Material UI (MUI) vs Ant Design: which to use?

What each one is

Material UI is an open source React library that implements Google's Material Design. You install @mui/material from npm with Emotion, the default styling engine, and theme it through a JavaScript theme object. The core library is MIT and free, and its all components page lists about 57 components plus Lab and MUI X. MUI X adds a data grid, date and time pickers, charts and a tree view, with a free MIT Community tier and paid Pro and Premium tiers. The same organization publishes Base UI, an unstyled component library.

Ant Design is an enterprise class UI design language and React library from Ant Group and the Ant Design community. You install antd from npm; theming is done with CSS-in-JS, and the site offers a Theme Editor. The components overview lists about 73 components, with deep data entry pieces such as Cascader, Transfer, TreeSelect, Mentions and Upload, and the ecosystem adds Ant Design Pro, ProComponents, Charts, Mobile and Ant Design X. It is MIT licensed, and it was at version 6.6.6 when we checked.

Where Material UI shines

• Material Design. It is the direct implementation of Google's guidelines, which helps when the design team works from them.
• MUI X. A data grid with row grouping, aggregation and pivoting, plus date and time pickers, charts and a tree view, with paid tiers sold per developer.
• A long track record. The library has years of history, and updates arrive through npm.
• Wide React support. The peer dependencies accept React 17, 18 and 19.
• An unstyled sibling. The MUI organization also publishes Base UI, for teams that want the behavior without Material styling.

Where Ant Design shines

• Data entry depth. Cascader, Transfer, TreeSelect, Mentions and Upload are part of the free library and are made for dense enterprise screens.
• Scaffolding. Ant Design Pro and ProComponents add structure on top of the components for internal tools and admin software.
• A wide ecosystem. Related libraries include Ant Design Charts, Mobile, Mini, Web3 and Ant Design X for AI interfaces.
• Theme Editor. CSS-in-JS theming supports dynamic and mixed themes, and the site offers a Theme Editor.
• Docs for coding agents. The home page links to a docs page written for coding agents.

The trade-offs

• Where the advanced parts live. Ant Design's deep data entry components are in the free MIT library. Material UI's core is free too, but its most advanced data components are in MUI X, with Pro and Premium tiers priced per developer per year.
• Design language. Both ship a complete visual language, so your product will look like Material Design or like Ant Design until you theme it. Pick the one closer to where your design is going.
• Upgrades. Both update through npm. Ant Design moves through major versions with their own styling changes, so read its changelog before upgrading an older antd codebase.
• Framework reach. Material UI is a React library. Ant Design's home page also lists Angular and Vue versions, which matters for organizations with more than one frontend stack.

Where MiniDev UI fits

MiniDev UI takes a different route from both: a free, MIT licensed shadcn-compatible registry that copies source into your repo, styled with Tailwind CSS v4 instead of CSS-in-JS and built on Base UI, the unstyled library from the MUI organization. It fits teams that want to own the code and start from finished product and marketing screens, such as an admin console, a users table and analytics and settings pages.

It is not a replacement for MUI X's data grid or for Ant Design's deepest data entry components; for large internal systems those two remain the stronger tools. See MiniDev UI vs Material UI and MiniDev UI vs Ant Design.