Tailwind CSS vs Bootstrap — 2024 Edition

Hi guys!
This story will include an introduction to Tailwind CSS and Bootstrap with their comparisons in Optimization, Renderings, popularity in 2023–24, etc.

Introduction

Tailwind CSS
Tailwind CSS is a popular utility-first CSS framework designed to accelerate the development of modern websites. Unlike traditional frameworks that offer pre-built components, Tailwind provides a massive collection of low-level utility classes that target specific aspects of an element’s style, like padding, margin, color, or typography. It works by scanning all of your HTML files, JavaScript components, and any other templates for class names, generating the corresponding styles, and then writing them to a static CSS file.

It’s fast, flexible, and reliable — with zero runtime.

Here’s a breakdown of key concepts in Tailwind CSS:

• Utility-First Approach: Instead of pre-designed components, Tailwind offers basic building blocks (utility classes) that you combine to create custom UI elements. This gives you fine-grained control over the look and feel of your website.

• Rapid Prototyping: With Tailwind’s utility classes readily available in your HTML, you can quickly style your web pages without writing extensive CSS from scratch. This is particularly useful for prototyping and building the initial layout of your website.

• Responsive Design: Tailwind includes responsive modifiers that allow you to adjust styles based on screen sizes. This ensures your website adapts seamlessly across different devices.

• Customization: Tailwind offers extensive customization options. You can configure the framework to include only the utility classes you need and tailor them to your design system.

• Integration: Tailwind integrates well with various JavaScript frameworks and libraries, making it a versatile tool for modern web development.

Bootstrap
Bootstrap is a free and popular framework for web development that simplifies the process of creating websites. It’s particularly useful for building responsive websites, which means they look good on all devices, from desktops to mobile phones. It is a powerful, extensible, and feature-packed frontend toolkit. Build and customize with Sass, utilize a prebuilt grid system and components, and bring projects to life with powerful JavaScript plugins.

Here’s a breakdown of key concepts in Bootstrap:

• Responsive Grid System: This is arguably Bootstrap’s most powerful feature. It provides a flexible layout system with grids and columns that automatically adjust based on screen size. This ensures your website looks its best and functions well on desktops, tablets, and mobile phones.

• Pre-designed UI Components: Bootstrap includes a vast collection of ready-made UI components like buttons, navigation bars, forms, modals, image carousels, and more. These components are styled and coded, saving developers significant time and effort compared to building them from scratch.

• Extensive JavaScript Plugins: Bootstrap goes beyond just static UI components. It offers a rich set of JavaScript plugins that add interactivity and functionality to your web pages. Examples include plugins for creating pop-up modals, carousels, tooltips, scrollspy navigation, and more. These plugins are well-documented and easy to integrate.

• Bootstrap Themes and Customization: While Bootstrap provides pre-built components, it also allows for extensive customization. You can use its built-in themes or create your own to achieve the desired look and feel for your website. Bootstrap offers a variety of CSS classes for styling and customizing the components to match your specific design needs.

Components Availability

Bootstrap
Bootstrap offers a rich collection of pre-designed components that you can integrate into your web pages. Here’s a glimpse of the component availability in Bootstrap:

• Basic Components: Buttons, Alerts, Progress bars, Badges, Labels
• Navigation: Navbars, Breadcrumbs, Pagination, Dropdowns
• Forms: Layouts, Inputs, Layouts, Validation
• Content: Typography, Images, Tables, Code snippets
• Modals & Popups: Accordions, Alert popups, Tooltips, Popover menus
• JavaScript Plugins: Carousels, Collapse elements, Toasts

Tailwind CSS
Tailwind CSS itself doesn’t provide pre-built components like buttons, cards, or navigation menus. It focuses on utility classes for styling individual elements.

However, there are several ways to get components for Tailwind CSS:

• Building with Utility Classes: You can combine Tailwind’s utility classes with HTML to create custom components. This offers maximum control but requires more development effort.
• Tailwind UI (Official): The creators of Tailwind CSS offer a premium library called Tailwind UI https://tailwindui.com/. It provides a rich set of pre-built, responsive components styled with Tailwind classes. These components are available in HTML, React, and Vue formats.
• Daisy UI: Daisy UI is a popular free and open-source component library specifically designed to work with Tailwind CSS https://daisyui.com/. It essentially adds pre-built components on top of Tailwind’s utility classes, making development faster and easier.

Comparison between Tailwind CSS and Bootstrap

Here’s the comparison between Tailwind CSS and Bootstrap in different aspects:

Rendering Speed
Rendering Speed is one of the major factors that will be considered during the creation of web apps. Generally, Tailwind CSS is considered to have better rendering speed and optimization compared to Bootstrap. Here’s a breakdown of why:

Tailwind CSS

• Utility classes: Tailwind uses small, reusable CSS classes that you combine to achieve specific styles. This can lead to a larger initial CSS file size, but it also means you’re only including the styles you actually use on a page. This reduces the amount of unused CSS that the browser needs to parse and render.
• Pruning unused styles: Tailwind offers features to purge unused styles from the final CSS file, further reducing its size and improving performance.

Bootstrap

• Pre-built components: Bootstrap comes with a set of pre-built components like buttons, forms, and navigation bars. These components have built-in styles, which can be convenient but can also lead to including styles you don’t need.
• Nested selectors: Bootstrap can use nested selectors in its CSS, which can impact browser performance, especially for complex layouts.

Bundle Size
Bootstrap and Tailwind CSS take different approaches that affect their bundle size:

**Tailwind CSS
**Tailwind CSS is known for its smaller bundle size. It uses utility classes that you include directly in your HTML. This means you only pay for the styles you actually use.

