When building user interfaces in React, choosing the right UI library can have a significant impact on your development speed, code quality, and user experience.
Among the many options available, two libraries stand out: Ant Design and MUI (Material UI). Both are powerful, widely-used, and well-documented — but which one is best for your project?
As a frontend developer who has worked with both Ant Design and MUI in real-world projects, I’ve had the chance to experience their strengths, weaknesses, and subtle differences firsthand. In this article, I’ll share a detailed comparison based on practical use — not just surface-level features.

🔹 What Are Ant Design and MUI?

MUI (Material UI)

• Developed by the MUI team.
• Based on Google’s Material Design.
• Offers 90+ components.
• Known for great documentation and strong TypeScript support.

Ant Design

• Developed by Alibaba.
• Focused on enterprise-level design with a clean, Eastern-inspired aesthetic.
• Great for building admin panels and business dashboards.
• Offers a full design system with layout, components, icons, and utilities.

1. Developer Experience (DX)
Both libraries offer a solid developer experience, but with different tools and styles.
MUI uses Emotion or styled-components for styling, giving you full power of CSS-in-JS and React’s ecosystem.
Ant Design uses Less, which can be powerful but requires extra configuration in Webpack/Vite for customization.

2. Documentation
MUI provides in-depth documentation with live examples, clear explanations, and customization guides.
Ant Design also has decent documentation, but some advanced topics (like dynamic forms or theme customization) can feel lacking or scattered.

3. Design and Aesthetics (UI/UX)
There’s a clear difference in design philosophy:
MUI looks modern, clean, and mobile-friendly. It’s a perfect fit for apps that follow Material Design guidelines.
Ant Design feels more professional and formal, making it ideal for enterprise dashboards or B2B applications.
For example:
Ant’s Form component is much more powerful than MUI’s out of the box.
MUI’s typography and spacing system is more intuitive for custom layouts.

4. Customization & Theming
MUI offers:

• A powerful theming system with full TypeScript support.
• Light/dark mode out of the box.
• Theme customization using the ThemeProvider. Ant Design allows theme customization using Less variables, but:
• You need additional setup with Webpack/Vite plugins.
• Real-time theme switching is harder to implement.

5. TypeScript Support
Both libraries support TypeScript, but:
MUI has excellent TypeScript support, with strong typing for generics and customizable components.
Ant Design also works well with TS, though complex components like Form or Table can get tricky.

6. RTL Support (Right-to-Left)
MUI provides built-in RTL support. Just set direction: "rtl" in your theme.
Ant Design supports RTL, but requires manual setup and injecting RTL-specific styles using ConfigProvider.

7. Performance & Tree-Shaking
MUI is designed to support tree-shaking, meaning you can import only what you use, keeping bundle sizes small.
Ant Design is heavier by default, but you can optimize it using babel-plugin-import or Vite’s plugin to enable on-demand loading.

✅ Final Thoughts: Which One Should You Choose?
It depends on your project needs and design direction:
🔹 Choose MUI if you:

• Prefer Google’s Material Design
• Need easy theming and light/dark mode
• Want better TypeScript support
• Prioritize mobile-friendly design

🔸 Choose Ant Design if you:

• Are building enterprise dashboards or admin panels
• Need powerful table and form components
• Prefer a more formal, structured UI
• Don’t mind using Less and extra config

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer — both libraries are excellent. Just pick the one that matches your team’s skills and your project’s priorities.