Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

React Native UI Kitten VS styled-components

Compare React Native UI Kitten VS styled-components and see what are their differences

React Native UI Kitten logo React Native UI Kitten

Customizable and reusable react-native component kit

styled-components logo styled-components

styled-components is a visual primitive for the component age that also helps the user to use the ES6 and CSS to style apps.
  • React Native UI Kitten Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-10-12
  • styled-components Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-27

React Native UI Kitten features and specs

  • Customizable Theme
    React Native UI Kitten offers a customizable theme that allows developers to easily adjust the design according to their app's branding needs. This flexibility is facilitated through default themes and the ability to create custom themes that can be applied across the application.
  • Consistency
    With a comprehensive set of UI components, UI Kitten helps maintain design consistency across different parts of the application, ensuring a unified look and feel.
  • Cross-Platform Support
    The library supports both iOS and Android platforms, enabling developers to create apps that work seamlessly across mobile operating systems with a single code base.
  • Community and Documentation
    UI Kitten has an active community and well-documented resources which provide developers support and guidance, facilitating smoother development processes and faster issue resolution.

Possible disadvantages of React Native UI Kitten

  • Size
    Inclusion of a comprehensive UI library can increase the application's bundle size, which might be a concern for performance-conscious developers aiming to keep their apps lightweight.
  • Learning Curve
    Though UI Kitten is relatively intuitive, new developers may face a learning curve to fully utilize its features and customize themes appropriately.
  • Limited Customization Beyond Theme
    While UI Kitten offers robust theming options, further customization of individual components may be limited compared to building components from scratch, potentially requiring additional custom development.
  • Dependency on Eva Design System
    UI Kitten is deeply integrated with the Eva Design System, which might limit flexibility for developers who wish to use or integrate with different design systems.

styled-components features and specs

  • Component-Scoped Styling
    Styles are encapsulated within components, ensuring that styles do not leak or conflict with other parts of the application.
  • Dynamic Styling
    Enables dynamic styling with the help of JavaScript variables and props, allowing for highly customizable components.
  • CSS Syntax
    Allows developers to write actual CSS code within JavaScript, making it easier for those familiar with CSS to adapt.
  • Automatic Vendor Prefixing
    Automatically adds vendor prefixes to CSS properties, ensuring cross-browser compatibility without additional configuration.
  • Theming Support
    Provides a built-in theming solution, making it easier to implement and switch between different themes in the application.
  • Server-Side Rendering
    Supports server-side rendering, improving initial page load times and SEO.

Possible disadvantages of styled-components

  • Bundle Size
    Styled-components can add to the overall bundle size, potentially affecting performance, especially in large projects.
  • Learning Curve
    Requires developers to learn the styled-components library and its API, which can be a hurdle for new team members or those unfamiliar with CSS-in-JS.
  • Performance Overhead
    The runtime cost of parsing and injecting styles can impact performance, particularly in larger applications or with frequent style changes.
  • Tooling and Ecosystem
    While improving, the ecosystem around styled-components (e.g., linting, debugging) is not as mature as traditional CSS or CSS preprocessor tools.
  • CSS-in-JS Limitations
    Some CSS features, like advanced selectors or cascading, may be more cumbersome or less intuitive to implement compared to traditional CSS approaches.

Analysis of styled-components

Overall verdict

  • Styled-components is considered a good choice for many React projects, especially for large applications where modularity and maintainability of styles are important. It has a strong community, extensive documentation, and is widely adopted in the industry.

Why this product is good

  • Styled-components is a popular library for styling React applications. It allows developers to write CSS-in-JS, which means that styles are written in JavaScript and scoped to individual components. This approach offers several benefits, such as easier style management, dynamic styling capabilities, and the ability to leverage JavaScript's full power for styles. Styled-components also supports theming, making it easier to develop consistent design systems.

Recommended for

  • Developers looking to implement a consistent design system with theming capabilities
  • Large-scale React applications where component-based styling is essential
  • Projects that require dynamic styling based on props or state
  • Teams familiar with or willing to adopt a CSS-in-JS approach

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to React Native UI Kitten and styled-components)
Development Tools
22 22%
78% 78
Developer Tools
7 7%
93% 93
Design Tools
9 9%
91% 91
React Native
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, styled-components seems to be a lot more popular than React Native UI Kitten. While we know about 174 links to styled-components, we've tracked only 12 mentions of React Native UI Kitten. 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.

React Native UI Kitten mentions (12)

  • React Native styling options/libraries
    Https://akveo.github.io/react-native-ui-kitten/ is a good alternative, I especially like their demo app, I can just refer a client to that and ask them what screens they like. Source: over 3 years ago
  • 7 Popular React Native UI Component Libraries You Should Know
    React Native UI Kitten is a React Native implementation of the Eva Design system. It offers a set of general-purpose UI components styled in the same way to take care of visual appearance. There are a lot of standalone components available as well. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • Form Validation in React (Native) using Formik
    UI Kitten: UI Kitten is a React Native framework for creating stunning cross-platform mobile applications. It is based on Eva Design System and provides a set of general purpose UI components styled in a similar way. - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago
  • Building a React Native Filter - Part 1
    In the application we built for the client we had two modal instances, the filtering modal (that used the native modal) and an alert modal (where we used UI Kitten's modal). We like the native modal because it offer's us the possibility of deciding how it transitions and it's easier to set it up fullscreen. - Source: dev.to / over 4 years ago
  • Top React Native UI Component Libraries
    Image source: https://akveo.github.io/react-native-ui-kitten/ React Native UI Kitten โ€“ a React Native implementation of the Eva Design system. It offers a set of about 20 general-purpose components styled in the same way to take care of visual appearance. There are a lot of standalone components available as well. The library is based on Eva Design System, containing a set of general-purpose UI components styled... - Source: dev.to / over 4 years ago
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styled-components mentions (174)

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What are some alternatives?

When comparing React Native UI Kitten and styled-components, you can also consider the following products

NativeBase - Experience the awesomeness of React Native without the pain

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

React Native Paper by Callstack - Material Design for React Native (Android & iOS)

Sass - Syntatically Awesome Style Sheets

React Native Elements - Cross-platform React Native UI Toolkit

Next.js - A small framework for server-rendered universal JavaScript apps