Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

UIKit VS Tailwind UI

Compare UIKit VS Tailwind UI and see what are their differences

UIKit logo UIKit

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

Tailwind UI logo Tailwind UI

Beautiful UI components by the creators of Tailwind CSS.
  • UIKit Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-24
  • Tailwind UI Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-19

UIKit features and specs

  • Modularity
    UIKit is highly modular, allowing developers to include only the components they need. This can lead to more efficient and faster loading webpages.
  • Extensive Documentation
    The framework comes with extensive and well-detailed documentation, making it easier for developers to get started and effectively utilize components.
  • Responsive Design
    UIKit is designed with responsiveness in mind, offering a sleek user experience across different screen sizes and devices.
  • Customization
    UIKit allows for deep customization through its LESS and SCSS files, enabling developers to modify the framework according to their needs.
  • Active Community
    There is an active community which leads to consistent updates and a wealth of shared resources and plugins.

Possible disadvantages of UIKit

  • Learning Curve
    For beginners, UIKit can be complex and might require a learning curve to become proficient in its use.
  • Limited Third-Party Integrations
    Compared to more mature frameworks like Bootstrap, UIKit may offer fewer third-party integrations and plugins.
  • Potential Overhead
    Including too many unnecessary components can add to the overhead, resulting in slower load times if not managed properly.
  • Inconsistencies Across Browsers
    Occasional inconsistencies may be noted across different browsers, which may require additional effort to resolve.
  • Less Recognition
    UIKit is not as commonly recognized as some other frameworks, which may lead to challenges in finding developers experienced with it.

Tailwind UI features and specs

  • Rapid Development
    Tailwind UI provides pre-designed components that help developers build interfaces quickly, reducing the time required to go from design to production.
  • Customization
    The components are built with Tailwind CSS, which allows for easy and extensive customization directly within the HTML, providing flexibility in design without needing to write custom CSS.
  • Consistency
    Using Tailwind UI ensures consistency across the application by providing a unified design language and pre-designed, reusable components.
  • Accessibility
    Components in Tailwind UI are designed with accessibility in mind, helping developers to create more inclusive and usable interfaces.
  • High-Quality Design
    The components are designed by professionals, ensuring high visual and functional quality, which can be beneficial for projects without a dedicated design team.
  • Documentation
    Tailwind UI comes with comprehensive documentation that aids developers in integrating the components effectively and understanding how to best utilize them.

Possible disadvantages of Tailwind UI

  • Cost
    Tailwind UI is a paid product, which can be a barrier for small projects or individual developers who are operating on a limited budget.
  • Learning Curve
    While Tailwind UI components are easy to use, the underlying Tailwind CSS framework can have a learning curve for those unfamiliar with utility-first CSS approaches.
  • Overhead
    Incorporating a large number of components can increase the initial bundle size, which may affect the performance unless optimized appropriately.
  • Dependency on Tailwind CSS
    Tailwind UI components are tightly coupled with Tailwind CSS, which means switching to or migrating from another CSS framework may require substantial effort.
  • Not Always Unique
    Using pre-built components might result in less unique designs, as other developers and projects using Tailwind UI can have similar looks and feels.
  • Limited Scope
    The pre-designed components cover a wide range but may not fulfill every niche use case, requiring additional custom development or design.

UIKit videos

Should I Learn SwiftUI instead of UIKit?

More videos:

  • Review - SwiftUI vs UIKit – Comparison of building the same app in each framework

Tailwind UI videos

TAILWIND UI: First Impressions!

More videos:

  • Review - Tailwind UI: A collection of fully responsive components from creators of Tailwind CSS
  • Review - Build a landing page using Tailwind UI

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to UIKit and Tailwind UI)
Design Tools
33 33%
67% 67
CSS Framework
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
42 42%
58% 58
UI Design
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 UIKit and Tailwind UI

UIKit Reviews

22 Best Bootstrap Alternatives & What Each Is Best For
UIkit includes an extensive collection of HTML, CSS, and JS components, all easy to use and customizable. Features include a responsive grid system, navigation components, form elements, and more. Though UIkit does not offer explicit integrations, its modular nature means it can be easily incorporated into many different web development workflows and tools.
Source: thectoclub.com
15 Top Bootstrap Alternatives For Frontend Developers in 2024
One of the advantages of UIKit is that it offers a wide range of UI components, even more than Bootstrap. It also includes unique components like Totop, Thumbnav, and more. Considering its rich set of resources, UIKit can be regarded as an ideal alternative to Bootstrap.
Source: coursesity.com
Top 10 Best CSS Frameworks for Front-End Developers in 2022
UI Kit has a comprehensive collection of CSS, HTML, and JS components. It is modular and lightweight. Used for iOS application development, UIKit is one of the bestfront-end CSS frameworks.
Source: hackr.io
10 of the Best Bootstrap Alternatives
UIKit offers an easy approach to developing sophisticated web interfaces. It’s a modular front-end framework that can be used with HTML or JavaScript. With this structure, you may quickly create your web layouts with ease. This structure is perfect for laying out your website. When compared to Bootstrap, this framework offers more UI components. It also includes oddity parts...
Best CSS Frameworks in 2019
Our fourth framework to consider is UIkit. UIkit is “a lightweight and modular front-end framework for developing fast and powerful web interfaces” (UIkit). The framework comes with built-in animations, is customizable and has out-of-the-box designs.

