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Tailwind CSS VS Foundation

Compare Tailwind CSS VS Foundation and see what are their differences

Tailwind CSS logo Tailwind CSS

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

Foundation logo Foundation

The most advanced responsive front-end framework in the world
  • Tailwind CSS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-13
  • Foundation Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-07-20

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.

Foundation features and specs

  • Customizability
    Foundation offers a high level of customizability, allowing developers to adjust the framework to meet specific project requirements.
  • Responsive Design
    Foundation is built with mobile-first design principles, ensuring that applications look and function well on a variety of devices and screen sizes.
  • Semantic Code
    The framework encourages the use of semantic HTML, making code more readable and improving accessibility.
  • Range of Components
    Foundation provides a wide array of pre-built components such as buttons, forms, and navigation bars, which can accelerate development time.
  • Strong Community Support
    The Foundation community is active and provides extensive documentation, forums, and additional resources to help developers.
  • Flex Grid
    Foundation's Flex Grid system provides a powerful and flexible way to create responsive layouts that adapt to different screen sizes.

Possible disadvantages of Foundation

  • Learning Curve
    Due to its extensive features and customizability, Foundation can have a steep learning curve for beginners.
  • Size
    The full-featured version of Foundation can be quite large, potentially slowing down load times if not optimized properly.
  • Browser Compatibility Issues
    While generally robust, Foundation has been known to have occasional compatibility issues with certain browsers, necessitating additional fixes.
  • Dependency on jQuery
    Foundation relies on jQuery for several of its components, which can be seen as outdated or unnecessary by some modern developers.
  • Complexity for Small Projects
    For smaller projects, Foundation might be overkill in terms of features and setup, making simpler frameworks or no framework a more optimal choice.

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

Foundation videos

BEST & WORST NEW FOUNDATIONS

More videos:

  • Review - BEST & WORST NEW FOUNDATIONS
  • Review - BEST & WORST FOUNDATIONS | Luxury & Drugstore

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Tailwind CSS and Foundation)
Developer Tools
92 92%
8% 8
Design Tools
88 88%
12% 12
CSS Framework
69 69%
31% 31
Web Frameworks
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 Tailwind CSS and Foundation

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

Foundation Reviews

22 Best Bootstrap Alternatives & What Each Is Best For
The reason I picked Foundation for this list is its strong emphasis on creating responsive designs, a feature that many developers value in the era of mobile browsing. This framework differentiates itself with an ingrained mobile-first approach, ensuring that applications look great on smaller screens without sacrificing functionality or aesthetics on larger ones.
Source: thectoclub.com
15 Top Bootstrap Alternatives For Frontend Developers in 2024
Semantic, coherent, and fully customizable, the Foundation empowers developers to create designs that are not only visually appealing but also adaptable to various screen sizes. Starting with small devices, developers can gradually enhance the complexity of their designs, ensuring a fully responsive experience layer by layer.
Source: coursesity.com
9 Best Bootstrap Alternatives | Best Frontend Frameworks [2024]
Not only this, but they also have ‘Foundation for Emails’, which is a framework to code responsive HTML emails. Hence, whenever you are looking for an alternative to Bootstrap, do give Foundation a try.
Source: hackr.io
11 Best Material UI Alternatives
Foundation is a responsive front-end framework with CSS and JavaScript components for building modern, mobile-friendly websites. It offers a comprehensive toolkit with a modular approach, allowing developers to customize and tailor their designs to meet specific project requirements.
Source: www.uxpin.com
Top 10 Best CSS Frameworks for Front-End Developers in 2022
One of the most advanced and sophisticated UI frameworks, Foundation enables quick website development. Just like Bootstrap, Foundation follows a mobile-first approach and is fully responsive. It is very suitable for huge web applications that need a lot of styling. Foundation is customizable, flexible, and semantic. And, there are over 2k contributors on Github and decent...
Source: hackr.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Tailwind CSS seems to be a lot more popular than Foundation. While we know about 1013 links to Tailwind CSS, we've tracked only 21 mentions of Foundation. 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.

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
View more

Foundation mentions (21)

  • Blazor #3 - How to Install Foundation into a Blazor Project
    Foundation is a mobile-first responsive front-end framework that provides a range of CSS and JavaScript components for creating websites quickly. It’s often seen as a competitor to Bootstrap, offering more flexibility and customization options. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • 100+ Must-Have Web Development Resources
    Foundation: An easy-to-use, powerful, and flexible front-end framework for building web applications on any device. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Show HN: LangCSS – An AI Assistant for Tailwind
    Here is a thought you might want to consider and see if it makes sense. This is personal, but I also believe this is where design codes (especially CSS) are going to go. It is not going to be Tailwind or more new frameworks. Honestly, I think all of these Bootstrap, Foundation, and Tailwind, etc. Are like middle-layer abstractions are for designs that are neither small nor large. Bootstrap won because of the... - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Front-end Framework: Comparing Bootstrap, Foundation and Materialize
    Foundation is another popular open-source front-end framework, similar to Bootstrap, but with its own set of features and design principles. It was created by ZURB a design and development company in 2011. And is also maintained by a community of developers. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • I hate CSS: how can I build UIs?
    Are you cool with JS frameworks? If so, you can use a higher level of abstraction that takes care of the CSS for you. If you just want to mock something up, you can use a pre-built UI system / component framework and just put together UIs declaratively, without having to worry about the underlying CSS or HTML at all. Examples include https://mui.com/ and https://chakra-ui.com/ and https://ant.design/ Really easy... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

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

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.

Materialize CSS - A modern responsive front-end framework based on Material Design

React - A JavaScript library for building user interfaces

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

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