According to its website, Bootstrap is the "most popular HTML, CSS, and JS library in the world." Yet usage trends show a different picture: Bootstrap receives roughly five million weekly downloads on npm, while Tailwind CSS now surpasses thirty million. For many developers, Tailwind has already become the default choice for new projects.
Upbringing
Bootstrap was developed in 2011 at Twitter as a framework to encourage consistency among internal tools. Once added to a project, Bootstrap provides basic style definitions for all HTML elements. The result is a uniform appearance across all web browsers.
Tailwind CSS was first released in 2019. It generates a list of utility CSS classes that can be used to style each element. The creator of the framework came up with this approach because he felt it was more maintainable.
The utilities were the only things that were truly "portable", while the component styles were always too opinionated to reuse on another design.
Adam Wathan, creator of Tailwind CSS
Utility-First vs. Component-First
Bootstrap provides predefined components. Its utility classes are limited and must be added manually to the Sass utilities API. In contrast, Tailwind automatically generates missing classes on the fly.
The utility classes that Bootstrap includes are inconsistent compared to Tailwind's consistent use of spacing multiplied by the specified number:
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Tailwind's utility-first approach exposes proportional (
w-1/4), fixed (w-4), and arbitrary (w-[4px]) sizing through predictable naming. This approach gives developers more control and reduces the need for custom CSS.A practical benefit of this philosophy is the size of the output. Tailwind's default CSS build is only about 4.5 kB because unused utilities are removed. In contrast, Bootstrap's bundled CSS is around 230 kB because it includes all utilities, even those that are never used.
Framework Integration
Modern JavaScript tooling reflects the shift to Tailwind. For instance, when initializing a new React project with Bun, Bootstrap is not offered as a template option. The only options are setting up a blank project or using Tailwind.
Bun's React templates
Ruby on Rails still includes Bootstrap as an option via
rails new <app> --css bootstrap, but the experience is far from smooth. Creating a new project produces thousands of deprecation warnings, signaling an aging integration that has not kept pace with modern CSS workflows.
Deprecation warnings when compiling Bootstrap
The tailwindcss-rails Ruby gem includes a Puma plugin that runs its file watcher within the same process as the Rails server. Therefore, no additional terminal process is necessary. Bootstrap, on the other hand, still requires a separate SASS compilation step, which is usually done with Foreman via
npm run watch:css. A Tailwind-only Rails project can avoid package.json and Node modules entirely, reducing build complexity. This is closer to the "no build" workflow and aligns more with the direction of modern Rails.Documentation and Learnability
Searching for a CSS property in Bootstrap's documentation is difficult. For instance, the width property is hidden in the "sizing" section. Tailwind's documentation, on the other hand, provides a comprehensive list of all CSS properties and their mappings to Tailwind classes, which makes the transition from raw CSS to utility classes straightforward.
Searching for "width" in Tailwind (left) brings up the page for element width. Bootstrap (right) shows border width and progress bar sizing instead.
A Changing Default
Bootstrap remains usable and familiar, but its design shows its age. Modern CSS layouts, such as Flexbox and Grid, offer less responsiveness within Bootstrap's 12-column grid system. Tailwind's ecosystem and developer experience reflect current expectations for front-end tooling. Its utility system allows for more customization, its output is smaller, and its workflow avoids legacy build steps. Frameworks increasingly adopt Tailwind as the default.
The trend is not subtle: Tailwind is replacing Bootstrap as the modern standard.
