Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Float UI VS Headless UI

Compare Float UI VS Headless UI and see what are their differences

Float UI logo Float UI

Beautiful and responsive UI components and templates for React and Vue with Tailwind CSS.

Headless UI logo Headless UI

Completely unstyled, fully accessible UI components, designed to integrate beautifully with Tailwind CSS.
  • Float UI Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-04

Float UI is a platform that allows users to create modern websites without requiring design knowledge. The platform is open source and free, making it accessible to everyone. It includes a collection of responsive user interface components and website templates with modern designs, making it easy for users to develop websites quickly. With Float UI, users can optimize their website development projects and achieve professional results.

  • Headless UI Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-04

Float UI features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Float UI offers a clean and intuitive user interface, making it easy for users to navigate and utilize its features efficiently.
  • Responsive Design
    The platform provides responsive design capabilities, ensuring that applications built using Float UI look and function well across a wide range of devices and screen sizes.
  • Customization Options
    Float UI allows for extensive customization, enabling developers to tailor components and layouts to meet specific project requirements.
  • Comprehensive Component Library
    The tool includes a rich library of pre-built components, which can help speed up the development process by reducing the need to create elements from scratch.
  • Community Support
    Float UI benefits from an active community, providing resources, discussions, and support for developers using the platform.

Possible disadvantages of Float UI

  • Learning Curve
    For new users, Float UI may present a learning curve, particularly for those unfamiliar with UI design principles or similar platforms.
  • Limited Advanced Features
    While great for basic and intermediate level projects, Float UI may lack some advanced features required for more complex application development.
  • Integration Challenges
    Depending on the existing tech stack, developers might encounter challenges when integrating Float UI with other tools or systems.
  • Potential Performance Issues
    As with any UI framework, there could be potential performance issues that arise, particularly if the application scales up significantly.
  • Dependency on Platform Updates
    As updates to Float UI are released, there may be dependencies and conflicts that arise, requiring developers to address these issues proactively.

Headless UI features and specs

  • Decoupled Design and Functionality
    Headless UI separates the logic and functionality of UI components from their styling, allowing developers to implement custom designs without altering the underlying functionality.
  • Flexibility
    Developers have the freedom to use Headless UI's unstyled components with any CSS framework or custom styles, enabling full control over the look and feel of applications.
  • Accessibility
    The library prioritizes accessibility and comes with built-in ARIA roles and attributes, helping developers create components that meet high accessibility standards.
  • Composable API
    Headless UI offers a composable API that makes it easier to integrate with existing codebases and combine with other libraries, enhancing modular development practices.
  • Consistent Updates and Community Support
    Being developed and maintained by the creators of Tailwind CSS, Headless UI enjoys consistent updates and a supportive community which helps in quick issue resolution and feature requests.

Possible disadvantages of Headless UI

  • Steep Learning Curve
    The headless approach requires developers to have a good understanding of coupling logic and styles separately, which can be challenging for those unfamiliar with the concept.
  • Increased Initial Setup Time
    Since Headless UI components are unstyled, additional effort is needed upfront to design and implement custom styles, which could extend the initial setup phase.
  • Limited Out-of-the-Box Solutions
    Unlike fully styled component libraries, Headless UI doesnโ€™t offer ready-to-use design patterns, so developers will have to create these themselves, potentially increasing development time.
  • Dependency on Custom Styling
    Projects relying heavily on Headless UI require well-structured custom styling solutions, which may lead to inconsistencies if not managed carefully.

Float UI videos

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Headless UI videos

Headless UI vs Radix UI React/Vue Primitives | The Compared EP 3

More videos:

  • Review - Building a command palette with Tailwind CSS, React, and Headless UI

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Float UI and Headless UI)
Design Tools
32 32%
68% 68
UI Design
26 26%
74% 74
Developer Tools
33 33%
67% 67
Tailwind
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

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

Float UI Reviews

22 Best Sites for Free Tailwind Components
React developers can quickly create websites and web applications with Float UI, a collection of interactive UI components and elements. A beautiful website can be created with Float UI because it uses pure React, React Router, and Tailwind CSS. Additionally, there is no need for jQuery or third-party plugins.

