Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Bootstrap VS Tailwind UI

Compare Bootstrap VS Tailwind UI and see what are their differences

Bootstrap logo Bootstrap

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

Tailwind UI logo Tailwind UI

Beautiful UI components by the creators of Tailwind CSS.
  • Bootstrap Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-22
  • Tailwind UI Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-19

Bootstrap features and specs

  • Responsive Design
    Bootstrap's grid system ensures that webpages are responsive and adapt to different screen sizes seamlessly.
  • Pre-designed Components
    Bootstrap comes with a variety of pre-designed components like buttons, forms, modals, and navigation bars that streamline the development process.
  • Cross-browser Compatibility
    Bootstrap ensures that your website will function correctly across different browsers, reducing the time spent on debugging issues related to browser inconsistencies.
  • Extensive Documentation
    The documentation is comprehensive and well-organized, making it easier for developers to understand and implement Bootstrap features quickly.
  • Community Support
    With a large and active community, finding help and resources related to Bootstrap development is relatively easy.
  • Customizable
    Bootstrap allows you to customize the default styles and components using Sass variables, making it adaptable to any project needs.
  • CDN Support
    Bootstrap can be included via Content Delivery Networks (CDN), which can help to speed up the initial load time of your web pages.

Possible disadvantages of Bootstrap

  • Uniform Look
    Websites built with Bootstrap often look similar because many developers use the default styles and components without customization.
  • Overhead
    Including the entire Bootstrap library can add unnecessary weight to your project if you only use a small fraction of its features.
  • Learning Curve
    For beginners, the extensive set of features and classes can be overwhelming and take some time to learn.
  • Dependency on jQuery
    Older versions of Bootstrap heavily rely on jQuery, which can be a disadvantage for projects that aim to minimize dependencies.
  • Specific Structure
    Bootstrap works best when you adhere to its predefined structure and classes, which can limit flexibility for more complex or unique designs.
  • Customization Challenges
    Deep customization can be difficult and time-consuming, especially if you need to override many default styles and behaviors.
  • Performance Issues
    Using a large number of Bootstrap components can lead to performance issues, particularly on lower-end devices.

Tailwind UI features and specs

  • Rapid Development
    Tailwind UI provides pre-designed components that help developers build interfaces quickly, reducing the time required to go from design to production.
  • Customization
    The components are built with Tailwind CSS, which allows for easy and extensive customization directly within the HTML, providing flexibility in design without needing to write custom CSS.
  • Consistency
    Using Tailwind UI ensures consistency across the application by providing a unified design language and pre-designed, reusable components.
  • Accessibility
    Components in Tailwind UI are designed with accessibility in mind, helping developers to create more inclusive and usable interfaces.
  • High-Quality Design
    The components are designed by professionals, ensuring high visual and functional quality, which can be beneficial for projects without a dedicated design team.
  • Documentation
    Tailwind UI comes with comprehensive documentation that aids developers in integrating the components effectively and understanding how to best utilize them.

Possible disadvantages of Tailwind UI

  • Cost
    Tailwind UI is a paid product, which can be a barrier for small projects or individual developers who are operating on a limited budget.
  • Learning Curve
    While Tailwind UI components are easy to use, the underlying Tailwind CSS framework can have a learning curve for those unfamiliar with utility-first CSS approaches.
  • Overhead
    Incorporating a large number of components can increase the initial bundle size, which may affect the performance unless optimized appropriately.
  • Dependency on Tailwind CSS
    Tailwind UI components are tightly coupled with Tailwind CSS, which means switching to or migrating from another CSS framework may require substantial effort.
  • Not Always Unique
    Using pre-built components might result in less unique designs, as other developers and projects using Tailwind UI can have similar looks and feels.
  • Limited Scope
    The pre-designed components cover a wide range but may not fulfill every niche use case, requiring additional custom development or design.

Bootstrap videos

Is Bootstrap Still Worth It? -- 1 Design, 2 Code Bases.

More videos:

  • Review - BOOTSTRAP Review | Best CSS Library ?
  • Review - Should you use Bootstrap?

Tailwind UI videos

TAILWIND UI: First Impressions!

More videos:

  • Review - Tailwind UI: A collection of fully responsive components from creators of Tailwind CSS
  • Review - Build a landing page using Tailwind UI

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Bootstrap and Tailwind UI)
Developer Tools
80 80%
20% 20
Design Tools
63 63%
37% 37
CSS Framework
100 100%
0% 0
UI Design
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Bootstrap and Tailwind 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 Bootstrap and Tailwind UI

Bootstrap Reviews

22 Best Bootstrap Alternatives & What Each Is Best For
Bootstrap alternatives are a suite of different tools and frameworks that web developers and designers employ for creating dynamic, responsive websites and applications. These tools, like Bootstrap itself, offer pre-written code for different elements of a website - from typography and buttons to navigation bars and image carousels - but each has its unique features and...
Source: thectoclub.com
15 Top Bootstrap Alternatives For Frontend Developers in 2024
UIKit is a modular front-end framework like Bootstrap and a Bootstrap competitor designed to develop fast and powerful web interfaces. You can utilize it with HTML or JavaScript based on your preference. It offers built-in support for right-to-left languages and includes an extensive library of components. This framework like Bootstrap provides a convenient solution for...
Source: coursesity.com
9 Best Bootstrap Alternatives | Best Frontend Frameworks [2024]
The only downside it has as compared to Bootstrap and Foundation is it is only a CSS framework, which means no JavaScript. So you will have to write your own JavaScript or Jquery to toggle your dropdowns or perform other basic interactionhttps://bulma.io/s of the sort. Overall it is a great alternative to Bootstrap, which is also being updated very frequently.
Source: hackr.io
Top 10 Best CSS Frameworks for Front-End Developers in 2022
Bootstrap is one of the most popular CSS frameworks globally and received instant popularity because of its responsive design. It was also the first framework that gave priority to mobile devices. With Bootstrap, there is no need for a separate design for mobile viewing. You just need to add the necessary classes, and the website will adapt to the screen size based on the...
Source: hackr.io
15 Best CSS Frameworks: Professional Bootstrap and Foundation Alternatives
This is why Bootstrap is by far the most popular framework on the market. All developers have heard of Bootstrap, and more than 80% of them say they are happy using it.

