Material UI vs. Chakra UI: Which One to Choose?

Are you confused between Material UI and Chakra UI for your next project? Check this blog for a clear understanding based on your needs.

Understanding the Contenders

What is Material UI?

Material UI is a popular React UI framework that follows Google's Material Design guidelines. It provides a robust set of components that are ready to use and fully customizable, making the development process faster and more efficient. From buttons and dialogs to complex data tables and sliders, Material UI has everything you need to build a visually appealing and functional applications.

Explore Material UI: Material UI Documentation

What is Chakra UI?

Chakra UI, on the other hand, is a relatively newer player in the market. It emphasizes simplicity, modularity, and accessibility. This React UI library is designed to be simple to use while providing a high degree of customization. Chakra UI follows a style props approach, allowing developers to style components directly with props, making the development process highly intuitive and efficient.

Discover Chakra UI: Chakra UI Documentation

Comparison Criteria

1. Ease of Use: How simple is it to integrate and start using the library in your projects?
2. Customization: How easily can you customize components to fit your design needs?
3. Performance: How do these libraries impact your app's performance?
4. Community and Support: What kind of community and support can you expect?

Ease of Use

Material UI offers a comprehensive set of components ready to use out of the box, perfect for developers wanting to quickly move projects forward. However, the abundance of components and customization options might overwhelm beginners at first.

Chakra UI stands out for its simplicity and ease of use. Its style props approach lets developers style components directly in the JSX, streamlining the development process, especially for those preferring a straightforward styling approach.

In terms of responsiveness, Material UI requires additional code to make controls responsive, whereas Chakra UI offers built-in support with minimal code adjustments.

Code Example: Button Component

Material UI Button:

import Button from '@mui/material/Button';

function App() {
  return <Button variant="contained" color="primary">
    Click Me
  </Button>;
}

Chakra UI Button:

import { Button } from '@chakra-ui/react';

function App() {
  return <Button colorScheme="blue">Click Me</Button>;
}

Both libraries are user-friendly, but Chakra UI is a bit quicker and easier than Material UI, though Material UI provides ready-made components for quick development. ✨

Customization

Material UI lets you change its look through themes, but changing its default styles can get tricky.

Chakra UI was made with easy customization in mind. It has special style props and themes that help you change your design easily without having to mess too much with overriding styles.

Chakra UI keeps its class names simple and clean.

Also, Chakra UI makes it easier to tweak CSS classes yourself, while Material UI doesn't make this as straightforward. Material UI has a lot of components ready to go, but it's not as easy to change their styles.

Chakra UI offers more freedom in crafting unique site designs.

Chakra UI is the clear winner here for customization. 🏆

Performance

Chakra UI uses CSS-in-JS, offering customization at a slight performance cost. This is due to runtime style computations and className generation, which might be noticeable in performance-sensitive, large apps.

However, for small to medium applications, Chakra UI is an excellent option.

Conversely, Material UI showed impressive performance in real-world tests. A significant reduction in blocking time, a slight drop in memory usage, and a notable decrease in CPU usage were observed, contributing to a smoother and faster user experience.

Material UI leads in efficiency, making it suitable for sites requiring robust performance, while Chakra UI performs well for small to medium-sized sites. 🚀

Community and Support

Material UI enjoys a large, active community, offering an abundance of resources, tutorials, and support, facilitated by its widespread adoption.

Chakra UI, though smaller, has a rapidly growing community known for its supportive environment. Its clear and concise documentation is accessible to newcomers, with the community expected to expand further.

Material UI has a larger community, but the Chakra UI community is also growing and very welcoming. 🌱

Conclusion

Material UI is ideal for projects where standard design suffices and high customization isn't critical. It excels in performance with a plethora of ready-to-use components.

Chakra UI is best for projects needing highly customizable components, thanks to its flexible design approach. It's suited for small to medium projects, with performance slightly lagging behind in very large, data-heavy applications.

Experimenting with both libraries in a small project is the best way to see which fits your project needs and development style best.