Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Materialize CSS VS xstyled

Compare Materialize CSS VS xstyled and see what are their differences

Materialize CSS logo Materialize CSS

A modern responsive front-end framework based on Material Design

xstyled logo xstyled

A utility-first CSS-in-JS framework built for React.
  • Materialize CSS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-14
  • xstyled Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-02-25

Materialize CSS features and specs

  • 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 of Materialize CSS

  • 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.

xstyled features and specs

  • Tailwind CSS Compatibility
    xstyled is compatible with Tailwind CSS, which allows developers to use utility-first styling and benefit from the extensive style options available in Tailwind's framework.
  • Styled Components Integration
    xstyled integrates well with styled-components, allowing users to leverage the power of CSS-in-JS while still using a utility-first approach, providing flexibility and dynamic styling capabilities.
  • Theme Customization
    xstyled offers robust theme customization options, allowing developers to define and extend theme objects with ease, enabling consistent styling across the application.
  • Responsive Design
    The library supports responsive styling through intuitive utilities and media queries, enabling developers to easily create adaptive and mobile-friendly interfaces.
  • Community Support
    xstyled has a growing community and active maintainers, providing support, regular updates, and a wealth of resources for problem-solving and learning.

Possible disadvantages of xstyled

  • Learning Curve
    While xstyled offers flexibility and power, it may have a steep learning curve for developers unfamiliar with CSS-in-JS or utility-first design concepts.
  • Performance Overhead
    Using xstyled with styled-components may introduce performance overhead due to extra processing in generating styles at runtime, which could be a concern in highly demanding applications.
  • Limited Ecosystem
    Compared to more established libraries, xstyled and its ecosystem are relatively young, which may mean fewer third-party tools and plugins are available.
  • Potential for Overengineering
    The flexibility and options provided by xstyled can lead to overengineering, where developers might create overly complex solutions for simple styling problems.

Analysis of Materialize CSS

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.

Analysis of xstyled

Overall verdict

  • xstyled is a solid utility-first CSS-in-JS library that combines the power of styled-components/emotion with a Tailwind-like utility props API, making it a strong choice for React developers who want consistent, theme-driven styling.

Why this product is good

  • Provides utility props and a magic style system that lets you write styling directly on components without leaving JSX
  • Built on top of styled-components or emotion, so you get the full power of CSS-in-JS with a familiar API
  • Strong theming support with design tokens for spacing, colors, typography, and breakpoints ensuring design consistency
  • Excellent responsive design capabilities with array and object-based breakpoint syntax
  • TypeScript support for type-safe styling and better developer experience
  • Open source and actively maintained with good documentation

Recommended for

  • React developers who prefer utility-first styling similar to Tailwind but within CSS-in-JS
  • Teams that already use styled-components or emotion and want enhanced utility props
  • Projects requiring a consistent, token-based design system
  • Developers building responsive UIs who want concise breakpoint syntax
  • TypeScript projects needing type-safe, theme-aware components

Materialize CSS videos

Build A Travel Agency Theme With Materialize CSS 1.0.0

xstyled videos

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

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Materialize CSS and xstyled)
Design Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Development Tools
86 86%
14% 14
CSS Framework
100 100%
0% 0
CSS
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Materialize CSS and xstyled

Materialize CSS Reviews

15 Top Bootstrap Alternatives For Frontend Developers in 2024
Material Design is a design language that combines classic principles of successful design with innovation and technology. One of the downsides of Materialize is that it does not support older versions of web browsers, and sometimes it does not handle certain nestings of components properly, resulting in an odd appearance.
Source: coursesity.com
9 Best Bootstrap Alternatives | Best Frontend Frameworks [2024]
Materialize is a modern responsive front-end framework based on the Material Design principles of Google. Material design is a design language created by Google, which combines traditional design methods with innovations and technology.
Source: hackr.io
Top 10 Best CSS Frameworks for Front-End Developers in 2022
Created by Google in 2014, Materialize is a responsive UI framework for websites and Android apps. It provides many ready-to-use components, classes, and starter templates. It is compatible with Sass and has a responsive layout based on Bootstrapโ€™s 12-column grid format. The best part? Its extensive color palettes. So, if you want to work with Material Design (Googleโ€™s...
Source: hackr.io
15 Best CSS Frameworks: Professional Bootstrap and Foundation Alternatives
Itโ€™s specifically designed to help you develop faster using a standard template and customizable components. As the name suggests, Materialize is based on the basic principles of Material Design.
10 of the Best Bootstrap Alternatives
Materialize is a Design-inspired front-end framework that offers everything you need to create beautiful websites and apps. It includes a responsive grid system, CSS components, and animation libraries. Materialize is also easy to use and customizable, making it the perfect choice for any project. Furthermore, a single basic responsive framework across all phases minimizes...

xstyled Reviews

We have no reviews of xstyled yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Materialize CSS should be more popular than xstyled. It has been mentiond 28 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.

Materialize CSS mentions (28)

  • JavaScript Awesome Package
    Materialize - Responsive front-end framework based on Material Design. - Source: dev.to / 7 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 it's 2023 and there are so many other libraries one could use outside of Bootstrap; TailwindCSS, Bulma, Materialize CSS, just to name a few. Forget that for a minute, maybe we can... - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Top 5 Best CSS Frameworks for Responsive Web Design in 2024
    Materialize is a modern CSS framework based on Googleโ€™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 integrates animations and components to provide feedback to users. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Front-end Framework: Comparing Bootstrap, Foundation and Materialize
    Materialize was created by a team of developers at Google, inspired by the principles of Material Design. Material Design is a design language developed by Google that emphasizes tactile surfaces, realistic lighting, and bold, graphic interfaces. Materialize aims to bring these principles to web development by providing a framework with ready-to-use components and styles based on Material Design. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Took a web development job without much experience, am I doomed?
    If you wanna make it look nice use materialize css works great with Django templates. Source: over 3 years ago
View more

xstyled mentions (3)

  • UI Design System - Badge Component
    There are multiple CSS in JS libraries as well e.g. Emotion, Styled-Components etc.. I picked Styled-Components that's what I am using it for past few years. But its very hard to setup theme, we can do that setup but we have to create it from scratch e.g. Theme, Theme Tokens etc.. For that we'll be using xStyled. Xstyled built by the same team that build styled-components. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • I don't see the point of using Styled-Components Library with React
    You can mix best of both worlds by using x-styled . In my professional opinion, SC is much better than bootstrap or Tailwind for the reasons cited above. However, I would not mix bootstrap and SC or TW and SC. Choose a tool, and use it with clear conventions. Source: over 4 years ago
  • UI Libraries/Frameworks for Your React apps
    Last but not least, now I'm going to talk about xstyled, for those who don't know this framework, imagine mixing Tailwind with Chakra UI and Styled Components. This framework takes a utility-first approach, along with CSS-in-JS and in a declarative way. My dear friend, this is everything I like to use in one tool. - Source: dev.to / almost 5 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Materialize CSS and xstyled, you can also consider the following products

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

Chakra UI - Simple, modular and accessible UI components for your React applications.

Foundation - The most advanced responsive front-end framework in the world

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.

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

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