Tailwind UI Reviews

Tailwind CSS: 15 Component Libraries & UI Kits
Tailwind UI has over 500 components in total; the documentation has component code for React, Vue, and raw HTML. The project has over 61,000 stars on GitHub and gets around 4 million weekly downloads on npm. *
Source: stackdiary.com
22 Best Sites for Free Tailwind Components
This Tailwind UI kit was introduced by the creators of the Tailwind CSS framework. So, this is undoubtedly one of the most reliable UI Kits for Tailwind CSS out there. Their responsive UI Tailwind components included 400+ professional-looking elements. For full interactivity, there is also a production-ready JavaScript. In addition, it is also compatible with Vuejs and Reactjs.
How to Choose a Tailwind Component Library (Plus the Top 6 Options)
First, you might be wondering: how does a TailwindCSS component library differ from just using TailwindCSS itself? Well, out of the box TailwindCSS doesn’t give you any pre-built components; it only offers utility classes. This means if you want a component, you need to build it using the classes provided to you. Or, you can use a component library built with TailwindCSS and...
Source: prismic.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Bootstrap should be more popular than Tailwind UI. It has been mentiond 362 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.

Bootstrap mentions (362)

  • How to Build a Blog with Laravel (& Send Slack Notifications)
    This will show the posts passed from the controller in a row of cards. Please notice that you are linking to Bootstrap’s CDN for easy styling. If there are no posts, a message on a card saying that there are no posts will be shown. - Source: dev.to / 11 days ago
  • Overengineered Anchor Links
    Yeah, good point. It's kinda common to have a big footer. Examples: https://getbootstrap.com/, https://stake.us/ (casino) That way on desktop you could get away with a 50vh margin under the content and then another 50vh for the footer. - Source: Hacker News / 29 days ago
  • The 3 Best Python Frameworks To Build UIs for AI Apps
    FastHTML allows developers to build modern web applications entirely in Python without touching JavaScript or React. As its name implies, it is quicker to begin with FastHTML. However, it does not have pre-built UI components and styling. Getting the best out of this framework requires the knowledge of HTMX and UI styling using CSS libraries like Tailwind and Bootstrap. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Tailwind CSS vs. Bootstrap: Which Framework is Better for Your Project?
    Bootstrap is one of the oldest and most established CSS frameworks, originally developed by Twitter in 2011. It takes a component-based approach to web development, providing a comprehensive collection of ready-to-use UI elements and prebuilt components. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • How I Vibe-Coded an App to Explore GitHub Topics and Trending Repositories
    For the frontend, I had no prior experience, so I relied entirely on Claude's capabilities. 🙏 Claude generated the entire frontend in pure JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, and even added Bootstrap to it. This not only saved me a significant amount of time but also made my application responsive and visually appealing. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
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Tailwind UI mentions (212)

  • Ask HN: Link to interactively learn UI/Typography design
    Studying existing component systems is a great starting point. You have to imitate and respect the systems that already exist before you can innovate on new things from scratch. I'd recommend starting by reading, building with, and imitating the most well-known frameworks for some personal projects. You can also find some good Figma projects to get started with on each of these. https://tailwindui.com/. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Session and User Registration in PHP
    Require base_path('views/partials/head.php') ?> require base_path('views/partials/nav.php') ?>     class="flex min-h-full items-center justify-center py-12 px-4 sm:px-6 lg:px-8">         class="w-full max-w-md space-y-8">                             class="mx-auto h-12 w-auto" src="https://tailwindui.com/img/logos/mark.svg?color=indigo&shade=600"                      alt="Your Company">                 ... - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Ant Design – the second most popular React UI framework
    There's https://tailwindui.com/?ref=top, from the Tailwind CSS people. They come with a "HTML" mode, which I think means no JS. But if you need interactivity, on the web it has to be JS, because that's the only thing that can manipulate the DOM. The alternative would be something like a server-updated Canvas where the UI is done outside of the DOM and not in the client, but even that would need some JS shims just... - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • How to Use Tailwind CSS for Your Ruby On Rails Project
    If you want to learn more, you can access many ready-to-use templates and components thanks to Tailwind's vibrant community, and products such as TailwindUI (from Tailwind's creators). - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Playing around with Hotwire ⚡️
    I won't take credit for the re-design though. If you're using the Tailwind CSS Library you should checkout Tailwind UI. It's helped me scaffold a few components and pages quite easily, without having a designer onboard. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Bootstrap and Tailwind UI, you can also consider the following products

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

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

DaisyUI - Free UI components plugin for Tailwind CSS

Bulma - Bulma is an open source CSS framework based on Flexbox and built with Sass. It's 100% responsive, fully modular, and available for free.

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

Foundation - The most advanced responsive front-end framework in the world