Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Elastic UI VS UIKit

Compare Elastic UI VS UIKit and see what are their differences

Elastic UI logo Elastic UI

React-based design library made for use with Elastic products

UIKit logo UIKit

A lightweight and modular front-end framework for developing fast and powerful web interfaces
  • Elastic UI Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-20
  • UIKit Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-24

Elastic UI features and specs

  • Comprehensive Component Library
    Elastic UI offers a wide range of reusable UI components, which can significantly speed up development time and ensure design consistency across applications.
  • Customizable and Theming
    Elastic UI components are highly customizable and support theming, allowing developers to tailor the UI to match specific brand requirements or user preferences.
  • Responsive Design
    The Elastic UI library is built with responsive design principles, ensuring that applications created with it are mobile-friendly and look great on any device.
  • Accessibility Best Practices
    Elastic UI follows accessibility best practices and guidelines, helping developers build applications that are accessible to users with disabilities.
  • Strong Documentation
    The library is well-documented, with comprehensive guides and examples that make it easier for developers to get started and troubleshoot any issues they encounter.
  • Active Community and Support
    Elastic UI has a supportive community, and being part of the Elastic stack, it has active maintenance and support from Elastic, ensuring continued updates and improvements.

Possible disadvantages of Elastic UI

  • Dependency on React
    Elastic UI is built on top of React, so developers must be familiar with React to make effective use of it, which could be a barrier for teams not using React.
  • Potential Overhead
    Integrating a comprehensive UI library like Elastic UI can introduce additional overhead to the project, both in terms of performance and bundle size.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite its strong documentation, there is still a learning curve associated with understanding and using the full range of components and features available in Elastic UI effectively.
  • Limited to JavaScript Environments
    Elastic UI is specifically designed for web applications, making it unsuitable for developers looking to build UIs in non-JavaScript environments or native applications.
  • Version Compatibility
    As with many libraries, there can be issues with version compatibility, especially when trying to integrate Elastic UI with other libraries or keeping up with updates.

UIKit features and specs

  • Modularity
    UIKit is highly modular, allowing developers to include only the components they need. This can lead to more efficient and faster loading webpages.
  • Extensive Documentation
    The framework comes with extensive and well-detailed documentation, making it easier for developers to get started and effectively utilize components.
  • Responsive Design
    UIKit is designed with responsiveness in mind, offering a sleek user experience across different screen sizes and devices.
  • Customization
    UIKit allows for deep customization through its LESS and SCSS files, enabling developers to modify the framework according to their needs.
  • Active Community
    There is an active community which leads to consistent updates and a wealth of shared resources and plugins.

Possible disadvantages of UIKit

  • Learning Curve
    For beginners, UIKit can be complex and might require a learning curve to become proficient in its use.
  • Limited Third-Party Integrations
    Compared to more mature frameworks like Bootstrap, UIKit may offer fewer third-party integrations and plugins.
  • Potential Overhead
    Including too many unnecessary components can add to the overhead, resulting in slower load times if not managed properly.
  • Inconsistencies Across Browsers
    Occasional inconsistencies may be noted across different browsers, which may require additional effort to resolve.
  • Less Recognition
    UIKit is not as commonly recognized as some other frameworks, which may lead to challenges in finding developers experienced with it.

Elastic UI videos

Elastic UI

UIKit videos

Should I Learn SwiftUI instead of UIKit?

More videos:

  • Review - SwiftUI vs UIKit – Comparison of building the same app in each framework

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Elastic UI and UIKit)
Design Tools
10 10%
90% 90
Development Tools
21 21%
79% 79
CSS Framework
8 8%
92% 92
Developer Tools
9 9%
91% 91

