Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Overlay VS Tailwind CSS

Compare Overlay VS Tailwind CSS and see what are their differences

Overlay logo Overlay

Overlay transforms Figma and Sketch designs into reusable React, Vue.js components

Tailwind CSS logo Tailwind CSS

A utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom user interfaces.
  • Overlay Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-28
  • Tailwind CSS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-13

Overlay features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Overlay simplifies the design-to-code process by allowing developers to generate code from design assets, reducing the manual effort and time required.
  • Integration
    Overlay integrates well with popular design tools like Figma and Sketch, making it convenient for designers to incorporate into their existing workflows.
  • Accuracy
    The tool produces highly accurate code that closely matches the design specifications, ensuring consistency between the design and the final implementation.
  • Collaboration
    Overlay facilitates better collaboration between designers and developers by providing a common platform to discuss and refine design elements.
  • Efficiency
    By automating part of the development process, Overlay increases overall project efficiency, allowing teams to focus on more complex tasks.

Possible disadvantages of Overlay

  • Learning Curve
    New users might face a learning curve to fully leverage Overlay's features and capabilities, particularly if they are not familiar with the design tools it integrates with.
  • Cost
    Overlay may be expensive for small teams or individual developers, as it usually operates on a subscription-based model.
  • Dependency
    Reliance on Overlay could make teams dependent on the tool, potentially disrupting workflows if there are outages or if the company discontinues the product.
  • Customization Limitations
    The auto-generated code might not always perfectly fit the specific needs of a project, requiring additional manual adjustments by developers.
  • Compatibility Issues
    There may be compatibility issues with less popular or custom design tools that Overlay doesn’t support.

Tailwind CSS features and specs

  • Utility-First Approach
    Tailwind CSS uses a utility-first approach, promoting the use of small, reusable utility classes to style elements directly in your markup. This can lead to more readable and maintainable HTML.
  • Customization
    The framework is highly customizable. You can easily configure its default theme, add your extensions, and create custom utilities. Tailwind’s config file allows for deep customization of all aspects of the framework.
  • Consistent Design
    Using utility classes ensures design consistency because the same classes will apply the same styles globally.
  • Responsive Design
    Tailwind CSS has excellent built-in support for responsive design. You can easily apply different styles for different screen sizes using responsive utility variants.
  • Performance
    Tailwind purges unused CSS in production, resulting in smaller final output files and improved performance.
  • Integrates Well with Frameworks
    Tailwind CSS integrates smoothly with modern JavaScript frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular.
  • JIT Compiler
    The Just-in-Time (JIT) mode in Tailwind CSS generates styles on-demand, reducing the development build sizes and speeding up the development process.

Possible disadvantages of Tailwind CSS

  • Steep Learning Curve
    For developers coming from traditional CSS or other CSS frameworks, getting used to Tailwind's utility-first approach may take some time.
  • HTML Congestion
    Due to the utility-first approach, HTML files can get filled with numerous utility classes, making it look cluttered and harder to read.
  • Initial Setup
    Setting up Tailwind CSS initially can be complex, especially for beginners. Configuration settings and integrations with build tools can be confusing.
  • Verbosity
    Some developers find the inline utility classes verbose, particularly when complex styles are required, which can lead to bloated template files.
  • Limited Abstractions
    Tailwind doesn't provide higher-level abstractions such as components out of the box, like other frameworks (e.g., Bootstrap) do. Developers need to build and maintain these abstractions themselves.
  • Dependency Tailoring
    While Tailwind aims to be minimalistic, it may enforce some dependencies or build tool integrations that could be unnecessary for very simple projects.

Overlay videos

RaceLab App iRacing Overlay Review

More videos:

  • Review - I Paid 3 Different Fiverr Artists for Twitch Overlays
  • Review - NEW Own3d Stream overlay Review!!

Tailwind CSS videos

Why I Don't Like Tailwind CSS

More videos:

  • Review - Vanilla CSS vs Bootstrap vs Tailwind CSS - Which one should you choose?
  • Review - Get Started with Tailwind CSS in 15 Minutes

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Overlay and Tailwind CSS)
Design Tools
5 5%
95% 95
Developer Tools
1 1%
99% 99
Productivity
100 100%
0% 0
Figma
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 Overlay and Tailwind CSS

Overlay Reviews

We have no reviews of Overlay yet.
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Tailwind CSS Reviews

  1. Awesome framework

    I use it in all my current projects. It's easy to start and very customisable. Love it so much! I improved the speed of development 2x times by using Tailwind.


