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Purecss VS Materialize CSS

Compare Purecss VS Materialize CSS and see what are their differences

Purecss logo Purecss

A set of small, responsive CSS modules that you can use in every web project.

Materialize CSS logo Materialize CSS

A modern responsive front-end framework based on Material Design
  • Purecss Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-18
  • Materialize CSS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-14

Purecss features and specs

  • Lightweight
    Pure.css is extremely lightweight, under 4KB when minified and gzipped, which makes it very fast to load.
  • Responsive
    Pure.css comes with a set of responsive design modules that can be easily integrated, ensuring that your web pages look good on all devices.
  • Modular
    The library is modular, meaning you can include only the parts that you need, which keeps your project lean.
  • Easy Integration
    Pure.css can be easily dropped into existing projects without much hassle, allowing for quick and effective styling.
  • Customization
    Pure.css is designed to be easily customizable, enabling developers to tweak the styles to fit their project's needs.
  • CSS Vanilla Approach
    Pure.css sticks to a vanilla CSS approach, making it easy for developers who are familiar with standard CSS.

Possible disadvantages of Purecss

  • Limited Components
    It offers fewer UI components compared to more comprehensive frameworks like Bootstrap or Foundation.
  • Basic Design
    The default styles are minimalistic, which may not meet the aesthetic requirements for more visually rich applications without additional customization.
  • Lack of JavaScript Utilities
    Pure.css focuses strictly on CSS, providing no JavaScript utilities or plugins for additional functionality.
  • Community Size
    The community around Pure.css is smaller compared to more popular frameworks, which means there are fewer third-party resources and extensions available.
  • Learning Curve for Customization
    While basic usage is simple, customizing Pure.css to fit specific needs may require a deeper understanding of CSS.

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.

Purecss videos

CSS Flexbox layout with inline-block fallback using PureCSS grids

Materialize CSS videos

Build A Travel Agency Theme With Materialize CSS 1.0.0

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Purecss and Materialize CSS)
CSS Framework
30 30%
70% 70
Design Tools
17 17%
83% 83
Developer Tools
18 18%
82% 82
Development Tools
35 35%
65% 65

User comments

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Reviews

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

Purecss Reviews

22 Best Bootstrap Alternatives & What Each Is Best For
Pure.css offers a set of small, responsive CSS modules that you can use in every project. These include grids, menus, buttons, tables, and other essential components. Despite its minimalistic design, Pure.css works well with other libraries such as Normalize.css, and can be used alongside any JavaScript library or framework.
Source: thectoclub.com
15 Top Bootstrap Alternatives For Frontend Developers in 2024
Pure is a lightweight CSS framework like Bootstrap and a Bootstrap competitor designed with a mobile-first approach. Built on Normalize.css, it provides styling and design to native HTML components, as well as the most popular UI elements.
Source: coursesity.com
9 Best Bootstrap Alternatives | Best Frontend Frameworks [2024]
Pure.css is a CSS framework bunch of CSS modules clustered together. The crux of Pure lies in its weight. It is incredibly lightweight, as it has been crafted keeping mobile devices in mind, in which a small file size is imperative. The framework is purely CSS in nature, doing justice to its name.
Source: hackr.io
Top 10 Best CSS Frameworks for Front-End Developers in 2022
At only 3.7 KB minified, Pure is the most compact CSS Framework around. Out of all the CSS frameworks, Pure will help you create awesome CSS Code without sacrificing space. You can add pure-min.css through free unpkg CDN in your code to use Pure. You can also install Pure using a package manager like npm, Grunt, etc.
Source: hackr.io
15 Best CSS Frameworks: Professional Bootstrap and Foundation Alternatives
We consider Pure a minimalist alternative to Bootstrap that offers every module a beginner needs (navigation menu, grid, tables, etc.).

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 Bootstrap’s 12-column grid format. The best part? Its extensive color palettes. So, if you want to work with Material Design (Google’s...
Source: hackr.io
15 Best CSS Frameworks: Professional Bootstrap and Foundation Alternatives
It’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...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Materialize CSS should be more popular than Purecss. It has been mentiond 26 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.

Purecss mentions (9)

  • Rapidly build efficient sites with Neat, the minimalist CSS framework
    Neat lacks a header and navigation; this by design, and may be enough for simple sites. If you want more capability, Pure.css is good to try too https://purecss.io/. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • CSS framework for Dioxus + mobile
    I found Pure.css and it looks nice but maybe there is something better? Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Is a website built completely on HTML, CSS and JS enough?
    Some examples: - https://simplecss.org/ - https://purecss.io/ (I've used this one for over a decade and works great). Source: over 2 years ago
  • CSP nonce with Node.js and EJS
    Now, to test our CSP, we just have to load some external resources. Let's bring on Pure.css and Lodash. Update index.ejs to look like this :. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • Bootstrap vs Tailwind
    Personally I don't like either. Bootstrap seems too bloated and cookie-cutter, and Tailwind is inline styles and clutter. Lately I've used Bulma (CSS framework) and Buefy (Bulma + Vue) on a couple of projects. I also like the look of Pure CSS, but I haven't used it. Source: about 3 years ago
View more

Materialize CSS mentions (26)

  • 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 integrates animations and components to provide feedback to users. - Source: dev.to / 7 months 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 / about 1 year 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: almost 2 years ago
  • Best 3 Bootstrap Alternatives
    You can also visit the Materialize website and GitHub repository which currently has garnered over 38k likes and has been forked over 4k times by developers. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • All About Hacktober Fest 2022 You Need To Know
    This repository consists of files required to deploy a Web App or PWA created with Materialize Css. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

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

Tailwind CSS - A utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom user interfaces.

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

UIKit - A lightweight and modular front-end framework for developing fast and powerful web interfaces

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

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.