Angular Material vs Ant Design: What are the differences?

Introduction

Angular Material and Ant Design are both popular UI component libraries for web development. While they have similarities in terms of providing a collection of ready-to-use UI components, there are key differences that set them apart.

1. Design Concept: Angular Material follows the Material Design guidelines by Google, offering a clean and modern look with a focus on simplicity and usability. Ant Design, on the other hand, is based on the design principles of Ant Financial, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, and embodies a more business-oriented and visually rich style.

2. Technology Stack: Angular Material is specifically designed for applications built with Angular, a popular JavaScript framework for developing web and mobile applications. It leverages Angular's functionality and follows Angular's development patterns. Ant Design, on the other hand, is framework-agnostic and can be used with different JavaScript frameworks or even without any framework.

3. Customization: Angular Material provides a limited level of customization, allowing developers to change colors, typography, and some components' behaviors, but it may be challenging to customize the overall design or layout extensively. Ant Design, on the other hand, offers a highly customizable library with a wide range of themes, layout options, and component styles that can be easily modified to meet specific design requirements.

4. Component Ecosystem: Angular Material offers a comprehensive set of components specifically tailored for Angular applications, including form controls, navigation components, and data tables. Ant Design provides a rich collection of enterprise-grade components that cover a wide range of use cases found in business applications, such as forms, tables, modals, and charts.

5. Documentation and Community Support: Angular Material has well-documented APIs, guides, and a large community of developers contributing to its ecosystem. It benefits from being part of the Angular ecosystem, which has a strong community and a wide adoption. Ant Design also has detailed documentation and a growing community, but being framework-agnostic, it may have less comprehensive resources related to specific frameworks.

6. Ease of Integration: Angular Material seamlessly integrates into an Angular project without much configuration, simplifying the setup process for Angular developers. Ant Design, on the other hand, can be integrated into various frameworks but may require more configuration and adjustments due to its framework-agnostic nature.

In Summary, Angular Material and Ant Design differ in their design concepts, supported technologies, customization capabilities, component ecosystems, documentation and community support, and ease of integration into different frameworks.