Radix UI
Unstyled, accessible React component primitives for building your own design system.
Pricing Open sourceOpen source yesStars 19.4knpm a week 92M
Headless UI alternatives
9 tools you can use instead of Headless UI, ranked by live GitHub stars and npm downloads. Radix UI, shadcn/ui and Material UI are the most used. Stats updated 5 hours ago.
Radix UI is the closest alternative: unstyled, accessible React primitives for building your own design system. shadcn/ui gives you styled components built with Tailwind CSS that you copy into your project.
When Headless UI is not a good fit
Headless UI is a free, open source library of completely unstyled, fully accessible UI components, built by Tailwind Labs (now owned by Shopify) and designed to pair naturally with Tailwind CSS. It covers common interactive patterns like menus, dialogs, listboxes and switches for both React and Vue, leaving all visual styling to the developer.
It is a weaker choice for:
- Projects that need a very large, comprehensive set of component primitives, where a bigger library like Radix UI may cover more patterns
- Frameworks outside React and Vue, since Headless UI only supports those two
- Teams that want prebuilt visual styling rather than a completely unstyled starting point
The alternatives
Most used first.
Headless UI vs Radix UI
shadcn/ui
Copy-paste, customizable UI components built with Tailwind CSS, not installed as a package.
Pricing Open sourceOpen source yesStars 127knpm a week 13M
Material UI
React component library implementing Google's Material Design, with free core and paid MUI X components.
Pricing FreemiumPaid from $299 a developer a year for MUI X ProOpen source yesStars 99.3knpm a week 12M
Ant Design
Enterprise-focused React component library and design system, maintained by Alibaba's Ant Group.
Pricing Open sourceOpen source yesStars 99.9knpm a week 4.4M
Mantine
Full-featured, styled React component library with over 100 components and hooks.
Pricing Open sourceOpen source yesStars 31.9knpm a week 3.3M
Chakra UI
Styled, accessible React component library with a simple, composable styling API.
Pricing Open sourceOpen source yesStars 40.7knpm a week 2M
DaisyUI
Component class plugin for Tailwind CSS, adding semantic component names like btn and card.
Pricing FreemiumOpen source yesStars 42.7knpm a week 1.2M
Ant Design Pro
Free, open source React boilerplate for enterprise admin dashboards, built on Ant Design.
Pricing Open sourceOpen source yesStars 38.9knpm a week 136k
HeroUI
Open source React and React Native component library, formerly called NextUI.
Pricing Open sourceOpen source yesStars 31knpm a week 770k
Headless UI and its alternatives, side by side
| Tool | Pricing | Free plan | Paid from | Open source | GitHub stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Headless UI | Open source | Yes, Headless UI is completely free | Not listed | Yes, MIT | 28.8k |
| Radix UI | Open source | Yes, Radix UI is completely free | Not listed | Yes, MIT | 19.4k |
| shadcn/ui | Open source | Yes, shadcn/ui is completely free | Not listed | Yes, MIT | 127k |
| Material UI | Freemium | Yes: MUI Core's 40+ components are free and open source | $299 a developer a year for MUI X Pro | Yes, MIT (MUI Core); MUI X components are proprietary on paid tiers | 99.3k |
| Ant Design | Open source | Yes, Ant Design is completely free | Not listed | Yes, MIT | 99.9k |
| Mantine | Open source | Yes, Mantine and Mantine UI are both free | Not listed | Yes, MIT | 31.9k |
| Chakra UI | Open source | Yes, Chakra UI is completely free | Not listed | Yes, MIT | 40.7k |
| DaisyUI | Freemium | Yes, the core DaisyUI plugin is completely free | Not listed | Yes, MIT | 42.7k |
| Ant Design Pro | Open source | Yes, completely free and open source | Not listed | Yes, MIT | 38.9k |
| HeroUI | Open source | Yes. The component library is open source and free to use. | Not listed | Yes, Apache-2.0 | 31k |
Pricing facts come from each tool's official pricing page, with the checked date on the tool's own page.
Questions
What is the most popular alternative to Headless UI?
By GitHub stars, Radix UI is the most used alternative to Headless UI listed on ScratchDB, with 19.4k stars.
Which Headless UI alternatives are open source?
Radix UI, shadcn/ui, Material UI, Ant Design, Mantine, Chakra UI, DaisyUI, Ant Design Pro and HeroUI are open source.
Which Headless UI alternatives have a free plan?
Radix UI, shadcn/ui, Material UI, Ant Design, Mantine, Chakra UI, DaisyUI, Ant Design Pro and HeroUI have a free plan. The table on this page shows what each one includes.