  • Incomplete Integration
    Some integrations with newer JavaScript frameworks such as React or Vue might require extra effort or third-party libraries, given that Semantic UI is not natively designed for them.
  • Infrequent Updates
    The development and updates to Semantic UI have been less frequent compared to other UI frameworks, potentially leading to compatibility and security issues.

Ant Design videos

Setup Ant Design - Tutorial to Install Ant Design library / Antd with Create React App

More videos:

  • Review - Coding React Form with Formik and Ant Design - Part 3

Semantic UI videos

Semantic UI In 60 Minutes

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Ant Design and Semantic UI)
Design Tools
58 58%
42% 42
Development Tools
74 74%
26% 26
CSS Framework
0 0%
100% 100
Developer Tools
53 53%
47% 47

User comments

Share your experience with using Ant Design and Semantic UI. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Ant Design and Semantic UI

Ant Design Reviews

10 Best Free React UI Libraries in 2023
Ant Design is a UI library that is used to build enterprise-level interfaces for web applications. It has its own design language that is used extensively in the products of Ant Financial.
11 Best Material UI Alternatives
The Ant Design library is a comprehensive UI component library developed by Ant Design that offers a wide range of reusable and well-documented components for building high-quality applications. It follows the principles of the Ant Design system, emphasizing a clean and minimalist design aesthetic with a focus on usability and accessibility.
Source: www.uxpin.com
React UI Components Libraries: Our Top Picks for 2023
Ant Design Pro: AntD’s other variant Ant Design Pro comes with features like templates and a design kit apart from components to help you design your applications.
Source: kinsta.com
Top React component libraries (2021 edition)
AntD offers Ant Design Pro, an out-of-box UI solution for enterprise applications. Ant Design Pro comes equipped with templates, components, and a corresponding design kit.
Source: retool.com
Comparing popular React component libraries
Unlike Ant Design, Material-UI offers built-in methods to style components. makeStyles() is useful, especially when your code starts to get big; it helps you find the element to style more quickly and makes the code more readable. The downside is that readability may degrade as a component grows. But overall, Material-UI is a strong, highly customizable library.

Semantic UI Reviews

22 Best Bootstrap Alternatives & What Each Is Best For
I chose Semantic UI because of its intuitive and accessible approach to design. Its use of human-friendly HTML sets it apart from many other frameworks, making it a more natural choice for developers prioritizing user-friendly designs. From my perspective, Semantic UI is the best tool for creating websites and applications that are easy for both developers and end users to...
Source: thectoclub.com
10 Best Free React UI Libraries in 2023
The styling of Semantic UI React is based on the Semantic UI theme and it's also free from jQuery. Apart from that, there are other useful features like augmentation, shorthand props, auto controlled state, etc.
11 Best Material UI Alternatives
Semantic UI supports theming and customization, allowing developers to customize the appearance of their UI components to align with their project’s branding. With its intuitive syntax and detailed documentation, Semantic UI is a valuable tool for designing and developing modern web interfaces.
Source: www.uxpin.com
Top 10 Best CSS Frameworks for Front-End Developers in 2022
If you’re just starting out with CSS and UI, go for Tacit, Pure, or Skeleton. However, to build more complex elements, you’ll need a more inclusive framework like Foundation, Tailwind, or Bootstrap. You can get an easy learning curve through Bulma or Semantic UI.
Source: hackr.io
15 Best CSS Frameworks: Professional Bootstrap and Foundation Alternatives
If you exclude the fact that Semantic UI doesn’t have the utility classes Bootstrap offers, it is a comprehensive CSS framework that you should try. The best Semantic feature allows you to write HTML code without using BEM methodologies.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Ant Design should be more popular than Semantic UI. It has been mentiond 107 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Ant Design mentions (107)

  • How to Create a Blog with React and ButterCMS
    One of the key concepts of React is components. Components enable us to break down a user interface (UI) into independent pieces that can be used in different parts of an application. Utilizing components for a blog, the blog postcard, header, footer, custom button, etc., can be created separately and used through the blog application. This can improve productivity by enabling the reuse of said components.... - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • React UI Component Libraries in 2025
    Ant Design's React implementation continues to be a favorite for enterprise applications, with its extensive component set and advanced theming capabilities. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • React libraries for building forms and surveys
    Library Documentation Community Updates Performance-focused Notes SurveyJS Easy to follow and concise Large and growing Updates frequently No [Paid tier](https://surveyjs.io/pricing) for large projects, [part of a form library ecosystem](https://surveyjs.io/try/reactjs) React Hook Form Easy to follow and concise Extremely large and rapidly growing Updates... - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Ask HN: How do I find UI/UX design systems for my app?
    Personally I like https://mui.com/ a lot. There's also https://www.chakra-ui.com/ and https://ant.design/ (but Ant is Chinese, if that matters). I think those are the big 3. There might be directories of smaller ones but I dunno any offhand. - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • How to Use Ant Design with Next.js: A Complete Guide
    One of the things each web developer should see is how easy it may be to create user experience as well as visual appeal. Two very powerful tools to assist in this regard are Next.js and Ant Design. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
View more

Semantic UI mentions (19)

  • 100+ Must-Have Web Development Resources
    Semantic UI: A fully semantic front-end development framework. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Ant Design – the second most popular React UI framework
    Semantic UI[1] was one I used to use, both the plain CSS one as well as the React version of the library. Version 3.0 is coming (eventually), which has left it a bit outdated for a while, but it's still a solid UI library imho. I have been switching away to Tailwind. [1]: https://semantic-ui.com/. - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • Ask HN: I'm bad at design, which stops me from finishing side projects. Advice?
    What stack are you using? I personally recommend utilizing readily available components: https://ui.shadcn.com/ https://mui.com/ https://semantic-ui.com/ etc.. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • I hate CSS: how can I build UIs?
    Are you cool with JS frameworks? If so, you can use a higher level of abstraction that takes care of the CSS for you. If you just want to mock something up, you can use a pre-built UI system / component framework and just put together UIs declaratively, without having to worry about the underlying CSS or HTML at all. Examples include https://mui.com/ and https://chakra-ui.com/ and https://ant.design/ Really easy... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Software Design Document - Lite
    Honestly you should build a webpage and use a UI library if you want markdown with some extra pop. Check out semantic ui. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Ant Design and Semantic UI, you can also consider the following products

Material UI - A CSS Framework and a Set of React Components that Implement Google's Material Design

Bootstrap - Simple and flexible HTML, CSS, and JS for popular UI components and interactions

Chakra UI - Simple, modular and accessible UI components for your React applications.

Materialize CSS - A modern responsive front-end framework based on Material Design

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

UIKit - A lightweight and modular front-end framework for developing fast and powerful web interfaces