Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

styled-components VS Gestalt

Compare styled-components VS Gestalt and see what are their differences

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.

Gestalt logo Gestalt

Gestalt is Pinterestโ€™s design system. It provides an extensive set of React components for use in building larger web experiences and patterns.
  • styled-components Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-27
  • Gestalt Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-17

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.

Gestalt features and specs

  • Design Consistency
    Gestalt provides a comprehensive design system that ensures consistency across various user interfaces within Pinterest, allowing for uniformity in design elements and interaction patterns.
  • Component Reusability
    The system offers a library of reusable components, which accelerates development time and reduces the effort needed to maintain code, as developers can implement and update UI features more efficiently.
  • Responsive Design
    Gestalt components are designed to be responsive, ensuring that applications using this system provide an optimal viewing experience across different devices and screen sizes.
  • Accessibility
    The Gestalt system emphasizes accessibility, providing guidelines and features that help developers create interfaces that are accessible to users with disabilities.

Possible disadvantages of Gestalt

  • Limited Customization
    While Gestalt offers consistency, it may restrict designers and developers who need highly customized or unique design elements that do not fit within the predefined system components.
  • Learning Curve
    New users might face a learning curve as they become familiar with the system's components, guidelines, and best practices, especially if they are accustomed to different design systems.
  • Dependency on Pinterest Ecosystem
    Gestalt is tailored for Pinterest and its products, meaning that using it outside the Pinterest ecosystem may lead to challenges in adapting the system to different brands or business needs.
  • Potential Overhead
    Incorporating such a comprehensive system might introduce unnecessary overhead for smaller projects that donโ€™t require extensive design consistency or complex interfaces.

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

Analysis of Gestalt

Overall verdict

  • Gestalt is a solid choice for teams building products within or in the style of Pinterest's ecosystem, offering a mature, well-documented design system, though it's most valuable to organizations aligned with Pinterest's design philosophy rather than general-purpose use.

Why this product is good

  • Open-source design system actively maintained and used by Pinterest itself, ensuring real-world battle-testing
  • Comprehensive component library covering common UI patterns like buttons, forms, modals, and data visualization
  • Strong accessibility (a11y) considerations built into components by default
  • Detailed documentation with usage guidelines, do's and don'ts, and design rationale for each component
  • Built with React, making it easy to integrate into modern JavaScript/TypeScript codebases
  • Consistent visual language that promotes design coherence across large product teams
  • Regular updates and version control through npm, allowing easy dependency management

Recommended for

  • Engineering and design teams building React-based web applications
  • Companies seeking a proven, production-grade design system to bootstrap their UI development
  • Teams that value accessibility as a core requirement in their component library
  • Organizations wanting to reduce design-engineering friction with well-documented component APIs
  • Startups or teams looking for inspiration or a foundation to fork and customize for their own design system
  • Products with visual and interaction patterns similar to content discovery or social media platforms

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to styled-components and Gestalt)
Developer Tools
96 96%
4% 4
Components Library
0 0%
100% 100
Design Tools
96 96%
4% 4
Javascript UI Libraries
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 styled-components and Gestalt

styled-components Reviews

We have no reviews of styled-components yet.
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Gestalt Reviews

React UI Components Libraries: Our Top Picks for 2023
Gestalt is a UI library that helps you create amazing user interfaces that people love using. Itโ€™s Pinterestโ€™s design tool as well and comes with many features and components. Its interface is also smooth to allow developers quickly get started with the tool.
Source: kinsta.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, styled-components seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 174 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.

styled-components mentions (174)

View more

Gestalt mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Gestalt yet. Tracking of Gestalt recommendations started around Sep 2023.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing styled-components and Gestalt, you can also consider the following products

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

Material UI - A CSS Framework and a Set of React Components that Implement Google's Material Design

Sass - Syntatically Awesome Style Sheets

Blueprint - http://bit. ly/bY8LhR Once your keyword research has identified a Site Concept (i. e., theme) and several related ..

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

Retool - Build custom internal tools in minutes.