10 Best Free Tailwind-based UI Component Libraries and UI Kits

Tailwind CSS' "write only atomic classes in your HTML approach" has long been regarded as a controversial and radical approach to styling since its inception. Over the years, the industry has started to see its benefits and Tailwind has since gained immense popularity.

In this article, we explore the diverse range of free UI components and libraries that leverage Tailwind CSS, empowering front end developers to build modern and aesthetically pleasing user interfaces without compromising on efficiency or flexibility.

Whether you're a seasoned developer or just venturing into the realm of Tailwind-powered design, this article is your compass to discover the most valuable and freely available UI component libraries that can elevate your websites to new heights.

Sailboat UI

Sailboat UI is a modern UI component library specifically designed for Tailwind CSS. It offers over 150 open source components, and uses Alpine.js for some interactive components. However, the important part of the examples is the Tailwind classes used, so you can easily integrate it with your favorite headless UI library in a framework of your choice.

What is great about Sailboat is that it offers a few variants of each component. For example, Accordions are offered in multiple styles like simple, bordered, with background, etc, so you can choose a variant that suits your theme and brand.

By the numbers (accurate as of 18th Jan 2024):

• Components: 28
• Sections/blocks: N/A
• GitHub stars: 1,076
• Mode of usage: Copy/paste HTML and CSS
• Framework integrations: Alpine.js

HyperUI

HyperUI is a collection of free copy-pastable Tailwind CSS components that has been around since 2021. It is very similar to Tailwind UI in that both contain components and sections for application, marketing, and e-commerce websites. Since it's pure copy pasting of HTML/CSS, there's nothing to install and you can integrate it with any headless UI library.

By the numbers (accurate as of 18th Jan 2024):

• Components: 27
• Sections/blocks: 20
• GitHub stars: 6,949
• Mode of usage: Copy/paste HTML and CSS
• Framework integrations: N/A

Preline UI

The most outstanding thing about Preline is its vast library of components and sections. At over 60 components and 170 sections, it is the largest free set of Tailwind component examples out there. The examples are all very well-built and look very polished. Last but not least, all the examples have full support for dark mode.

By the numbers (accurate as of 18th Jan 2024):

• Components: 60
• Sections/blocks: 171
• GitHub stars: 3,200
• Mode of usage: Copy/paste HTML and CSS
• Framework integrations: N/A

daisyUI

daisyUI is one of the first Tailwind-based UI component libraries in existence. The library takes a unique approach where it provides a Tailwind plugin that injects its own higher-level classes that are composed of Tailwind utility classes. This somewhat defeats the purpose of Tailwind's atomic classes approach as developers are using pre-built CSS classes, similar to Bootstrap. Nevertheless, with 28.5k stars, it's a wildly popular library that boasts a vast library of over 50 components with multiple variants and classes.

By the numbers (accurate as of 18th Jan 2024):

• Components: 56
• Sections/blocks: N/A
• GitHub stars: 28,494
• Mode of usage: Import CSS from npm package
• Framework integrations: N/A

Tremor

While many libraries are aimed at more general usage of marketing and e-commerce, Tremor is focused on dashboard and data visualization components. Beyond the standard UI components of accordion, button, forms, Tremor includes multiple visualization components – area chart, bar chart, donut chart, line chart, scatter chart, you name it, they have it.

By the numbers (accurate as of 18th Jan 2024):

• Components: 29
• Sections/blocks: 5
• GitHub stars: 14,227
• Mode of usage: Import React components from npm package
• Framework integrations: React

NextUI

Despite the name, NextUI has nothing to do with Next.js, the popular React metaframework. Since v2.0, Next UI is built on top of Tailwind CSS and React Aria and is one of the fastest growing UI libraries based on Tailwind. Like Tremor, to use Next UI, import React components from the npm package @nextui-org/react and use the components within your application.

By the numbers (accurate as of 18th Jan 2024):

• Components: 38
• Sections/blocks: N/A
• GitHub stars: 17,879
• Mode of usage: Import React components from npm package
• Framework integrations: React

shadcn/ui

If there was one library that took the world by storm in 2023, it'd be shadcn/ui, which is built on top of Tailwind CSS and Radix UI. While many other Tailwind UI libraries make developers copy the HTML/CSS or install the library as an npm dependency, shadcn takes an approach where you copy and paste any required component code into your projects; you have full ownership and control over the code. This approach has both merits and drawbacks. While you have full control over the components, the obvious downside is that you won't receive updates automatically and have to remember to sync any changes. This approach is best used by teams who have strong front end developers who have a need for customizing component appearance as well as the capability to maintain the components in the long term.

By the numbers (accurate as of 18th Jan 2024):

• Components: 46
• Sections/blocks: N/A
• GitHub stars: 44,449
• Mode of usage: Copy/paste React components (manually or via CLI)
• Framework integrations: React (but community forks available in Vue and Svelte)

Park UI

Park UI is a relatively new Tailwind library but is a strong contender to shadcn/ui. Park UI's usage approach is similar to shadcn/ui,

Where shadcn/ui is coupled with Tailwind and Radix UI, Park UI is way more versatile. It has first class support for both Tailwind CSS and Panda CSS (another atomic CSS library that uses a JavaScript-first approach) and also integrates with React, Vue, and Solid via Ark UI, a headless UI library that has first party implementations with React, Vue, and Solid.

By the numbers (accurate as of 18th Jan 2024):

• Components: 40
• Sections/blocks: N/A
• GitHub stars: 842
• Mode of usage: Copy/paste React components (manually or via CLI)
• Framework integrations: React, Vue, Solid

Pines UI

Pines UI is a UI library built on top of Tailwind CSS and Alpine.js and offers multiple variants for each component. With black as its primary color, the default appearance of the components highly resemble shadcn/ui and Park UI.

By the numbers (accurate as of 18th Jan 2024):

• Components: 26
• Sections/blocks: 34 (more than a hundred available for Pro subscribers)
• GitHub stars: 1,696
• Mode of usage: Copy/paste components
• Framework integrations: React

Aceternity UI

Last but not least, we have Aceternity UI. Built by the amazing Manu Arora, Aceternity UI is unlike the typical common UI component libraries introduced above. It is a collection of bespoke and carefully crafted UI sections built on top of Tailwind CSS and Framer Motion.

Some of our favorite examples include the Hero Parallax, 3D Card Effect, and the Wavy Background. It's an extremely fast way to elevate your website's design and add a "wow" factor! We recommend using it along another UI component library of your choice.

By the numbers (accurate as of 18th Jan 2024):

• Components: N/A
• Sections/blocks: 36
• GitHub stars: Not open sourced
• Mode of usage: Copy/paste components
• Framework integrations: React