Best CSS frameworks in 2021
Published: 2021-08-09 13:35:12

During development of web Frontend you can see a huge amount of CSS frameworks which you can use for simplification of your development.
But which you should really use? That can be very hard to answer this question.
I decided to try answer it by comparison of all frameworks what exists right now.

Here is my list:

# Bootstrap
**Latest stable version:** 5.1.0
**Github stars:** 152K
**Development:** active
**Long of active development:** 10 years
**Active maintainers:** 2
**Contributors:** 1236
**Number of commits:** 21K
**License:** MIT
**Used by:** 2,662,212 Github projects
**Reddit followers:** 12.4K

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/fwnsszuiob7f3r19m05g.png)


# Foundation
**Latest stable version:** 6.6.3
**Github stars:** 29.1K
**Development:** without activity for last 1 year
**Long of active development:** 8 years
**Active maintainers:** 0
**Contributors:** 1028
**Number of commits:** 17K
**License:** MIT
**Used by:** 24 Github projects
**Reddit followers:** -

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/27itba1lq2xbc8wetnxw.png)
 

# Bulma
**Latest stable version:** 0.9.3
**Github stars:** 44K
**Development:** low activity
**Long of active development:** 5.5 years
**Active maintainers:** 1
**Contributors:** 362
**Number of commits:** 1631
**License:** MIT
**Used by:** 160K Github projects
**Reddit followers:** 71

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/sjiw15ewime6k63v2qwc.png)
 

# Tailwind CSS
**Latest stable version:** 2.2.7
**Github stars:** 45.4K
**Development:** quite good activity
**Long of active development:** 3 years
**Active maintainers:** 1
**Contributors:** 184
**Number of commits:** 4K
**License:** MIT
**Used by:** 265K Github projects
**Reddit followers:** 4.5K

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/f029m58r7txp8y6bza2i.png)
 

# HTML5 Boilerplate
**Latest stable version:** 8.0.0
**Github stars:** 51K
**Development:** low activity
**Long of active development:** 11 years
**Active maintainers:** 2
**Contributors:** 258
**Number of commits:** 2123
**License:** MIT
**Used by:** 2.1K Github projects
**Reddit followers:** -

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/pf52t1y55wifsb50sxy3.png)
 

# Metro UI
**Latest stable version:** 4.5.0
**Github stars:** 6.8K
**Development:** very active
**Long of active development:** 6.5 years
**Active maintainers:** 1
**Contributors:** 51
**Number of commits:** 3010
**License:** MIT
**Used by:** 173 Github projects
**Reddit followers:** -

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/03v7rby0gqsrxmveghb1.png)
 

# UIkit
**Latest stable version:** 3.7.2
**Github stars:** 17K
**Development:** active
**Long of active development:** 6.5 years
**Active maintainers:** 2
**Contributors:** 32
**Number of commits:** 4606
**License:** MIT
**Used by:** 8.8K Github projects
**Reddit followers:** 17

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/uufcke11a9dvwdg1aqc3.png)
 

# Materialize
**Latest stable version:** 1.0.0
**Github stars:** 38.6K
**Development:** very low activity
**Long of active development:** 4 years
**Active maintainers:** 0
**Contributors:** 261
**Number of commits:** 4K
**License:** MIT
**Used by:** 76.2K Github projects
**Reddit followers:** 22

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/xig8vcfmolhit5cgjz9v.png)
  

# MUI
**Latest stable version:** 0.10.2
**Github stars:** 4.4K
**Development:** without activity
**Long of active development:** 4 years
**Active maintainers:** 0
**Contributors:** 28
**Number of commits:** 647
**License:** MIT
**Used by:** 2.4K Github projects
**Reddit followers:** -

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/qa1mgnlb5v6xl91h4ahg.png)
 

# Cirrus
**Latest stable version:** 0.6.2.1
**Github stars:** 812
**Development:** active
**Long of active development:** 4,5 years
**Active maintainers:** 1
**Contributors:** 8
**Number of commits:** 904
**License:** MIT
**Used by:** 0 Github projects
**Reddit followers:** -

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/j9xm2w3wp2x93ri33t0g.png)
 
# Montage
**Latest stable version:** 17.2.1
**Github stars:** 1.5K
**Development:** without activity for 1,5 years
**Long of active development:** 7 years
**Active maintainers:** 0
**Contributors:** 35
**Number of commits:** 5697
**License:** BSD
**Used by:** 0 Github projects
**Reddit followers:** -

