shadcn/ui vs Material UI Developer Guide 2026 (opens in new tab)

\shadcn/ui and Material UI optimise for opposite priorities. Choose shadcn/ui to own your component code, ship a near-zero runtime, and control every pixel; choose Material UI (MUI) for breadth — 90+ components and a paid data grid — behind Google's Material Design. shadcn/ui has ~116,000 GitHub stars and ships copy-paste components; MUI has ~98,000 stars and ~7.3M weekly npm downloads. Both are MIT-licensed and free for commercial use. This guide covers the parts you only learn by shipping b...