Tailwind UI Reviews

Tailwind CSS: 15 Component Libraries & UI Kits
Tailwind UI has over 500 components in total; the documentation has component code for React, Vue, and raw HTML. The project has over 61,000 stars on GitHub and gets around 4 million weekly downloads on npm. *
Source: stackdiary.com
22 Best Sites for Free Tailwind Components
This Tailwind UI kit was introduced by the creators of the Tailwind CSS framework. So, this is undoubtedly one of the most reliable UI Kits for Tailwind CSS out there. Their responsive UI Tailwind components included 400+ professional-looking elements. For full interactivity, there is also a production-ready JavaScript. In addition, it is also compatible with Vuejs and Reactjs.
How to Choose a Tailwind Component Library (Plus the Top 6 Options)
First, you might be wondering: how does a TailwindCSS component library differ from just using TailwindCSS itself? Well, out of the box TailwindCSS doesn’t give you any pre-built components; it only offers utility classes. This means if you want a component, you need to build it using the classes provided to you. Or, you can use a component library built with TailwindCSS and...
Source: prismic.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Tailwind UI should be more popular than UIKit. It has been mentiond 212 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.

UIKit mentions (22)

  • 100+ Must-Have Web Development Resources
    UIkit: A lightweight and modular front-end framework. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Building UIs with Franken UI, a Shadcn alternative
    Franken UI is compatible with UIkit 3 and can work as a standalone CSS framework but can be integrated with Tailwind CSS for faster styling and customization. The design of Franken UI is influenced by shadcn/ui. It aims to provide a solution to developers who are not comfortable using React, Vue, or Svelte by leveraging UIkit for JavaScript and accessibility. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • SwiftUI vs. UIKit: What is the best choice for building an iOS user interface in 2024?
    As an iOS engineer, you've likely encountered SwiftUI and UIkit, two popular tools for building iOS user interfaces. SwiftUI is the new cool kid on the block, providing a clean way to build iOS screens, while UIkit is the older and more traditional way to build screens for iOS. SwiftUI uses a declarative style where you describe how the UI should look, similar to Jetpack Compose in Android. UIkit, on the other... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • How To Build a Web Application with HTMX and Go
    All that's left is adding a little style. I won't claim to be a frontend engineer or a UI designer, so I just used UIKit to easily add modern-looking style to the HTML table and buttons. As mentioned throughout the article, the CSS classes and other small details are excluded since they are not directly relevant to the tutorial. See the full example on GitHub to try running it for yourself. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • On the search for a truly "good" UI framework.
    Can try UIKIT out if you're looking around, I've used it solely for some quick slider stuff in certain projects and use it fully in others. The docs are pretty good and they have a discord community that's fairly active. Source: almost 2 years ago
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Tailwind UI mentions (212)

  • Ask HN: Link to interactively learn UI/Typography design
    Studying existing component systems is a great starting point. You have to imitate and respect the systems that already exist before you can innovate on new things from scratch. I'd recommend starting by reading, building with, and imitating the most well-known frameworks for some personal projects. You can also find some good Figma projects to get started with on each of these. https://tailwindui.com/. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • Session and User Registration in PHP
    Require base_path('views/partials/head.php') ?> require base_path('views/partials/nav.php') ?>     class="flex min-h-full items-center justify-center py-12 px-4 sm:px-6 lg:px-8">         class="w-full max-w-md space-y-8">                             class="mx-auto h-12 w-auto" src="https://tailwindui.com/img/logos/mark.svg?color=indigo&shade=600"                      alt="Your Company">                 ... - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Ant Design – the second most popular React UI framework
    There's https://tailwindui.com/?ref=top, from the Tailwind CSS people. They come with a "HTML" mode, which I think means no JS. But if you need interactivity, on the web it has to be JS, because that's the only thing that can manipulate the DOM. The alternative would be something like a server-updated Canvas where the UI is done outside of the DOM and not in the client, but even that would need some JS shims just... - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • How to Use Tailwind CSS for Your Ruby On Rails Project
    If you want to learn more, you can access many ready-to-use templates and components thanks to Tailwind's vibrant community, and products such as TailwindUI (from Tailwind's creators). - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Playing around with Hotwire ⚡️
    I won't take credit for the re-design though. If you're using the Tailwind CSS Library you should checkout Tailwind UI. It's helped me scaffold a few components and pages quite easily, without having a designer onboard. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing UIKit and Tailwind UI, you can also consider the following products

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

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

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

DaisyUI - Free UI components plugin for Tailwind CSS

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

Foundation - The most advanced responsive front-end framework in the world