Top 6 Vue.js UI Libraries (Vue 3) Trending in 2024
Edit: Previously I wrote about the “6 Most Popular Vue.js UI Libraries (Vue 3) in 2023”. As we are now in 2024, I have revisited the different libraries and updated them for the current year 🎉
Vue.js, a JavaScript framework, has been gaining a lot of attention in recent years due to its simplicity, flexibility, and performance. User Interface (UI) component libraries have become an essential aspect of web development, providing a fast and convenient way to build beautiful and responsive user interfaces.
Vue 3 has become the default choice to build modern applications since Vue 2 reaching its end of life on December 31, 2023. The need for UI component libraries designed specifically for Vue 3 has risen. In this article, we will take a look at the six most popular Vue.js UI component libraries for 2024, categorized based on their popularity within English and Chinese-speaking communities.
I decided to categorize this way because of the massive popularity of Vue.js in China according to an interview with Evan You, the creator of Vue.js, who was born in China and grew up in a city near Shanghai.
Moreover, Vue has well-written documents in Chinese. As teams from big companies in China such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu started using Vue.js, all these factors may have contributed to its popularity in the country.
Vue-PDF-Viewer: Flexible and Powerful Vue.js PDF Component
Just a quick background about what I’m working on. Vue-PDF-Viewer renders the PDF viewer on your Vue or Nuxt websites so that your users can interact with your PDF document without leaving your sites. The component has over 20 features including theme customization, built-in localization, web responsive and more.
I would be grateful if you could check Vue-PDF-Viewer out. It will encourage me to make even more content ❤️🔥
English focused community
1. Vuetify
Vuetify is a popular Vue.js UI component library based on Material Design specifications. It provides over 100 customizable components for creating beautiful and responsive user interfaces. With its modular design, developers can selectively import components, which keeps the bundle size small and improves performance.
Additionally, Vuetify integrates seamlessly with Nuxt 3 and features powerful theming capabilities where developers can customize their application style and match it with their brand.
As of February 2024, Vuetify has over 38,800 stars (from 37,900 stars in 2023) on GitHub and an average weekly downloads count of close to 500,000. (The trend line) seems to be growing steadily over the years)
Learn more on https://vuetifyjs.com
Remark: There are still a couple of Vuetify 2 components including calendar, overflow-btn, speed-dial, time-picker and treeview that are not yet available in Vuetify 3. According to the official Vuetify guide, they will be released by Vuetify Labs when development is completed.
2. Quasar
Quasar’s UI Components feature 70 high-performance customizable Material Design components and icons of various styles (bootstrap, material, font-awesome, and many more). The documentation is detailed and well thought-out. The library also has pre-built features including animations and functions to handle dates and times.
What makes Quasar, founded in 2015, different and stand out from other UI component libraries is that Quasar is not only a UI component library but a dynamic Vue framework. You can develop Vue.js desktop, web, and mobile applications with a single codebase. As the saying goes, write once and use everywhere.
As of February 2024, Quasar has over 25,000 stars (from 24,200 stars in 2023) on GitHub and an average weekly downloads count of over 100,000.
Learn more on https://quasar.dev/
3. PrimeVue
PrimeVue is a sleek Vue.js component library that offers over 90 components and 200+ icons making it one of the most comprehensive libraries in the Vue.js community. It’s a lightweight library with exclusive Tailwind CSS integration, enabling developers to build complex enterprise-level applications with ease.
PrimeVue is powered by PrimeTek, which serves millions of developers of Fortune 500 companies such as Intel, Nvidia, and American Express, lending it massive credibility in the enterprise space.
PrimeVue also features an intuitive API, allowing developers to quickly customize the components to achieve their desired designs.
As of February 2024, PrimeVue has over 6,800 stars (from 4,300 stars in 2023) on GitHub and an average weekly downloads count of over 170,000 (Huge increase from around 100,000 downloads in September 2023).
Learn more on https://primevue.org/
Chinese focused community
1. Element Plus
Element Plus is a community-developed project born from Element UI which supports only Vue 2.X. Due to its predecessor’s popularity, it has naturally gained a lot of attention from developers, especially those in China.
A TypeScript-based library with a complete type definition, Element Plus is not based on Material Design and has its own distinct UI style which can be modified quite easily. Element Plus simplifies component utilization, making the code more maintainable and readable with Vue 3’s Composition API.
As of February 2024, Element Plus has over 22,600 stars (from 21,300 stars in 2023) on GitHub and an average weekly downloads count of over 200,000.
Learn more on https://element-plus.org/en-US/
2. Ant Design Vue
Ant Design Vue (Antdv) is a popular TypeScript-based UI component library based on Ant Design, a library that was developed for React and was originally created by a team from Alibaba. But it has gained traction in the Vue.js community for its ease of use and its rich feature set. It offers a comprehensive range of components like tree structures, forms, and data visualization components.
Similar to Element Plus, Antdv has its own unique UI style. Although it may initially seem daunting to explore its huge sets of UI components and features, once you get the hang of it, Antdv can be a very powerful UI component library for projects of all sizes.
As of February 2024, Ant Design Vue has over 19,300 stars (from 18,600 stars in 2023) on GitHub and an average weekly downloads count of over 80,000.
Learn more on https://antdv.com/
3. Naive UI
Naive UI is a TypeScript-based UI component library developed by TuSimple, a Chinese autonomous truck company based in California. It has been mentioned by Evan You, the creator of Vue.js, in his Weibo blog back in 2021.
Naive UI consists of over 90 components that can be imported to use in your project. Most impressively, all 90+ components can be treeshaken. This means that the component can be imported individually into your application without waste. Documentation of Naive UI is also well documented and easy to follow.
As of February 2024, Naive UI has over 14,800 stars on GitHub and an average weekly downloads count of over 30,000.
Learn more on [https://github.com/tusen-ai/na
ive-ui](https://github.com/tusen-ai/naive-ui)
Special Mention: Nut UI
Nut UI is a mobile UI component library that is developed by the Chinese e-commerce giant, JD.com (also known as Jingdong). It provides a JD-style mobile UI component library that is used by JD in production.
Nut UI features high-quality UI components that are well-tested (unit test coverage more than 80%). It has clear documentation and supports TypeScript. Furthermore, it provides Sketch design resources for designers to easily create design screens.
As of February 2024, Nut UI has over 5,700 stars on GitHub and an average weekly downloads count of over 3,000.
Learn more on https://github.com/jdf2e/nutui/blob/v4/README_EN.md
Conclusion
In conclusion, Vue.js has gained popularity due to its flexibility, simplicity, and performance. The availability of different UI component libraries has made it easier for developers to build complex and elegant applications at speed with ease. Whether you’re building large complex applications or small, highly performant ones, there is always the right Vue.js UI component library suitable for your needs.
Ref: Anson Ch - Medium