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Tailwind CSS VS Laravel Nova

Compare Tailwind CSS VS Laravel Nova and see what are their differences

Tailwind CSS logo Tailwind CSS

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

Laravel Nova logo Laravel Nova

Application and Data, Languages & Frameworks, and MVC Tools
  • Tailwind CSS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-13
  • Laravel Nova Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-08-21

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.

Laravel Nova features and specs

  • Ease of Integration
    Laravel Nova is designed to work seamlessly with the Laravel framework, allowing for quick and efficient integration with existing Laravel applications.
  • User Interface
    Nova provides a clean, responsive, and modern user interface that enhances the user experience for both developers and end-users.
  • Resource Management
    It offers comprehensive tools for managing resources, relationships, and metrics, making it easier to handle complex data structures within the admin panel.
  • Customizability
    Developers can easily customize the Nova dashboard, including fields, actions, filters, and lenses, to suit their application needs.
  • Active Community and Support
    As part of the Laravel ecosystem, Nova benefits from an active community, detailed documentation, and ongoing support and updates.

Possible disadvantages of Laravel Nova

  • Cost
    Unlike other free open-source Laravel solutions, Nova is a paid product, which might not be suitable for small projects or developers with limited budgets.
  • Learning Curve
    For developers who are new to Laravel or Nova, there is a learning curve to effectively understand and utilize all of Nova’s features.
  • Limited Extensibility
    While Nova is customizable, there are certain extensibility limitations that might require a workaround or in-depth understanding to overcome.
  • Dependence on Laravel Ecosystem
    Nova is tightly coupled with Laravel, which means it cannot be used with other PHP frameworks, thus limiting its use cases.
  • Performance Concerns
    In some cases, especially with larger datasets or more complex operations, there might be performance bottlenecks if the Nova configurations are not optimized properly.

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

Laravel Nova videos

LARAVEL NOVA VS LARAVEL BACKPACK ⚔ HONEST REVIEW

More videos:

  • Review - Laravel Nova Overview
  • Review - LKnet | Why we Decidided to Switch from Wordpress to Laravel Nova

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Tailwind CSS and Laravel Nova)
Developer Tools
98 98%
2% 2
Design Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Web Frameworks
92 92%
8% 8
CSS Framework
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 Laravel Nova

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

Laravel Nova Reviews

We have no reviews of Laravel Nova yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Tailwind CSS seems to be a lot more popular than Laravel Nova. While we know about 1013 links to Tailwind CSS, we've tracked only 15 mentions of Laravel Nova. 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 / 16 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 / 22 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 / 29 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 / about 1 month 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 2 months ago
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Laravel Nova mentions (15)

  • Goravel: A Go framework inspired by Laravel
    Same reason IDEs — when you really know them — allow for quicker development compared to using primitive text editors with a bunch of third-party plugins duck-taped together. When you understand the framework, everything is written to the same standard, behaves in similar ways, and is where you expect it to be. Adding things like background job processing requires changing one line of config. Also, one... - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • Laravel Ecosystem in 2024
    Laravel Nova: Laravel Nova is an easy-to-use admin panel for Laravel applications with a clean design. It provides an intuitive UI for managing application data and creating custom dashboards. With Nova, developers can easily build CRUD interfaces, manage relationships, and add custom tools. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • Creating a CRM from scratch in wordpress, how hard would it be?
    If you're insistent on php, use Laravel Nova, or better yet, something like Odoo. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Would love some CMS suggestions for an for existing Laravel app
    Laravel ecosystem itself provides you with Nova. It's perfect for. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Am new to PhP and Laravel and my company wants me to code in it.
    But if this is simply "We need a CRUD app", you should look at Laravel Nova to cut down on a lot of work that people have done a million times before. Source: about 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

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

Laravel Voyager - The missing Laravel admin

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.

Laravel Kit - Desktop Laravel admin panel app with no configuration needs

React - A JavaScript library for building user interfaces

Laravel - A PHP Framework For Web Artisans