// IN-DEPTH ICON LIBRARY COMPARISON

Ant Design Icons vs Material Icons (2026)

When building modern web applications, choosing the right icon library can significantly impact both your application's aesthetic and its performance. In this comprehensive comparison, we pit Ant Design Icons against Material Icons to help you make an informed decision for your React, Next.js, Vue, or Svelte project.

Together, these libraries represent some of the most popular open-source UI assets available today. Ant Design Icons boasts an impressive 840 icons (licensed under MIT), while Material Icons counters with 2,100 highly-polished icons (licensed under MIT).

Below, we dive into the technical details: bundle size impacts, tree-shaking capabilities, TypeScript support, explicit commercial licensing rules, and real-world implementation examples.

Ant Design Icons
840
icons
8,700 stars · MIT
View full guide →
VS
Material Icons
2,100
icons
98,300 stars · MIT
View full guide →

TECHNICAL FEATURE COMPARISON

When comparing Ant Design Icons and Material Icons, developer experience features like TypeScript definitions and tree-shaking support are just as important as the icon count. Review the matrix below to see how they stack up.

FEATURE
Ant Design Icons
Material Icons
Total Icons
840
2,100
GitHub Stars
8,700
98,300
License
MIT
MIT
TypeScript
✓ Yes
✓ Yes
Tree Shakable
✓ Yes
✓ Yes
Figma Plugin
✓ Yes
✓ Yes
Styles
outline, filled, twotone
filled, outlined, rounded, sharp, twotone
Frameworks
react, vue
react, nextjs

DESIGN AESTHETICS & VISUAL STYLE

Beyond the code, the visual identity of your application is heavily influenced by your choice of iconography. Ant Design Icons primarily features a outline aesthetic, whereas Material Icons leans toward a filled look.

Ant Design Icons is designed with strict geometric rules and a consistent grid, ensuring that all 840 icons share the same visual weight. This makes it particularly well-suited for professional dashboards, enterprise SaaS products, and minimal user interfaces.

On the other hand, Material Icons offers a more distinct personality. With its 2,100 carefully crafted icons, it can bring warmth and character to consumer-facing mobile apps, marketing websites, and creative portfolios.

LICENSING & COMMERCIAL USE DEEP-DIVE

Legal compliance is critical when selecting assets for a commercial software project. Understanding the nuances between the MIT license used by Ant Design Icons and the MIT license used by Material Icons will ensure your project remains risk-free.

Ant Design IconsMIT

Ant Design Icons uses the MIT License — one of the most permissive open-source licenses. You can use it in any commercial project, modify the icons, and redistribute them freely. The only requirement is preserving the copyright notice in copies of the software.

✓ COMMERCIAL USE
Free for personal, commercial, and SaaS projects without recurring fees.
Material IconsMIT

Material Icons uses the MIT License — one of the most permissive open-source licenses. You can use it in any commercial project, modify the icons, and redistribute them freely. The only requirement is preserving the copyright notice in copies of the software.

✓ COMMERCIAL USE
Free for personal, commercial, and SaaS projects without recurring fees.
Read our complete Icon Library License Guide (MIT vs ISC vs Apache) →

PERFORMANCE & BUNDLE SIZE

Modern front-end frameworks like React and Next.js heavily penalize large JavaScript bundles. This makes tree-shaking—the ability of a bundler to remove unused code—a crucial factor when choosing between Ant Design Icons and Material Icons.

  • Ant Design Icons Performance: Because Ant Design Icons supports tree-shaking, importing a single icon will only add a tiny fraction of a kilobyte to your final bundle. You can safely install the entire package without performance concerns.
  • Material Icons Performance: Similarly, Material Icons is fully tree-shakable. Your Webpack or Turbopack build step will strip out any unused icons, ensuring your First Contentful Paint (FCP) metrics remain exceptional.

REACT IMPORT SYNTAX & INTEGRATION

Here is how you actually write the code to import and use each library in a React or Next.js component. Both libraries offer distinct APIs and integration patterns.

