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Tailwind CSS VS Tachyons

Compare Tailwind CSS VS Tachyons and see what are their differences

Tailwind CSS logo Tailwind CSS

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

Tachyons logo Tachyons

A modular CSS toolkit that makes it easy to build interfaces that are readable, responsive, and fast loading.
  • Tailwind CSS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-13
  • Tachyons Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-07-25

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.

Tachyons features and specs

  • Responsive Design
    Tachyons provides a robust set of responsive utilities that make it easy to create designs that work well across different screen sizes without writing custom media queries.
  • Functional CSS
    Tachyons adopts a functional CSS approach which encourages the use of small, reusable classes for styling, resulting in more predictable and maintainable code.
  • Fast Loading
    Since Tachyons emphasizes small, single-purpose CSS classes, this can lead to quicker loading times as only the necessary styles are included, reducing the overall CSS size.
  • Customizability
    Tachyons can be easily customized by modifying its default design tokens, allowing developers to tailor the framework to better fit the unique design needs of their project.
  • Consistent Design Language
    The framework promotes a consistent design language across a project by utilizing a predefined set of design tokens and utilities.

Possible disadvantages of Tachyons

  • Steep Learning Curve
    For developers who are accustomed to traditional CSS approaches or larger component-based frameworks, the functional CSS methodology of Tachyons might initially be challenging to learn.
  • Verbose HTML
    Using so many small, single-purpose classes can result in more verbose HTML, which may be harder to read and debug.
  • Lack of Components
    Unlike some CSS frameworks that include ready-to-use components (e.g., Bootstrap, Materialize), Tachyons focuses on utility-first classes, making it less straightforward to implement common UI patterns without additional custom styles or components.
  • Limited Community and Resources
    While Tachyons is well-documented, the community and resources may not be as extensive as larger frameworks, which could make finding examples, themes, or auxiliary tools more challenging.
  • Non-Semantic Class Names
    The use of non-semantic, utility-based class names (e.g., `m2`, `p3`) can make the HTML less intuitive, especially for those not familiar with the framework or its conventions.

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

Tachyons videos

Tachyons: Faster Than Light Particles

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Tailwind CSS and Tachyons)
Developer Tools
98 98%
2% 2
CSS Framework
89 89%
11% 11
Design Tools
97 97%
3% 3
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 Tachyons

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

Tachyons Reviews

22 Best Bootstrap Alternatives & What Each Is Best For
Tachyons offers a wealth of CSS classes that allow you to fine-tune your web design without bloating your style sheets. This functional CSS framework also plays well with JavaScript, providing a significant advantage when creating interactive components. Tachyons doesn't officially support integrations but, due to its simplicity, can work alongside any frontend JavaScript...
Source: thectoclub.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Tailwind CSS seems to be a lot more popular than Tachyons. While we know about 1016 links to Tailwind CSS, we've tracked only 23 mentions of Tachyons. 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 (1016)

  • MailPlanet🌍: Visualize email origins on a global map
    Styling: Tailwind CSS (Assumed, common with Next.js). - Source: dev.to / 1 day ago
  • How to add markdown to a Next.js project
    This article assumes the reader is a developer that knows their way around Markdown, TypeScript, React.js, and [Next.js] https://nextjs.org/). Familiarity with Tailwind-css would also be useful. - Source: dev.to / 17 days ago
  • SonicScan - A Music Fingerprinting and Identification App
    Then I learned Tauri and used my favourite frontend framework SolidJS with TailwindCSS and DaisyUI to build the UI with MotionOne to add animations and Tauri to build the desktop/web/android/ios app. - Source: dev.to / 19 days ago
  • 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 / about 1 month 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 / about 2 months ago
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Tachyons mentions (23)

  • Kicking the tires with NestJS and Hotwire: Part II
    I chose Tachyons over Tailwind because Tachyons is an atomic CSS framework, similar to Tailwind, however it's much lighter weight. Tailwind tends to be a bit heavier without using post CSS processing so I wanted to stick with something smaller. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • How to Build a File Explorer using Xata and Vue.js
    The CSS framework we will use in this project is Tachyons CSS, which we will install by running the command below in the terminal. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Writing JavaScript without a build system
    Tachyons is a similar utility class framework, and a lot smaller at somewhere under 20kb, IIRC. https://tachyons.io/. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Is there a better option than plain HTML, CSS and JS for creating my own design system?
    I like using a functional CSS library (tachyons.io, tailwindcss, or SLDS) and setup components separately. The CSS has my colors and units declared (and the aim is to not have 40 different gray colors, it's to limit yourself with a definition list). Then the actual components are setup via a component library. Plenty to choose from: React, VueJS, LWC, AngularJS, or just native web components. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Why I choose T3 stack as the fullstack to build the react app
    Therefore, I totally got to buy in for the utility-first approach. In that world, the only thing is worth mentioning is Tachyons. However, although it came way earlier than Tailwind, it is said to be feature-complete, and one cannot expect new features to be added or problems discussed. The latest release is almost five years old, which definitely violates the principle “Bleed Responsibly”. You can also see... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

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

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

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

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.

React - A JavaScript library for building user interfaces

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

Tailwind UI - Beautiful UI components by the creators of Tailwind CSS.