Software Alternatives & Startups

Materialize CSS VS React Toolbox

Compare Materialize CSS VS React Toolbox and see what are their differences

Materialize CSS

A modern responsive front-end framework based on Material Design

Rating
0 reviews
Pricing
Open source
React Toolbox

A set of React components implementing Google's Material Design specification with the power of CSS Modules - react-toolbox/react-toolbox

Rating
0 reviews

Which is more popular?

Based on our record, Materialize CSS seems to be a lot more popular than React Toolbox. While we know about 28 links to Materialize CSS, we've tracked only 1 mention of React Toolbox.

social mentions
28 vs 1
Design Tools popularity
100% vs 0%
alternatives listed
240+ vs 11

Base details

Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.

Materialize CSS
React Toolbox
Website materializecss.com github.com
Pricing
Open source
—
Listed in

Features and specs

What each product offers, as listed by its team.

Materialize CSS 5 features
React Toolbox 4 features
  • Responsive Design
    Materialize CSS provides a responsive grid system, making it easier to create layouts that work well on various screen sizes and devices.
  • Material Design
    Adheres to Google's Material Design principles, offering a modern and professional look that is consistent across web applications.
  • Component Variety
    Offers a wide range of pre-built components, including forms, buttons, cards, and navigation bars, which helps speed up development.
  • Customization
    Provides options to customize components using Sass, making it flexible for specific design needs.
  • Built-in JavaScript
    Includes built-in JavaScript components like modals, carousels, and tabs, which enhance functionality without requiring additional libraries.

Possible disadvantages

  • Learning Curve
    Although it follows Material Design guidelines, there is a learning curve associated with understanding and implementing its various components and classes.
  • File Size
    Including the full library can make your project heavier, affecting load times, especially for users on slower connections.
  • Customization Complexity
    While customizable, deeply customizing or overriding default styles can sometimes be complicated and time-consuming.
  • Dependency on jQuery
    Some components still rely on jQuery, adding to the library size and potentially conflicting with modern JavaScript practices.
  • Community Support
    Compared to larger frameworks like Bootstrap, Materialize CSS has a smaller community, which can result in fewer third-party resources and plugins.
  • Material Design Compliance
    React Toolbox offers components that are designed according to the Material Design guidelines, ensuring a consistent and attractive user interface.
  • Rich Component Library
    It provides a wide range of components out-of-the-box, which can accelerate the development process by reducing the need to build these components from scratch.
  • Customization
    React Toolbox allows for easy customization through CSS Modules, making it easier to tailor the components to match the unique styles of a project.
  • Responsive Design
    The components in React Toolbox are designed to be responsive, helping developers build applications that work well on a variety of screen sizes and devices.

Possible disadvantages

  • Project Activity
    As of the latest check, React Toolbox might not be as actively maintained as other libraries, which could lead to fewer updates and slower responses to issues.
  • Learning Curve
    For developers unfamiliar with Material Design or CSS Modules, there might be a learning curve associated with using React Toolbox effectively.
  • Dependency on CSS Modules
    Since React Toolbox heavily relies on CSS Modules, it may not be suitable for projects that use different styling methodologies or global stylesheets.
  • Bundle Size
    Incorporating a full suite of components can lead to larger bundle sizes, which might affect the performance of applications if not managed properly.

Analysis

An editorial look at what each product does well and who it suits.

Materialize CSS
React Toolbox

Overall verdict

  • Materialize CSS is a good choice if you're looking for a framework that emphasizes Material Design and comes with a sleek, modern interface. It's particularly useful for developers who want to quickly integrate Google's design philosophy without delving into custom styling or layout creation.

Why this product is good

  • Materialize CSS is a front-end framework based on Material Design principles developed by Google. It provides a comprehensive set of UI components that help developers create visually appealing and responsive web applications quickly. The framework includes a variety of pre-styled components like buttons, forms, cards, and much more, which adhere to the Material Design guidelines. This consistency in design components helps ensure a cohesive and professional look across web applications. Additionally, it simplifies responsive design with a grid system that's easy to implement, and it comes with excellent documentation and a supportive community.

Recommended for

    Materialize CSS is recommended for teams and developers who prefer Google's Material Design aesthetic, are building applications with a focus on rapid UI development, and value consistency and ease of use. It's also great for projects where a pre-existing UI library speeds up the development process, such as prototypes, admin dashboards, or smaller web applications. However, for highly customized UI components or non-Material Design projects, other frameworks might be more suitable.

Overall verdict

  • React Toolbox was a solid, well-designed set of React components implementing Google's Material Design, but it is now largely unmaintained and superseded by more actively developed alternatives like MUI (Material-UI).

Why this product is good

  • Clean, modular Material Design components built specifically for React
  • Used CSS Modules for scoped, customizable styling without global conflicts
  • Lightweight and composable, integrating well with modern React workflows at the time
  • Good documentation and a live component playground for exploring usage

Recommended for

  • Developers maintaining legacy projects that already depend on React Toolbox
  • Learning how CSS Modules can be applied to component libraries
  • Small projects needing a straightforward Material Design look (though newer alternatives are preferable)
  • Teams evaluating the evolution of React UI libraries for historical context

Videos

Walkthroughs and reviews on video.

Materialize CSS 1 video + Add
React Toolbox 0 videos + Add

Build A Travel Agency Theme With Materialize CSS 1.0.0

No React Toolbox videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Category popularity

How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.

Score bands 0–20 21–40 41–50 51–60 61–100
Materialize CSS
React Toolbox
100% 100%
0% 0%
0% 0%
100% 100%
100% 100%
0% 0%

User comments

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Reviews and articles

External articles and on-site reviews we used to compare the two products.

Materialize CSS no reviews yet
React Toolbox no reviews yet

View more

  • 6 Best ReactJS based UI Frameworks
    medium.com · Jul 2018

    Another feather in Google Material Design based library. React Toolbox is a UI library that follows the concepts of Google’s Material Design and is built on top of some of the trendiest proposals like CSS Modules...

Social recommendations and mentions

Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.

Materialize CSS 28 mentions
React Toolbox 1 mention
  • JavaScript Awesome Package
    Materialize - Responsive front-end framework based on Material Design. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • Mistakes Were Made
    Sure, why not use Blazor? It makes life easier for the developers who are primarily backend, to work on the frontend as well. Seems like the better choice. So what's next? The UI library. No shade to the long-time standing Bootstrap, but... - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Top 5 Best CSS Frameworks for Responsive Web Design in 2024
    Materialize is a modern CSS framework based on Google’s Material Design. It was created and designed by Google to provide a unified and consistent user interface across all its products. Materialize is focused on user experience as it... - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago

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Alternatives to Materialize CSS and React Toolbox

When comparing Materialize CSS and React Toolbox, you can also consider the following products.