MiniDev UI vs HeroUI: which should you use?

What each one is

HeroUI is the library previously known as NextUI. Version 3 combines React Aria Components for behavior and accessibility with Tailwind CSS v4 for styling. You install it from npm as @heroui/react plus @heroui/styles, import the styles after Tailwind, and use components with a compound API such as Card.Header and Card.Content. No provider wrapper is required. The open source library is MIT. A separate paid product, HeroUI Pro, adds more components and blocks, full-page templates, design systems and AI tooling, and there is also HeroUI Native for React Native apps.

MiniDev UI is a free, MIT licensed shadcn-compatible registry of over 500 items built on Base UI, Tailwind CSS v4 and motion. Instead of importing from a package, you add items with the shadcn CLI and the source lands in your project. The focus is product work: data tables, billing and invoice screens, settings layouts, command palettes, notification centers and AI chat, plus about 43 full-page blocks and 86 motion components, all drawing from one set of semantic tokens.

Where HeroUI shines

• Accessibility depth. React Aria is one of the most thorough accessibility foundations in React, with careful keyboard, focus and screen reader behavior, including for date, time and color fields.
• A versioned package. Updates arrive through npm, so fixes reach your app with a version bump instead of a manual merge.
• Web and native. HeroUI Native gives React Native projects a related component set, which helps teams shipping both.
• A consistent, attractive default look. Components look finished out of the box, and several prebuilt themes are available.
• AI support. An official MCP server, llms.txt indexes and agent skills help coding assistants use the library correctly.

Where MiniDev UI shines

• You own the code. Every component is a file in your repo, so changing markup or behavior is an edit, not an override.
• Finished product screens for free. Billing, settings, sign in, admin consoles and chat pages are part of the MIT registry, with no paid tier.
• A visual system. One light source drives shadows across the page, and a data-material attribute switches between hairline, glass, metal and paper.
• Motion included. About 86 motion components built on motion sit next to the UI components and share the same tokens.

Using them together or migrating

Both target Tailwind CSS v4, so they can live in one project. The main thing to watch is CSS variables: HeroUI's theme uses short names such as --accent, and MiniDev also defines --accent (its brand violet) along with the standard shadcn names. Whichever stylesheet loads later wins for overlapping names, so check both light and dark mode after adding the second library. Keeping each library to its own area, for example HeroUI in an existing app and MiniDev UI blocks for new pages, avoids most surprises.

If you are moving screens from HeroUI to MiniDev UI, go one route at a time. Event props differ because HeroUI follows React Aria conventions (for example onPress on buttons) while MiniDev components use standard DOM props such as onClick. Compound components like Card.Header map to named exports in MiniDev, such as CardHeader and CardContent. Data-heavy screens are the easiest place to start, since a MiniDev block often replaces a hand-assembled page.

npx shadcn@latest add https://ui.minidev.pro/r/billing-page.json

Which to pick

• Choose HeroUI if you prefer a maintained npm package, want React Aria accessibility, or also build for React Native.
• Choose MiniDev UI if you want the source in your repo, need application screens and page blocks, and want all of it free under MIT.
• Choose both carefully if you already run HeroUI and want MiniDev blocks for new areas; plan the shared CSS variable names up front.