Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Font Awesome VS CodePen

Compare Font Awesome VS CodePen and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Font Awesome logo Font Awesome

Font Awesome makes it easy to add vector icons and social logos to your website. And version 5 is redesigned and built from the ground up!

CodePen logo CodePen

A front end web development playground.
  • Font Awesome Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-02-09
  • CodePen Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30

Font Awesome features and specs

  • Comprehensive Icon Library
    Font Awesome offers a vast collection of icons, providing a wide range of options for different use cases and making it easier for developers to find the perfect icon to fit their needs.
  • Easy Integration
    Font Awesome can be easily integrated into web projects using either a CDN link or by downloading the icon set. This makes it convenient for developers to start using icons quickly without extensive setup.
  • Scalability
    Since Font Awesome icons are vector-based, they are infinitely scalable without losing quality. This ensures that icons look sharp on all devices and screen resolutions.
  • Customizable
    Font Awesome icons can be customized easily with CSS, allowing developers to change colors, sizes, and even create animations to match the design of their projects.
  • Consistent Design
    The icons in Font Awesome are designed to be consistent with each other in terms of style, line weight, and aesthetic, which helps in maintaining a uniform look across a web project.
  • Accessibility
    Font Awesome includes ARIA attributes and support for screen readers, ensuring that icons can be interpreted correctly by assistive technologies for better accessibility.

Possible disadvantages of Font Awesome

  • File Size
    Font Awesome can add substantial size to web projects, particularly if the entire library is imported. This can slow down load times, especially on mobile devices or slower internet connections.
  • Dependence on External Resources
    Using a CDN for Font Awesome can create a dependency on external resources. If the CDN is down or blocked, the icons will not display correctly.
  • License Fees
    While Font Awesome offers a free version, the Pro version with more icons and features requires a subscription. This can be a limitation for projects with tight budgets.
  • Overhead for Simple Projects
    For small projects that only require a few icons, using Font Awesome can be overkill. The overhead of including the entire library may not be justified when only a handful of icons are needed.
  • Potential for Version Conflicts
    Using Font Awesome alongside other libraries or different versions of Font Awesome can sometimes lead to conflicts, resulting in icons not displaying correctly or styling issues.
  • Limited to Available Icons
    Despite its large collection, users are restricted to the icons available in Font Awesome. Custom or niche icons that aren't included in the library will need to be sourced or created elsewhere.

CodePen features and specs

  • Real-time Collaboration
    Developers can collaborate with others in real-time, making it easy to work on projects with teammates or seek help from the community.
  • Immediate Visual Feedback
    CodePen allows you to see the results of your code as you write it, which is highly beneficial for learning and debugging.
  • Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
    CodePen provides a comfortable and feature-rich online IDE environment with syntax highlighting, autocomplete, and more.
  • Community-Driven
    Users can share their work with the CodePen community, receive feedback, and explore a wide range of projects created by others.
  • Extensive Resources
    CodePen offers a wealth of examples and templates for various web development tasks, making it a useful resource for learning and inspiration.
  • Cross-Device Accessibility
    Being an online platform, CodePen can be accessed from any device with an internet connection, making it convenient for developers on the move.

Possible disadvantages of CodePen

  • Limited Offline Functionality
    Since CodePen is primarily an online tool, it requires an internet connection for most of its features to work, limiting its usefulness in offline environments.
  • Performance Constraints
    Complex or resource-intensive projects may not perform as well on CodePen as they would in a full-fledged local development environment.
  • Subscription Costs
    While many features are free, advanced functionalities and additional storage options require a paid subscription, which may not be ideal for all users.
  • Limited Backend Capabilities
    CodePen is primarily designed for front-end development, so it offers limited support for backend technologies, making it less suitable for full-stack or server-side development.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing dependencies and libraries can be cumbersome compared to local development environments which have better tools for this purpose, like npm.
  • Security Concerns
    Sharing projects with the public can expose your code and assets to unauthorized use, posing potential intellectual property and security risks.