Ant Design Icons Integration
import { SmileTwoTone } from '@ant-design/icons'

export default function App() {
  return <SmileTwoTone twoToneColor='#eb2f96' style={{ fontSize: '24px' }} />
}
Material Icons Integration
import HomeIcon from '@mui/icons-material/Home'
import HomeOutlinedIcon from '@mui/icons-material/HomeOutlined'
import SearchIcon from '@mui/icons-material/Search'
import DeleteIcon from '@mui/icons-material/Delete'

// ✅ Path imports — up to 6x faster in dev than barrel imports
// ❌ Avoid: import { HomeIcon } from '@mui/icons-material'

export default function App() {
  return (
    <div>
      {/* Filled — bold, solid, for primary actions */}
      <HomeIcon />

      {/* Outlined — minimal stroke-style, for supporting UI */}
      <HomeOutlinedIcon />

      {/* Sizing via fontSize prop */}
      <SearchIcon fontSize="small" />   {/* 20px */}
      <SearchIcon fontSize="medium" />  {/* 24px default */}
      <SearchIcon fontSize="large" />   {/* 35px */}
      <SearchIcon sx={{ fontSize: 48 }} />

      {/* Color via MUI theme tokens or custom hex */}
      <DeleteIcon color="error" />
      <DeleteIcon sx={{ color: '#6366f1' }} />
    </div>
  )
}

FINAL VERDICT: WHICH SHOULD YOU CHOOSE?

Still undecided? Here is our definitive breakdown of when to use Ant Design Icons versus when to opt for Material Icons.

CHOOSE ANT DESIGN ICONS IF...
Three distinct themes
Native React components
Dynamic TwoTone coloring
Enterprise grade
CHOOSE MATERIAL ICONS IF...
5 style variants per icon — Filled, Outlined, Rounded, Sharp, TwoTone from one package
Most downloaded React icon package — 5.1M weekly npm installs, 98K GitHub stars
Native MUI integration — sx prop, theme color tokens, fontSize scale all work out of the box
Google's official Material Design visual language — recognized by billions of Android and web users
Works in Next.js Server Components — renders static SVG HTML with no use client required
Full TypeScript support — SvgIconProps type covers sx, color, fontSize, and className

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Which is better: Ant Design Icons or Material Icons?

Choosing between Ant Design Icons and Material Icons depends entirely on your project's technical requirements and design aesthetic. Ant Design Icons provides 840 icons and is notable for three distinct themes, while Material Icons offers 2,100 icons and is best known for 5 style variants per icon — filled, outlined, rounded, sharp, twotone from one package.

Are Ant Design Icons and Material Icons completely free to use?

Yes. Both libraries are highly permissive open-source projects. Ant Design Icons is licensed under MIT, and Material Icons is licensed under MIT. Both licenses permit free commercial usage, modification, and redistribution in both personal and enterprise projects.

Do these libraries support TypeScript natively?

Yes, Ant Design Icons includes excellent built-in TypeScript definitions. Similarly, Material Icons offers robust native TypeScript support for an improved developer experience.

OUR RECOMMENDATION

✓ CHOOSE ANT DESIGN ICONS IF YOU...
  • Need a library with 840 icons and outline/filled/twotone style options
  • Want tree-shakable imports to keep bundles small
  • Require first-class TypeScript support in your codebase
  • Are building with react, vue
  • Need a Figma plugin for designer-developer handoff
✓ CHOOSE MATERIAL ICONS IF YOU...
  • Need a library with 2,100 icons and filled/outlined/rounded/sharp/twotone style options
  • Want tree-shakable imports to keep bundles small
  • Require first-class TypeScript support in your codebase
  • Are building with react, nextjs
  • Need a Figma plugin for designer-developer handoff

Still unsure? Try our interactive quiz to get a personalized recommendation, or search 350,000+ icons from both libraries side by side. You can also check our live stats dashboard for real-time download and GitHub star trends.

NPM INSTALLATION COMMANDS

Install Ant Design Icons
npm install @ant-design/icons
Install Material Icons
npm install @mui/icons-material @mui/material @emotion/styled @emotion/react

RELATED RESOURCES

Ant Design Icons — Comprehensive License, Installation & React GuideMaterial Icons — Comprehensive License, Installation & React GuideSearch 15,000+ Icons Across All Libraries InstantlyIcon Library License Guide — MIT vs Apache vs ISC ExplainedFind the Best Icons For Your Project — Interactive Wizard

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