22 Best Bootstrap Alternatives & What Each Is Best For
Tailwind CSS comes with features such as responsive design, customizability, hover, focus, and active states out of the box. These enable developers to build sophisticated, interactive interfaces with ease. When it comes to integrations, Tailwind CSS can be integrated with popular front-end frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular, enhancing its utility across different...
Source: thectoclub.com
15 Top Bootstrap Alternatives For Frontend Developers in 2024
If you want to learn the valuable skill of Tailwind CSS, we highly recommend taking the "Tailwind CSS From Scratch" course by Brad Traversy on Udemy. In this introductory course, you will build great-looking layouts quickly and efficiently using Tailwind CSS utility classes.
Source: coursesity.com
10 Best Free React UI Libraries in 2023
TailwindCSS is a utility-first CSS framework designed to build modern and beautiful websites in no time. Here, utility class names define what to do. Each utility class comes with pre-defined CSS properties.
11 Best Material UI Alternatives
Tailwind CSS promotes a modular approach to styling, where devs can combine classes to create unique and responsive designs. It offers utilities for layout, typography, colors, spacing, and more, allowing developers to create consistent and visually appealing interfaces with minimal effort.
Source: www.uxpin.com
Top 10 Best CSS Frameworks for Front-End Developers in 2022
Tailwind enables faster development of the front-end. Instead of a default theme or built-in UI components, you’d get pre-designed widget menus and utility classes to build your website. Tailwind has modular components, and if you make changes in one place, other parts of your code won’t get impacted. Tailwind requires the least amount of learning and is easy to use. You can...
Source: hackr.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Tailwind CSS seems to be a lot more popular than Overlay. While we know about 1013 links to Tailwind CSS, we've tracked only 3 mentions of Overlay. 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.

Overlay mentions (3)

  • Figma design to VUE components
    Using https://overlay-tech.com/ to transform Figma to VUE it gives me this html, then should I manually make it into a input instead or this is somethings that has to be done in Figma side instead? Source: over 3 years ago
  • Figma → React
    Overlay too. Their Figma plugin is very good for React/Vue code and SCSS. It manages nested components and extracts design tokens automatically. https://overlay-tech.com/. - Source: Hacker News / about 4 years ago
  • [UPCOMING] Export your Figma components as real websites with WeWeb.io
    Production-ready websites. Our friends at Overlay are already producing code from Figma files ;). Source: about 4 years ago

Tailwind CSS mentions (1013)

  • Top 5 Free React UI Libraries to Use in 2025
    Shadcn/ui contains a set of beautifully designed and accessible components, and it works seamlessly with major React frameworks. It’s open-source and has amassed 85.5k (and counting) GitHub stars. It’s built on the shoulders of giants — Radix UI and Tailwind CSS, making it one of the best to work with. Unlike many other UI libraries, the components are not just installed as npm modules, they’re downloaded into... - Source: dev.to / 3 days ago
  • Tailwind vs Linaria: Performance Investigation
    We're going to investigate the difference in performance between Tailwind and Linaria. Tailwind, you already know. And Linaria has been getting quite a lot of traction since styled components went into maintenance mode recently. We'll cover why Linaria is a good choice for this comparison a bit further. - Source: dev.to / 9 days ago
  • How to Integrate Tailwind with 11ty – With Code Examples
    It is a well-known fact that Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework. It lets you style elements directly within your HTML, thanks to pre-defined classes. Unlike other CSS frameworks that offer pre-built components, Tailwind offers these low-level utility classes that let you create your own design system. Thus, this makes crafting unique responsive designs effortless as there is not much to do with custom CSS. - Source: dev.to / 17 days ago
  • 🎨 Smooth UI Transitions in HTML with Grains.js, TailwindCSS and g-class directive
    Note: It's best to utilize TailwindCSS to use ready-made styles via their classes. g-class directive has nothing to do with TailwindCSS, however. It only switches class names based on state. After that, you can use whatever you want. - Source: dev.to / 28 days ago
  • ## Vibe Coding Adventures: Day 1 — HealthLens AI
    By having the AI building the skeleton of the project, I learn few things. First, this tool is fantastic for building impressive frontend applications with clean, well-structured Tailwind CSS styling. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Overlay and Tailwind CSS, you can also consider the following products

Anima App - Design, get feedback, convert to code, publish, iterate.

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

Overlay2 - Overlay2 is like digital tracing paper for your computer.

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.

LayerX - An intuitive app to display transparent images on screen.

React - A JavaScript library for building user interfaces