MaterialUI vs Tailwind CSS: Choosing a UI Library for React Project

Creating user-friendly and visually eye-catching interfaces for web applications in the ever-evolving world of web development is unimaginable without tools and frameworks that speed up and simplify the process. Among the many options available, Tailwind CSS and Material UI stand out, each with its own strengths, specific approach, and design philosophy.

Material UI VS Tailwind CSS

Let's compare Material UI with its complex design system and pre-built components and Tailwind CSS, which has under the hood a customizable and flexible solution to create any style. We'll look at their integration features, ease of use, and how they meet the needs of different projects.

Overview

MUI provides a set of pre-designed and customizable components based on Google's Material Design principles, which include using shadows, responsive animations, and emphasising a sensible and intuitive user experience. You get a set of ready-to-use components, ranging from basic elements like buttons, to more complex ones like data grids and navigation.

Tailwind CSS is a utility-oriented CSS framework with predefined classes to quickly create user interfaces. Its principles are based on simplicity, flexibility, and efficiency. There are no ready-to-use components in free access, but you’ll have tools for designing your components with a lot of predefined styles and a high level of customization. There’s also a paid library with a big set of React components - Tailwind UI.

Theming and styles

A unified and consistent visual style in MUI is provided through a centralized repository of design options. This approach to theme creation improves maintainability and simplifies global design changes, after which MUI components dynamically adapt their styles based on a given theme.

In addition, MUI supports the use of CSS-in-JS libraries such as JSS (JavaScript Style Sheets). This increases the encapsulation and modularity of components by allowing developers to write styles directly in React components. However, it should be noted that Material UI may require a bit more time to make more complex and comprehensive design changes.

Tailwind CSS allows developers to create custom themes by defining color palettes, spacing, font sizes, and other styles in the tailwind.config.js file. Style generation in Tailwind CSS is flexible, allowing developers to maintain design consistency while still keeping styles customizable to meet specific needs.

Moreover, the framework's responsive design features make it easy to adapt styles to different screen sizes, helping to simplify and improve the efficiency of the theming process. Tailwind CSS adopts a utility-first approach, providing a large set of pre-defined utility classes for styling directly in HTML or JSX. Developers compose styles by applying these utility classes, avoiding the need to write custom CSS.

Crossplatform components

Material UI is a framework that has been around for a long time, so there are many MUI solutions for different platforms. For example, if you want to create a mobile app, you can use React Native Material UI. This allows you to create apps that look the same in the browser and on mobile devices.

Tailwind CSS is designed to work seamlessly across various platforms and devices. The cross-platform compatibility is primarily due to its reliance on standard web technologies. It's important to note that while Tailwind CSS is compatible for web development, it is not designed for mobile development.

Documentation

Exhaustive documentation for MaterialUI provides clear explanations, code snippets, examples, and demos for each component, greatly reducing learning time.

TailwindCSS documentation has clear explanations, examples, and a comprehensive list of classes used, which can significantly reduce learning time.

A good practice for understanding is to study real examples of projects created using these UI libraries.

Learning curve

CSS-in-JS approach used in Material UI for styling is not difficult to learn or get used to. With a small time investment, this knowledge will make it easier to use Material UI in your project. The ready-made components and documentation make it accessible to developers of different levels.

For beginners to React, understanding Material UI may require a little advanced knowledge of React concepts. For advanced React users, Material UI will not be difficult and will be a good addition to existing stack. As customization becomes more complex and the size of the project increases, it may need more expertise and time.

For using Tailwind CSS in your React project, as well as using other frameworks, you don’t need any additional knowledge about React, because style building in Tailwind hasn’t any familiarity with React components. The only thing you need is basic knowledge of HTML and CSS.

Tailwind may seem like an overwhelming task for developers not familiar with CSS. However, if you understand the basic principles of element styling, using Tailwind will be effective and easy. For those who are already familiar with CSS styling, it will be easy to learn because it uses many standard CSS concepts.

Comparing the examples

To understand the difference in the principles of using Material UI and Tailwind CSS, let’s implement a simple form.

You can find full code examples here.

Let's start with MaterialUI example.

It's notable that when using the basic Material UI components, we don't need to use decomposition. It allows us to use components that already follow the KISS and DRY principles out of the box.

