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Material Icons VS Material Components

Compare Material Icons VS Material Components and see what are their differences

Material Icons logo Material Icons

Google Fonts now supports icons

Material Components logo Material Components

Modular and customizable UI components from Google
  • Material Icons Landing page
    Landing page //
    2024-05-22
  • Material Components Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-12-18

Material Icons features and specs

  • Extensive Collection
    Material Icons offer a comprehensive set of over 2,000 icons, covering a wide range of use cases and design needs.
  • Consistency
    The icons are designed following Google's Material Design guidelines, ensuring visual and functional consistency across different platforms and applications.
  • Scalability
    Being vector-based, these icons can be scaled to any size without losing quality, making them versatile for various screen resolutions.
  • Ease of Integration
    Material Icons are easy to integrate into projects through the use of the Google Fonts API, CSS, or direct downloading and inclusion in codebases.
  • Customizability
    Icons can be customized in terms of color, size, and other styles to fit the specific needs of a project.
  • Free and Open Source
    Material Icons are free to use under the Apache License 2.0, making them accessible for both personal and commercial projects.

Possible disadvantages of Material Icons

  • Steep Learning Curve
    For designers not familiar with Material Design, there may be a learning curve to understanding and effectively implementing the design principles.
  • Design Limitations
    While Material Icons are highly versatile, their design is rooted in Material Design principles, which may not fit every brand or aesthetic.
  • Performance Overhead
    Including a large number of icons through the Google Fonts API can result in additional HTTP requests, potentially affecting page load times.
  • Less Unique
    Given their popularity, Material Icons are widely used, which may lead to a lack of uniqueness in the design of applications using them.
  • Inconsistent Updates
    While Google does update the icon set, updates can be infrequent or may not include all needed icons for newer features or design trends.

Material Components features and specs

  • Design Consistency
    Material Components follow the Material Design guidelines, ensuring a consistent look and feel across various platforms and devices. This helps maintain a unified user experience.
  • Rich Component Library
    The library offers a wide range of pre-designed components that can be easily integrated into projects, saving development time and effort.
  • Accessibility-Focused
    Material Components prioritize accessibility, providing built-in support for screen readers, high contrast, and other features to make applications usable by people with disabilities.
  • Responsive Design
    Components are designed to be responsive, adapting seamlessly to different screen sizes and orientations, which is essential in today's multi-device ecosystem.
  • Community and Support
    Being widely used, there is a large community and extensive documentation available for developers to get help and support when implementing components.

Possible disadvantages of Material Components

  • Customization Limitations
    While Material Components are highly customizable, they might not meet unique branding requirements out-of-the-box, requiring additional effort for further customization.
  • Performance Overhead
    Including a rich set of components can introduce performance overhead, especially in applications where weight is a concern, potentially affecting load times.
  • Learning Curve
    Developers unfamiliar with Material Design may need to invest time in understanding its principles and guidelines to effectively use the components.
  • Frequent Updates
    Material Design principles and components are frequently updated, which might require developers to regularly update their code to maintain compatibility.

Material Icons videos

NOU - Icon Pack Review Material Icons Best Icon Pack

Material Components videos

No Material Components videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Material Icons and Material Components)
Web Icons
83 83%
17% 17
Design Tools
80 80%
20% 20
Photos & Graphics
100 100%
0% 0
Vector Icons
67 67%
33% 33

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Material Icons and Material Components

Material Icons Reviews

10 Best Fontello Alternatives 2021
Fontello doesn’t have this capability so this makes Material Icons the more superior tool. Also, the Material Icons font catalog supports over 135 languages—a feature most of its rivals including Fontello cannot do.
Top FontAwesome alternatives to use on your websites
If you are familiar with Google Fonts already, then you will be familiar with Google's Material Icons. You can include Material Icons in the exact same way that you would include a Google Font family on your webpage.

Material Components Reviews

We have no reviews of Material Components yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Material Icons should be more popular than Material Components. It has been mentiond 67 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.

Material Icons mentions (67)

  • Best Icon Font Libraries for Developers
    By adding Material Design Icons to your project, you can have a clean and professional look that is in line with current design standards. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Best Flutter Icon Libraries in 2025
    It is a collection of icons provided by Google Fonts, available on their website. This set is the go-to for developers who want to maintain consistency with Google’s Material Design principles. With a wide range of icons, this library is perfect for creating a polished, cohesive app interface. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • The Best 100 Free UI/UX Resources for Every Designer & Developer
    Material Icons Fonts.google.com/icons Google’s open-source icon set for Material Design. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • ✨10 Stunning Icon Libraries to Check Out (That Are Free and Open-Source) 🚀
    Website: Material Symbols GitHub Repo: GitHub Repo. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Ask HN: Which SVG icon library are you using and why?
    Https://fonts.google.com/icons My preference for new projects is currently swaying towards Google's Material library as its just so easy and fast to use. Nevertheless Fontawesome has been a staple for me for the last several years! - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
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Material Components mentions (16)

  • The Decline of Usability
    Yeah, companies would get entire studies done to determine what sort of UI should be used, for what reasons, etc. A few years ago I was working at a company where they still use software that originated in the 90s. This is in an industrial setting where all sorts of information is displayed to operators on clusters of screens. What amazed me the most is when I came across a binder which contained the 5th revision... - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • What is this 'drawer like' card-view type of widget called? Can someone help me with how to implement such a widget?
    Https://m3.material.io/components here, you’ll need this. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • How would you name this?
    My default approach is to search for similar comonents in a framework like https://material.io/components. Sometimes I check if the designer has already named it in Figma. Or, if I know another interface/website with that element, I'll see if it has a class name :). - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Component Naming
    As everybody’s saying, these are kinda the same component, but for naming types of components within a design system you can’t really go wrong with https://material.io/components. Source: over 2 years ago
  • A Quick Start into Material UI
    A popular UI library that allows developers to reuse well-designed components from Material Design, a best-practice design system for front-end development. MUI plays well with React, and provides interactive components for designing responsive user interfaces. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Material Icons and Material Components, you can also consider the following products

Feather Icons - Simply beautiful open source icons

Iconhub - Custom and own beautiful icons in no time

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!

Material Design Kit - Design for Android better and faster

Heroicons - Beautiful, free SVG icons from the makers of Tailwind CSS.

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