Smaller files due to the utility-first approach

Bootstrap
Bootstrap offers a larger bundle size. It includes pre-built components and styles out of the box, which is convenient but can bloat the final CSS file.

Larger CSS and JavaScript files

Design Philosophy

Tailwind CSS

<div class="bg-gray-200 p-4">
  <div class="bg-white shadow p-4">
    Header
  </div>
  Content
</div>

• Tailwind CSS promotes a utility-first approach. In this example, we’ve created a card-like structure with utility classes.
• We define the background color, shadow, padding, and other styles explicitly.

This approach provides greater flexibility to design components from scratch and tailor them to your project’s specific needs.

Bootstrap

<div class="card">
  <div class="card-header">Header</div>
  <div class="card-body">Content</div>
</div>

Bootstrap follows an opinionated design system with predefined components. In this example, we’re creating a card structure using Bootstrap’s card class.

Bootstrap encourages consistency in design by offering ready-made elements like cards, making it quick to set up but potentially less customizable for unique designs.

Customization

Tailwind CSS

// Customizing Tailwind CSS
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    extend: {
      colors: {
        primary: '#3498db',
      },
    },
  },
};

Tailwind CSS provides extensive customization options in its configuration file. In this example, we extend the theme’s color palette with a new color named primary and set it to the color #3498db.

This level of flexibility allows us to adapt the framework to your design requirements easily.

Bootstrap

/* Customizing Bootstrap */
$primary-color: #3498db;

Bootstrap allows customization through variables. In this case, we’re customizing the primary color by setting the $primary-color variable to a specific color code.

However, this level of customization can be limiting when you’re aiming to create unique designs that deviate significantly from Bootstrap’s default styles.

Ecosystem and Community

Tailwind CSS

• Tailwind CSS also has a growing community and ecosystem, but it may not be as extensive as Bootstrap’s.
• However, it’s gaining popularity and offers resources for those looking to learn and use the framework.

Bootstrap

• Bootstrap has a vast community and ecosystem with extensive documentation, plugins, and themes available.
• This robust support system can be advantageous when seeking help or resources.

State of CSS 2023 Comparison

Awareness Rate

As we can see Tailwind CSS has gained an extraordinary awareness rate over the years since it was released which is only 2% behind Bootstrap which may cross Bootstrap in 2024. It means that developers around the world are gaining awareness of Tailwind CSS. However, Bootstrap has shown an almost flat line over the years because it is an old framework, and before the Tailwind CSS release, everyone mostly used Bootstrap.

Usage Rate

Bootstrap has a high usage rate, it depends on how many websites and web apps are using Bootstrap. As we know Bootstrap is an old framework so Bootstrap has a higher usage rate but that rate has been declining over the years. On the other hand, Tailwind CSS has gained an extraordinary jump in usage rate, which means today developers are more focused on using Tailwind CSS.

Interest Rate

As we see the Tailwind CSS had a higher interest rate in 2023 and over the years than the Bootstrap which is present in the last with a low interest rate in all CSS frameworks and libraries. It means developers are more interested in tailwind CSS than Bootstrap.

Retention Rate

Bootstrap retention rate has declined so much over the years. It means developers are shifting toward other frameworks and competitors. Tailwind CSS declined to some 3–4% because it has other competitors but still got a higher retention rate than others.

Why to use Tailwind CSS over Bootstrap

Tailwind CSS has been designed from the ground up with performance and optimization in mind. Its utility-first approach allows developers to build complex designs with minimal overhead, leading to faster rendering speeds and a more streamlined development process. This efficiency is further enhanced by Tailwind’s ability to purge unused styles, drastically reducing the final bundle size. In contrast, Bootstrap’s larger, pre-built component library, while comprehensive, can introduce unnecessary bloat, affecting both load times and performance.

The design philosophies of the two frameworks also highlight why Tailwind might be the preferable choice for many. Tailwind encourages a more hands-on approach to styling, offering greater flexibility and control over the look and feel of a website. This can lead to more unique, tailor-made designs, as opposed to the somewhat uniform appearance that Bootstrap-based sites can have due to their reliance on a set of predefined components.

Moreover, Tailwind’s customization capabilities far exceed those offered by Bootstrap. With Tailwind, developers can define a custom design system that fits their project’s needs without wrestling with overriding styles. This level of customization fosters consistency and scalability in design, making Tailwind an attractive option for projects of all sizes.

The community and ecosystem around Tailwind CSS are also rapidly growing, providing an abundance of resources, plugins, and integrations that enrich the development experience. While Bootstrap has a long-established community, the dynamism and enthusiasm around Tailwind suggest a vibrant and supportive ecosystem that’s continually expanding.

Lastly, the interest and retention rates reflect a broader trend toward utility-first CSS frameworks, with developers increasingly seeking out tools that offer more control, efficiency, and performance benefits. Tailwind CSS’s high retention rate, in particular, speaks to its effectiveness and the satisfaction of its users, suggesting that once developers switch to Tailwind, they find compelling reasons to stick with it.

Conclusion

In the evolving landscape of web development, both Tailwind CSS and Bootstrap have carved their niches, offering distinct approaches to building and styling websites. Tailwind CSS, with its utility-first design and emphasis on performance, caters to developers seeking fine-grained control and efficiency. Bootstrap, on the other hand, remains a go-to for those who prioritize rapid development with its comprehensive library of pre-designed components. Choosing between them ultimately depends on project requirements, developer preference, and the specific design challenges at hand. As the web continues to evolve, both frameworks will undoubtedly adapt, continuing to serve the diverse needs of the development community.

Happy Coding!