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  <Box border={1} borderRadius={2} borderColor={'lightgray'} mt={4} mx={5} style={{ boxShadow: '4px 4px 8px lightgray' }}>
    <Typography variant="h6" p={2.5} textAlign={'center'}>
      Request for a sample of goods
    </Typography>
    <Box px={3} pt={0} pb={2.5}>
      <Stack p={1.5} spacing={2}>
        <Stack direction={{ xs: 'column', sm: 'row' }} gap={2}>
          <Stack direction="column" gap={2} flex={1}>
            <TextField label="First name" variant="outlined" size="small" />
            // more text input fields here
          </Stack>
          <Stack direction="column" gap={2} flex={1}>
            // more text input fields here
          </Stack>
        </Stack>
        <Divider />
        <Stack>
          <FormControlLabel
            control={<Checkbox />}
            label={
              <>
                I agree with <Link href="#">Term and conditions</Link>
              </>
            }
          />
          <Stack gap={2} direction={{ xs: 'column', sm: 'row' }} mt={2}>
            <Button fullWidth variant="contained" color="error">
              Cancel
            </Button>
            <Button fullWidth variant="contained" color="success">
              Send request
            </Button>
          </Stack>
        </Stack>
      </Stack>
    </Box>
  </Box>

Before giving an example of implementation with Tailwind CSS, we would like to say that for this solution we have to perform a small decomposition and separate some components. So, we’ll use our custom Button and InputField in the example.

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<div className="relative m-8 max-w-screen-sm w-full border rounded-lg border-gray-300 shadow-xl">
    <div className="border-0 rounded-lg shadow-lg relative flex flex-col w-auto bg-white outline-none focus:outline-none">
      <div className="flex items-start justify-center p-5 rounded-t ">
        <h2 className="text-xl font=semibold">
          Request for a sample of goods
        </h2>
      </div>
      <div className="relative px-6 pb-5 flex-auto">
        <div className="p-3">
          <div className="w-full flex flex-col gap-3 sm:flex-row mb-4 border-grey-500 border-b pb-4">
            <div className="w-full flex flex-col gap-3 w-full">
              <InputField label="First name" />
              // more text input fields here
            </div>
            <div className="w-full flex flex-col gap-3 w-full">
              // more text input fields here
            </div>
          </div>
          <div className="flex align-center pb-4">
            <input id="link-checkbox" type="checkbox" value="" className="w-5 h-5 text-blue-600 bg-gray-100 border-gray-300 rounded"/>
            <label htmlFor="link-checkbox" className="ms-2 text-base font-medium cursor-pointer">
              I agree with the
              <a href="/" className="text-blue-600 hover:underline text-base ml-1">
                Terms and conditions
              </a>
            </label>
          </div>
          <div className="flex flex-col sm:flex-row items-center gap-4">
            <Button title="Cancel" variant="cancel" />
            <Button title="Send request" variant="accept" />
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
</div>

As you can see from the examples above, each implementation has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Material UI implementation stands out by simplicity and readability of the code. The minimum number of component customizations allows you to get the desired result. Although customization will require a deeper understanding of the structure and principles of components' functionality.

On the other hand, the implementation with Tailwind CSS is characterized by the use of standard HTML tags, but a somewhat cluttered amount of code. Using utility classes allows you to make changes in styling by simply adding classes.

What UI library to choose?

Both Material UI and Tailwind CSS are suitable for tasks such as web application development, single-page applications, prototyping and rapid development, as well as implementing custom designs and branding.

Tailwind CSS allows you to use a granular utility class-based approach and quickly create customized styles, which will be a very important factor for brand-oriented projects.

Material UI offers a more standardized and consistent component design out of the box, which is especially beneficial if one of the goals is an organized user interface with minimal time investment.

To decide which UI library to use for your project, you need to assess the needs of your project and consider the skills and experience of your development team.

Summary

Material UI and Tailwind CSS represent different approaches to styling and UI development, and both are popular among the developers.

Material UI is increasingly used for modern and aesthetically pleasing interfaces because of its versatility and widespread use in the React ecosystem.

Tailwind CSS is known for its ease and speed in creating web application styles, and it is particularly popular in scenarios where a utility-oriented approach fits the development workflow and project requirements.

Ultimately, given your project goals, your team's experience with each library, and your overall development process, you'll be able to choose between Tailwind CSS and Material UI, ensuring unified and pleasant look of your project.