Tailwind CSS
FeaturedRapidly build custom designs without leaving your HTML
Open Source
About Tailwind CSS
Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework that provides low-level utility classes for building custom designs directly in your HTML. Instead of writing custom CSS, developers compose styles using pre-defined classes like flex, pt-4, and text-center. It has become one of the most popular CSS frameworks due to its speed of development and the consistency it brings to design systems.
Key Features
- Utility-first classes covering layout, spacing, typography, color, and more
- Just-in-time compiler that generates only the CSS you actually use
- Built-in dark mode support with the dark: variant
- Responsive design with mobile-first breakpoint prefixes
- Customizable design system through tailwind.config.js
- First-party plugins for forms, typography, aspect ratios, and container queries
- Seamless integration with component frameworks like React, Vue, and Svelte
Pros & Cons
What we like
- Dramatically speeds up UI development once you learn the class conventions
- Produces tiny CSS bundles in production thanks to tree-shaking unused styles
- Enforces design consistency through a constrained set of spacing, color, and sizing tokens
- Eliminates context-switching between HTML and CSS files
- Excellent documentation with searchable class references and examples
Room for improvement
- HTML can become cluttered and hard to read with many utility classes
- Steep learning curve for developers used to traditional CSS or BEM methodology
- Requires build tooling setup, unlike dropping in a CDN stylesheet
- Custom designs outside the utility system still require writing raw CSS or using @apply
Best For
Rapid prototyping and MVP developmentBuilding design systems and component librariesMarketing landing pages and static websitesDashboard and admin panel interfacesRefactoring legacy CSS into a consistent, maintainable system
