Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Tailwind CSS VS Unsplash

Compare Tailwind CSS VS Unsplash and see what are their differences

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Tailwind CSS logo Tailwind CSS

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

Unsplash logo Unsplash

Unsplash is a website with high-quality free HD images. It has a catalog of more than three hundred thousand striking images that are neatly organized with tags. Read more about Unsplash.
  • Tailwind CSS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-13
  • Unsplash Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-02

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.

Unsplash features and specs

  • High-Quality Images
    Unsplash offers a wide variety of high-resolution images that are often produced by professional photographers.
  • Free to Use
    All images on Unsplash can be used for free, including for commercial purposes, without the need for attribution.
  • User-Friendly Interface
    The platform is designed with a simple and intuitive interface, making it easy to search for and download images.
  • Curated Collections
    Unsplash offers curated collections of images, helping users to find related images quickly and easily.
  • Large Community
    A large community of photographers contributes to Unsplash, ensuring a steady stream of new and diverse content.

Possible disadvantages of Unsplash

  • Limited Exclusivity
    Since images are free and widely available, the same photos can be used by multiple users, reducing the uniqueness of visual content.
  • Licensing Restrictions
    While images are free to use, there are some limitations, such as not being able to use images in a way that competes with Unsplash.
  • Not Comprehensive
    While the collection is extensive, it may not cover highly specific or niche topics as comprehensively as some paid stock photo sites.
  • Attribution Encouraged
    Although not required, Unsplash encourages users to credit photographers, which might be an additional task for some users.
  • Limited Vectors and Illustrations
    The platform focuses predominantly on photographs, offering fewer options for vectors and illustrations compared to other stock image sites.

Analysis of Unsplash

Overall verdict

  • Unsplash is highly recommended for individuals or businesses looking for free, high-quality images without worrying about licensing issues. It's especially beneficial for those who need visual content for websites, blogs, social media, and marketing materials.

Why this product is good

  • Unsplash is considered good due to its vast collection of high-quality, royalty-free images contributed by talented photographers from around the world. The platform is user-friendly, making it easy for users to search for and download images for commercial and personal use at no cost. Additionally, Unsplash has a vibrant community that encourages collaboration and creativity.

Recommended for

  • Web designers
  • Bloggers
  • Content creators
  • Marketing professionals
  • Social media managers
  • Graphic designers
  • Students and educators

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

Unsplash videos

Thoughts On Unsplash

More videos:

  • Review - My issue with UNSPLASH
  • Review - Unsplash 5.0 Review | License Free Stock Images | Pearl Lemon Reviews

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Tailwind CSS and Unsplash)
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Image Marketplace
0 0%
100% 100
Design Tools
86 86%
14% 14
Photos & Graphics
0 0%
100% 100

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 Unsplash

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

Unsplash Reviews

12 Best Sites Like Freepik For Downloading Photos
Unsplash is one of the largest platforms out there for stock images. We say so because over 16 billion photo impressions per month are generated on the platform. Stock photos available on the website are from a wide range of categories. There’s hardly any chance that you’ll not find the photo that you’re looking for on the website.
Source: www.devdude.com
The best Freepik alternatives 2023
Yes, Unsplash provides a significantly larger library of over 2 million free stock photos compared to Freepik’s free tier which is limited. Unsplash images can also be used completely free for both personal and commercial projects without attribution. The tradeoff is Unsplash lacks vectors, icons, and illustrations that Freepik offers.
Source: photutorial.com
Freepik Alternatives: 10 Sites Like Freepik for Free
There are more than 3 million high-quality pictures, all thanks to the kind photographers in the Unsplash community. They carefully choose each picture and only pick the finest ones, ensuring you can always discover precisely what you’re searching for on this platform. Unsplash started because they had trouble finding good pictures to use, and they weren’t the only ones....
Source: mockey.ai
23 Best Free Image Hosting Sites (Upload & Share) in 2022
But the fact that Unsplash’s images are free does not mean that they are of poor quality. In fact, one of the reasons for its widespread popularity is the high quality of the images they offer for free. Photos submitted to Unsplash have to meet certain stringent criteria before they can be accepted.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Tailwind CSS should be more popular than Unsplash. It has been mentiond 1016 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.

Tailwind CSS mentions (1016)

  • MailPlanet🌍: Visualize email origins on a global map
    Styling: Tailwind CSS (Assumed, common with Next.js). - Source: dev.to / 8 days 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 / 24 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 / 26 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 2 months 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
View more

Unsplash mentions (496)

  • A Weather Clock (with Alarms) for ESP32 / Raspberry Pi Pico Implemented with Arduino Framework
    ... // ##### // # you will need to either // # . Enable and complete the following "secret" block // # . Or create and complete the "secret" block in the file `_secret.h` // ##### #if false // ---------------------- // !!! "secret" block !!! // ---------------------- // // ***** // * you can setup WIFI_SSID / WIFI_PASSWORD; for ESP32, if WIFI_SSID not defined, will use WiFiManager to get WiFi SSID and... - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • The Best 100 Free UI/UX Resources for Every Designer & Developer
    Unsplash Unsplash.com High-resolution, royalty-free photos for commercial use. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Three Free Resource Websites to Boost My Workflow
    As a developer and designer, we often need high-quality images and vector resources for projects. In this post, I’ll share three of my go-to platforms: Unsplash (free high-quality photos), pngfree.ai (free high-quality PNG images), and SVGRepo (free SVG vector graphics). These sites have helped me save countless hours, and I think they might come in handy for others too. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Facing my performance anxiety
    Photo by Wan San Yip on Unsplash Photo by the blowup on Unsplash. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • Build a landing page using a react template
    Replace images in any format. Download free images from unsplash. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

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

Pixabay - Over 270,000 free photos, vectors and art illustrations

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.

Pexels - Find the best free stock images about Browser Home Page. Download all photos and use them even for commercial projects.

React - A JavaScript library for building user interfaces

Shutterstock - Shutterstock is a provider of stock photos, illustrations, and vector art. The website allows individuals to purchase a subscription and download copyrighted art for creative projects. Read more about Shutterstock.