2022-09-22
3741
#css#web design
Obinna Ekwuno
818
Sep 22, 2022 ⋅ 13 min read

Comparing Tailwind CSS to Bootstrap: Is it time to ditch UI kits?

Obinna Ekwuno Writer of all things technical and inspirational. Developer and Community Advocate. In a love-love relationship with JavaScript🔥

Recent posts:

the replay october 8

The Replay (10/8/25): Data enrichment, CSS is back, TypeScript 5.9

Discover what’s new in The Replay, LogRocket’s newsletter for dev and engineering leaders, in the October 8th issue.

Matt MacCormack
Oct 8, 2025 ⋅ 30 sec read
Goodbye, messy data: An engineer’s guide to scalable data enrichment

Goodbye, messy data: An engineer’s guide to scalable data enrichment

Walk through building a data enrichment workflow that moves beyond simple lead gen to become a powerful internal tool for enterprises.

Alexandra Spalato
Oct 8, 2025 ⋅ 6 min read

DesignCoder and the future of AI-generated UI

From sketches to code in minutes, DesignCoder shows how AI-generated, hierarchy-aware UIs could change the way developers prototype and ship apps.

Rosario De Chiara
Oct 7, 2025 ⋅ 5 min read

Should you use if() functions in CSS?

It’s 2025, and CSS finally thinks logically. The if() function brings real conditional styling — no hacks, no JS workarounds. Here’s how to use it right.

Ikeh Akinyemi
Oct 7, 2025 ⋅ 16 min read
View all posts

13 Replies to "Comparing Tailwind CSS to Bootstrap: Is it time to ditch UI kits?"

  1. Need to update your code in the first example. `bg-purple` and `bg-purple-dark` no longer exist. Try `bg-purple-600 hover:bg-purple-800`

  2. “Another advantage I really appreciate — and I am sure every front-end developer would also appreciate — is never having to worry about changes to one element affecting another related element.”

    So if I change a component I need to change all other components manually to keep my layout consistent? That sounds really cumbersome and I don’t see how this is an improvement.

  3. Hey Bas!
    You have two basic choices for repeated elements here:
    1. use @apply in your CSS and build up your own class es for repeated components
    2. use Vue-, React- or PHP-Components and just include them whereever needed.
    It’s not too bad, for elements that lie beyond direct control, like WordPress’ WYSIWYG-Fields I just wrap that in a content class and use apply to style elements in there.

    Cheerio.

  4. Also for Bas,

    It can also depend on where you want to put your eggs.

    Do you want components you can guarantee won’t be effected or broken over time with a maximum css file size.

    Or do you want to update a handful of classes in the off chance your design requirement might change half way through. Which even if it does change, you get the benefit of not breaking other components by changing your design requirements 🙂

    People often forget that other programming languages apply the styling directly to the elements rather than global style sheets, so if it works for them! Can work for you

  5. Have you written inline css in your dom element? Tailwind is something like that in the form of classes. Its makes your dom element dirty with too many classes. And for similar kind of components writing little classes is far more better than writing many classes again and again.

  6. This article feels like a very opinionated and honestly can’t see any real points why Tailwind is better than Bootstrap. First, can you define what do you mean by saying “UI kit”? Bootstrap has prebuilt templates but that is up to you to use it or not, it provides responsive classes too like Tailwind if you need to have more control over what you are building. So having prebuilt templates and all what Tailwind provides I would go with Bootstrap any time. Just because Tailwind is new does not make the case, COVID-19 was new too, but no one liked it since it took a few years from our lives.

  7. Talk about re-inventing the wheel. Bootstrap has the exact same utility classes and more and yet people ignorant of these think they’ve stumbled on the holy grail.

Leave a Reply