CSS/Styling
6 open source tools compared. Sorted by stars — scroll down for our analysis.
| Tool | Stars | Velocity | Language | License | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Tailwind CSS Utility-first CSS framework | 94.2k | — | TypeScript | MIT License | 82 |
 UnoCSS Instant on-demand atomic CSS engine | 18.7k | +23/wk | TypeScript | — | 67 |
| 9.2k | — | HTML | — | 55 | |
| 3.5k | — | C# | — | 51 | |
| 2.6k | — | TypeScript | — | 50 | |
| 1.3k | — | TypeScript | — | 46 |
Our Analysis
Tailwind CSS ended the CSS architecture debate by making it someone else's problem. Utility classes directly in your HTML — flex items-center gap-4 — and a build step that strips unused styles to near-zero CSS output. You either get it immediately or you hate it. Most people who try it get it. Bootstrap is the legacy component library (great for prototyping, bad for custom design). Vanilla CSS with custom properties is the purist approach. UnoCSS is the atomic CSS alternative that's faster and more flexible. Panda CSS offers type-safe CSS-in-JS. If you're building a custom UI — SaaS dashboard, marketing site, web app — Tailwind is the fastest path from design to code. The JIT compiler is instant. Tailwind UI and Headless UI provide components when you need them. MIT licensed. The catch: your HTML will look like alphabet soup. Long className strings with dozens of utilities are real code people ship. Some developers find this unreadable and unmaintainable. Also, Tailwind v4 changed enough that migration from v3 is non-trivial.
UnoCSS is Tailwind CSS rebuilt as a pure engine. Instead of a fixed utility framework, you get a programmable atomic CSS generator — define your own rules, presets, and conventions, and UnoCSS generates only the CSS you use. Hot reload in ~10ms regardless of project size, vs. Tailwind's ~200ms. An order of magnitude faster. Tailwind CSS is the safe choice with the bigger ecosystem, more plugins, and better docs. Windi CSS (now deprecated) inspired UnoCSS. Styled-components and CSS Modules are the CSS-in-JS alternatives. Use UnoCSS if you're building a design system, micro-frontend, or UI library where you want total control over your utility classes. The Tailwind preset gives you compatibility, but you can go far beyond it. The catch: Tailwind's ecosystem is massive — component libraries, design tools, IDE plugins — and UnoCSS can't match that breadth. If your team just wants to build a product with utility-first CSS, Tailwind is less friction. UnoCSS is for developers who want to craft their own system, not use someone else's.