Font Awesome videos

Star Ratings With JavaScript & Font Awesome

More videos:

  • Review - Add Font Awesome Icons to our Buttons, freeCodeCamp Bootstrap Review, lesson 13
  • Review - Add Font Awesome Icons to all of our Buttons, freeCodeCamp Bootstrap Review, lesson 14

CodePen videos

What Is Codepen?

More videos:

  • Review - Learn to use CodePen from a co-founder of CodePen
  • Review - Using CodePen For Inspiration & Learning

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Font Awesome and CodePen)
Web Icons
100 100%
0% 0
Text Editors
0 0%
100% 100
Vector Icons
100 100%
0% 0
Programming
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Font Awesome and CodePen. 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 Font Awesome and CodePen

Font Awesome Reviews

Revolutionize Your Icon Collection: 5 CSS Icon Sites to Boost Your Web Designs
Font Awesome is one of the most comprehensive libraries of CSS icons available, with over 1,500 scalable vector icons that can be customized using CSS classes.
7 Best Free Icon Libraries
While Font Awesome was a font-based asset library i.e font icon library, Bootstrap chose to use SVG-based icons. At this time, Bootstrap Icons consists of over 1,000 ready-to-use library icons in the alpha version.
Source: www.atatus.com
The Best Free And Paid Icon Fonts - Font Awesome Alternatives
On the Internet, you can easily find many services that give everyone thousands of beautiful icons for free or for a fee. With their help, you can design a website or a page on a social network. There are many alternatives to Font Awesome, but, unfortunately, there are few Russian-language sites. Although, even without translation, it is clear how to find the desired icon...
Source: www.wcido.com
9 FontAwesome Alternatives That Are Equally As Good
FontAwesome is by far one of the most popular source for font icons, with a huge collection of icons. But it is highly unnecessary to download the whole collection when you need to use just a few.
10 Best Fontello Alternatives 2021
Similar to other vector makers and Fontello, you can use Font Awesome to create custom icons of your own using a variety of colors, shapes, and font styles. When you’re done, you can share your newly minted icons with others or save them directly on your computer.

CodePen Reviews

Best Forums for Developers to Join in 2025
Codepen is a social network for developers to show off their work, ask and answer questions, and exchange ideas. It's like a Reddit for coding and design, with a large community of talented web developers.
Source: www.notchup.com
Top 10 Developer Communities You Should Explore
Codepen is a social development environment that allows developers to showcase their work and experiment with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a collaborative space. Codepen’s focus on visual and interactive development makes it an excellent community for front-end developers and designers.
Source: www.qodo.ai
8 Best Replit Alternatives & Competitors in 2022 (Free & Paid) - Software Discover
Codepen is a social development environment for front-end designers and developers. Build and deploy a website, show off your work, build test cases to learn.
Best Online Code Editors For Web Developers
Probably the most popular online code editor. CodePen is fast, easy to use, and allows a web developer to write and share HTML/CSS/JS code online.
Source: techarge.in
Top 25 websites for coding challenge and competition [Updated for 2021]
CodePen is a cool online IDE that allows you to write code in your browser and see the result just as you build it. CodePen challenges is a place for leveling up your skills by building things. Each week, new challenges appear for you to tackle, and the best “Pens” get picked.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, CodePen should be more popular than Font Awesome. It has been mentiond 503 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.

Font Awesome mentions (130)

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CodePen mentions (503)

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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Font Awesome and CodePen, you can also consider the following products

Flaticon - A database of free vector icons.

JSFiddle - Test your JavaScript, CSS, HTML or CoffeeScript online with JSFiddle code editor.

The Noun Project - Creating, Sharing and Celebrating the World's Visual Language

CodeSandbox - Online playground for React

Icons8 - Free app for Mac & Windows already containing 39,800 icons. Allows to search and import icons…

GitHub - Originally founded as a project to simplify sharing code, GitHub has grown into an application used by over a million people to store over two million code repositories, making GitHub the largest code host in the world.