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/cvpgerg12cxnej93uehx.png)
 
# Pure.css
**Latest stable version:** v2.0.6
**Github stars:** 21.8K
**Development:** very low activity
**Long of active development:** 1.5 years
**Active maintainers:** 0 (project is finding maintainer)
**Contributors:** 64
**Number of commits:** 659
**License:** BSD
**Used by:** 4.1 Github projects
**Reddit followers:** -

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/xkrnm8ebnp2itz1l5msw.png)
 

# Semantic UI
**Latest stable version:** 2.4.1
**Github stars:** 49.5K
**Development:** without activity for 3 years
**Long of active development:** 6 years
**Active maintainers:** 0
**Contributors:** 201
**Number of commits:** 6684
**License:** MIT
**Used by:** 12.6 Github projects
**Reddit followers:** -

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/35fbg87k5ltu6jpclv1g.png)
 

# Fomantic UI
**Latest stable version:** 2.8.8
**Github stars:** 2.6K
**Development:** active
**Long of active development:** 9 years
**Active maintainers:** 1
**Contributors:** 252
**Number of commits:** 8K
**License:** MIT
**Used by:** 1K Github projects
**Reddit followers:** -

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/il4437wgkr1xdx9kcgik.png)
 

# Material Components Web

**Latest stable version:** v12.0.0
**Github stars:** 15.7K
**Development:** active
**Long of active development:** 8 years
**Active maintainers:** 2
**Contributors:** 380
**Number of commits:** 6835
**License:** MIT
**Used by:** 6K Github projects
**Git repository:** https://github.com/material-components/material-components-web

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/cnuyvu6b8eitmo7bwhcd.png)
 

# Material Design Lite

**Latest stable version:** 1.3.0
**Github stars:** 31.8K
**Development:** without activity for 5 years
**Long of active development:** 2 years
**Active maintainers:** 0
**Contributors:** 178
**Number of commits:** 2872
**License:** Apache
**Used by:** 11.1K Github projects
**Git repository:** https://github.com/google/material-design-lite

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/d56okzftip5f68i1yo4a.png)
 

# Skeleton

**Latest stable version:** 2.0.4
**Github stars:** 18.3K
**Development:** without activity for 7 years
**Long of active development:** 1 years
**Active maintainers:** 0
**Contributors:** 25
**Number of commits:** 167
**License:** MIT
**Used by:** 0 Github projects
**Git repository:** https://github.com/dhg/Skeleton

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/m8cu3k3iha1k5q5nsu1r.png)
 

# Conclusion
So from 17 the most known CSS frontend frameworks we can choose only 9 projects which are under active mainteinance yet:

<table>
<tr><th> Name </th><th> Activity </th><th> Number of maintainers </th></tr>
<tr><td> Metro UI </td><td> very active </td><td> 1 </td></tr>
<tr><td> Bootstrap </td><td> active </td><td> 2 </td></tr>
<tr><td> UIkit </td><td> active </td><td> 2 </td></tr>
<tr><td> Material Components Web </td><td> active </td><td> 2 </td></tr>
<tr><td> Tailwind CSS </td><td> good activity </td><td> 1 </td></tr>
<tr><td> Cirrus </td><td> good activity </td><td> 1 </td></tr>
<tr><td> Fomantic UI </td><td> good activity </td><td> 1 </td></tr>
<tr><td> HTML5 Boilerplate </td><td> low activity </td><td> 2 </td></tr>
<tr><td> Bulma </td><td> low activity </td><td> 1 </td></tr>
</table>


Probably on the first place is **Bootstrap** which have the most active developers and community around this project.
On second and third place are **UIkit** and **Material Components Web** which are maintained very well with two maintainers.

But if you want to use some alternative to this 3 top frameworks, you can choose:
- **Metro UI** -> if you want to have design like Metro UI in Microsoft Windows 
- **Tailwind CSS** -> where you can style your project in very different way
- **Cirrus** -> if you want to have some lightweight framework
- **Fomantic UI** -> if you want have successor for Semantic UI

Also you can try **Bulma** or **HTML5 Boilerplate** but only for personal home made projects because there is not so big development like in prevous frameworks and is here a risk that it become dead after some years like other frameworks from my list.