FontAwesome Alternatives: Explore These 4 Free Icon Libraries
Tags: webdev, javascript, beginners, productivity
Published: 2023-11-09 04:56:43

Icons are among the most important navigational elements of a web application or any kinds of applications. Often, we rely on `FontAwesome` an often-overrated icons provider. And, unfortunately, many essential icons are only available for a fee. 

So, here are 4 alternatives of `FontAwesome` icon libraries we can use, and these are completely free. You can use these libraries on daily basis with any kinds of frameworks(React, Vue, Angular, Svelte etc.), or static HTML, CSS, JS projects.

# Google Fonts Icons AkA Material Symbols

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ae6oq9ac0dl0009kyh4i.png)



According to the official docs, Material Symbols are the newest icons consolidating over 3,169 glyphs in a single font file with a wide range of design variants. Symbols are available in three styles and four adjustable variable font styles (fill, weight, grade, and optical size).

**Link**: Google [Material Symbols](https://fonts.google.com/icons)

# Heroicons 

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/huw2b4ejd2tg2yc923j8.png)

According to the `Heroicons` it has motto, Beautiful hand-crafted SVG icons, by the makers of Tailwind CSS. Available as basic SVG icons and via first-party React and Vue libraries. Heroicons can be used by any kinds of web apps with or without any framework.

It has supported mainly three different types of Icon sets:

#### Outline 
For primary navigation and marketing sections, with an outlined appearance.

#### Solid
For primary navigation and marketing sections, with a filled appearance.

#### Mini
For smaller elements like buttons, form elements, and to support text.

**Link**: [Heroicons](https://heroicons.com/)

# Boxicons

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/klktn1bstghw6mdhcoml.png)


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/50xqtwpydwlcjrw3lz4d.png)

`Boxicons` provides High Quality Web Icons. It is simple open source icons carefully crafted for designers & developers. Switching to `Boxicons` is easy and can be done in few steps. There are more features than just the icons set. Moreover, `Boxicons` also follows the official `Google Material` Design guidelines.

**Link**: [Boxicons](https://boxicons.com/)

# Ionicons

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/lyni3pqi0z9vff3yonrh.png)

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/54alktcvjsz0fq2yhsp9.png)

According to the official site it is Open sourced icons. Lovingly hand-crafted. Premium designed icons for use in web, iOS, Android, and desktop apps. Support for SVG. Completely open source, MIT licensed and built by Ionic. 

Ionicons is a completely open-source icon set with 1,300+ icons crafted for web, iOS, Android, and desktop apps. Ionicons was made for Ionic Framework, a cross-platform hybrid and Progressive Web App framework.

The Ionicons Web Component is an easy and performant way to use Ionicons in your app. The component will dynamically load an SVG for each icon, so your app is only requesting the icons that you need.

**Link**: [ionicons](https://ionic.io/ionicons)

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