Angular Material vs Bootstrap: Choose the Best UI Library for Angular
Lucian Moldovan 
Angular Material and Bootstrap are both presented in our Top 5 Best Angular UI frameworks and in this article, we will put them in a side-by-side comparison to help you choose the best solution for your Angular project.
Angular Material is the official UI component library provided by the Angular team, that integrates seamlessly with Angular.
The library is well-tested, contains a lot of components, and offers the tools to build your own. It follows the Material Design specifications created by Google that support the best practices of user interface design.
NG Bootstrap is a very popular UI framework, developed by Twitter which got its place in the Angular ecosystem by being wrapped into an Angular library by the people at ng-bootstrap. It contains all the goodies that the Bootstrap library has to offer.
The comparison table below contains the major factors when choosing a UI library. If you want to find more details about each of them, you can click on it and you will be scrolled to the corresponding section.
Angular Material | NG Bootstrap | |
| Use case | Personal to enterprise projects | Personal to professional projects |
| Components | – Form Controls: Autocomplete, Button, Button toggle, Checkbox, Date picker, Form field, Radio, Select - Navigation / Layout: Bottom sheet, Card, Dialog, Divider, Expansion panel, Grid list, List, Menu, Paginator, Slider, Sidenav, Snackbar, Stepper, Table, Tabs, Toolbar -Global: Badge, Chips, Icon, Progress bar & spinner, Ripples | – Form controls: Datepicker, Dropdown, Time picker, Type ahead – Navigation/Layout: Accordion, Carousel, Collapse, Modal, Nav, Offcanvas, Pagination, Table – Global: Alert, Progress Bar, Popover, Rating, Toast, Tooltip |
| Developer | Angular/Google | NG Bootstrap / Twitter |
| Performance/ Track Record/ Documentation | – Performant components – No external dependencies – Easy upgrade | – Performant components – Dependency on Bootstrap CSS and Popper – Relatively easy upgrade |
| PROS | – Free to use – A lot of common-use components – Maintained by the Angular team – Good documentation and track record | – Free to use – Familiar-looking components – Large community |
| CONS | -Material Design system – might be an issue if you don’t like the material style | -It is maintained by a relatively small team so there’s always the risk of shutting down the library, although it’s unlikely as it’s supported by a large community |
Use case
The use case for Angular Material is pretty wide as it offers a lot of common components, you can use it from personal projects to enterprise applications, where there is no need for complex data visualization as the library does not provide chart components or powerful table/data grids.
The use case for NG Bootstrap is very wide as it offers a lot of common components that can be used from personal to professional projects.
Developer
It’s always important to make sure that the tools you use will be supported for the long term. Both libraries are developed by some of the big names in the industry, although the NG Bootstrap library is created by a smaller team, but it’s supported by a large community.
Performance/Track record/Documentation
When choosing a UI library the performance, track record, and documentation are very important as you don’t want to use a library that will slow you down instead of helping your application.
Both libraries have a great track record, and documentation and contain performant components, although the NG Bootstrap has some external dependencies.
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