User comments

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Reviews

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

Elastic UI Reviews

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UIKit Reviews

22 Best Bootstrap Alternatives & What Each Is Best For
UIkit includes an extensive collection of HTML, CSS, and JS components, all easy to use and customizable. Features include a responsive grid system, navigation components, form elements, and more. Though UIkit does not offer explicit integrations, its modular nature means it can be easily incorporated into many different web development workflows and tools.
Source: thectoclub.com
15 Top Bootstrap Alternatives For Frontend Developers in 2024
One of the advantages of UIKit is that it offers a wide range of UI components, even more than Bootstrap. It also includes unique components like Totop, Thumbnav, and more. Considering its rich set of resources, UIKit can be regarded as an ideal alternative to Bootstrap.
Source: coursesity.com
Top 10 Best CSS Frameworks for Front-End Developers in 2022
UI Kit has a comprehensive collection of CSS, HTML, and JS components. It is modular and lightweight. Used for iOS application development, UIKit is one of the bestfront-end CSS frameworks.
Source: hackr.io
10 of the Best Bootstrap Alternatives
UIKit offers an easy approach to developing sophisticated web interfaces. It’s a modular front-end framework that can be used with HTML or JavaScript. With this structure, you may quickly create your web layouts with ease. This structure is perfect for laying out your website. When compared to Bootstrap, this framework offers more UI components. It also includes oddity parts...
Best CSS Frameworks in 2019
Our fourth framework to consider is UIkit. UIkit is “a lightweight and modular front-end framework for developing fast and powerful web interfaces” (UIkit). The framework comes with built-in animations, is customizable and has out-of-the-box designs.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, UIKit should be more popular than Elastic UI. It has been mentiond 22 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.

Elastic UI mentions (6)

  • Ask HN: How to roll out an internal UI component library
    I did this! I founded EUI [0] at Elastic and helped teams adopt it. I attribute success to a few factors: 1. Publish components, not styles. This has been rehashed in other HN threads, but the idea is to provide Lego blocks to help engineers build UIs more quickly. This might be out of fashion with Tailwind adherents but we found success by treating the framework's primary interface as React/Vue/JS, not CSS. 2. Be... - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • It's weird how design systems are so rote, yet so difficult
    My very modest claim to "fame" is having founded the Elastic UI Framework [1]. My experience with these kinds of design systems taught me two lessons: 1. You'll iterate towards the most useful version of your design system in the least amount of time if maintainers spend time consuming it, and vice versa. 2. Code is the source of truth, in the form of the component library. It's an unhelpful fiction to treat the... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Elastic UI – Component library for data-driven web apps
    Excellent, I see now. Thanks! https://elastic.github.io/eui/#/tabular-content/data-grid#virtualization. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • 유명한 리액트 컴포넌트 라이브러리 모음
    You should check out our living style guide, which contains many examples of components in the EUI framework aesthetic, and how to use them in your products. We also have a FAQ that covers common usage questions. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • Best CSS UI component library for react
    I don't think its ready yet, but people shoudl also check out elasic ui it seems like a very comprehensive library, still under dev. Source: almost 4 years ago
View more

UIKit mentions (22)

  • 100+ Must-Have Web Development Resources
    UIkit: A lightweight and modular front-end framework. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Building UIs with Franken UI, a Shadcn alternative
    Franken UI is compatible with UIkit 3 and can work as a standalone CSS framework but can be integrated with Tailwind CSS for faster styling and customization. The design of Franken UI is influenced by shadcn/ui. It aims to provide a solution to developers who are not comfortable using React, Vue, or Svelte by leveraging UIkit for JavaScript and accessibility. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • SwiftUI vs. UIKit: What is the best choice for building an iOS user interface in 2024?
    As an iOS engineer, you've likely encountered SwiftUI and UIkit, two popular tools for building iOS user interfaces. SwiftUI is the new cool kid on the block, providing a clean way to build iOS screens, while UIkit is the older and more traditional way to build screens for iOS. SwiftUI uses a declarative style where you describe how the UI should look, similar to Jetpack Compose in Android. UIkit, on the other... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • How To Build a Web Application with HTMX and Go
    All that's left is adding a little style. I won't claim to be a frontend engineer or a UI designer, so I just used UIKit to easily add modern-looking style to the HTML table and buttons. As mentioned throughout the article, the CSS classes and other small details are excluded since they are not directly relevant to the tutorial. See the full example on GitHub to try running it for yourself. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • On the search for a truly "good" UI framework.
    Can try UIKIT out if you're looking around, I've used it solely for some quick slider stuff in certain projects and use it fully in others. The docs are pretty good and they have a discord community that's fairly active. Source: almost 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Elastic UI and UIKit, you can also consider the following products

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

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

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

Semantic UI - A UI Component library implemented using a set of specifications designed around natural language

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.

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