Headless UI Reviews

The Best Component Libraries for React, Next.js & Tailwind UI
Headless UI provides unstyled, fully accessible UI components designed to integrate seamlessly with Tailwind CSS. It allows developers to build custom designs without sacrificing functionality.
Source: gist.github.com
React UI Components Libraries: Our Top Picks for 2023
Regarding the support and documentation, Headless UI is good. It has a strong community on GitHub. You can also connect with other users of Headless UI on the Tailwind CSS discord server and seek help. In addition, Headless UIโ€™s discussions page stays active with general help, interactions, and feature requests.
Source: kinsta.com
Tailwind CSS: 15 Component Libraries & UI Kits
Headless UI is what you want to use if you're looking to build interactive apps right from the start, with the ability to control component logic directly through the library rather than writing all the code yourself.
Source: stackdiary.com
22 Best Sites for Free Tailwind Components
You can use the Headless UI gallery in any way possible because each component is entirely unstyled and accessible. Thereโ€™s something for everyone, from headers and buttons to radios, menus, and transitions. All you need to do is add your own flair to make them your own!

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Headless UI should be more popular than Float UI. It has been mentiond 40 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.

Float UI mentions (10)

  • SASS, CSS, or Tailwind: Which One Should You Choose?
    Tailwind by default does not give you any components to work with, except if you use TailwindUI, which is quite expensive. But if you want a free component library, you can use FloatUI. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • A list of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offerings that have free tiers of interest to devops and infradev
    Float UI - free web development tool for quickly creating modern, responsive websites with sleek design, even for non-designers. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Seriously, why isn't React Aria as famous as Radix UI?
    I have used Radix UI a lot, and built a library using it like Float UI and PH clone, and itโ€™s cool tbh. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • A STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO CREATING A FULL STACK WEB APP USING NEXT JS AND SUPABASE ๐Ÿ™Œ๐Ÿ™Œ๐Ÿ’ฅ..
    Personally I used Float UI , I can guarantee you that this is a game changer in the design of the front-end working๐Ÿ”ฅwith tailwind ๐Ÿ’ฅ๐Ÿ‘Œ๐Ÿ‘Œ๐Ÿ”ฅ.Just head over to their website Float UI and you can see the amazing components that they have:. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • Tailwind CSS vs Float UI: which one is the best in 2023?
    Tailwind CSS is a highly popular utility-first CSS framework that has been gaining significant attention and adoption among web developers. Unlike traditional CSS frameworks that come with predefined styles and components, Tailwind CSS takes a unique approach by providing a comprehensive set of utility classes that can be combined to build custom user interfaces. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
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Headless UI mentions (40)

  • Tailwind CSS vs. Bootstrap: Which Framework is Better for Your Project?
    Tailwind CSS ecosystem features growing resources like Tailwind UI (a component library), Headless UI (unstyled, accessible components), and community-built plugins. Itโ€™s maintained by a smaller company (Tailwind Labs) but has very active development and a dedicated community of web developers. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • React UI Component Libraries in 2025
    An evolution of the popular Headless UI library, now offering more pre-styled components while maintaining its focus on accessibility and customization. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Top 10 Vue.js libraries you should be using in 2025
    Headless UI is a design pattern and library that separates the logic and behavior of a user interface component from its visual representation. It provides completely unstyled, fully accessible UI components, designed to integrate beautifully with Tailwind CSS. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Let's create Data Table with React, TanStack Table and Tailwind CSS. Part 1: Intro and HTML layout
    Headless UI for various interface component logic. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • 10 game-changing tools that level up Svelte developers in 2025 ๐Ÿ’ช
    Svelte Headless UI is a library of unstyled, accessible UI components, inspired by Tailwind's Headless UI. It gives you all the interactivity without enforcing styles, allowing you to design the components exactly the way you want. With Svelteโ€™s reactivity and this library's flexibility, building complex UI interactions has never been easier. Github repository โ†’. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Float UI and Headless UI, you can also consider the following products

FlowBite - Build UI interfaces and simplify the process of integrating into live websites with Tailwind CSS

DaisyUI - Free UI components plugin for Tailwind CSS

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

OpenUI - OpenUI โ€“ Imagine codelessly, create effortlessly.

Tailwind UI - Beautiful UI components by the creators of Tailwind CSS.

Preline UI - Open source Tailwind CSS UI components