Angular Material vs Material
Which should you use? A side-by-side look at what each one does, who it suits, what it costs, how hard it is to set up, and where each falls short.
Open source · MIT
Official Angular UI component library (Material Design) plus tools for building custom components.
Open source · MIT
A Swift UI framework for iOS apps with Material Design-style components and animations.
The short answer
Choose Angular Material if you need…
- Angular developers who want ready-made, accessible UI components
- Teams already following Material Design guidelines
- Developers building custom components who need common interaction logic from the CDK
- Projects that want components maintained alongside the Angular framework
Choose Material if you need…
- iOS developers who want Material Design-style components without building them from scratch
- Developers maintaining existing Swift projects that already use Material
- Projects that need Material's card, text field, or navigation drawer components
Side-by-side
| Angular Material | Material | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Library | Library |
| Price | Free and open source | Free and open source |
| Licence | MIT | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 25k | 12k |
| Setup difficulty | Intermediate | Intermediate |
| How you get it | Install with a package manager | Install with a package manager |
| Main language | TypeScript | Swift |
| Last code update | 4 days ago | 4 years ago |
What each one is
Angular Material
This is the official set of UI building blocks for Angular, the web framework from Google. It includes Material Design components such as those for common interface parts, and a toolkit (the CDK) for building your own custom components with shared interaction patterns. It is split into several npm packages, including @angular/aria for accessible headless directives and @angular/google-maps and @angular/youtube-player for embedding those services.
Material
Material is a UI/UX framework for building iOS apps in Swift. It provides ready-made interface components such as cards, text fields, navigation drawers, toolbars, and floating action menus, styled after Google's Material Design look. It also uses the separate Motion library to handle animations and transitions.
Best for
Angular Material
- Angular developers who want ready-made, accessible UI components
- Teams already following Material Design guidelines
- Developers building custom components who need common interaction logic from the CDK
- Projects that want components maintained alongside the Angular framework
Material
- iOS developers who want Material Design-style components without building them from scratch
- Developers maintaining existing Swift projects that already use Material
- Projects that need Material's card, text field, or navigation drawer components
Strengths
Angular Material
- Official project maintained by the Angular team at Google
- Stated goals include accessibility, internationalization, and thorough unit and integration testing
- Released under the MIT license with a clear support policy tied to Angular's release schedule
Material
- Covers many common components (cards, drawers, tabs, search bar, snackbar) in one package
- Includes sample projects in a separate repository to learn from
- MIT license permits use in commercial projects
Not ideal for
Angular Material
- Projects not using Angular, since these packages are built specifically for it
- Teams that need a non-Material visual style without customization effort, because the components are designed within Material Design bounds
- Beginners with no Angular experience, who should learn the framework first
Material
- Teams starting a new app today, since the README lists iOS 8.0+ and Swift 4.0+ and the last push was in May 2022
- Android or cross-platform projects, since this is iOS-only
- Developers who need SwiftUI support, which the README does not mention
Trade-offs
Angular Material
- Only useful inside Angular projects
- Customization is described as working within the bounds of the Material Design specification
- README does not detail specific components or APIs; see the documentation site for those
Material
- The README targets old tooling (iOS 8.0+, Xcode 8.0+) and the last push is from 2022
- Documentation is mostly sample links and GIFs; the README gives little API detail
- The latest release lists no binaries, so you install through a dependency manager or by copying source
Getting started
Angular Material
Install Angular Material and CDK (from the Getting Started guide link; exact command not in README)
git clone https://github.com/angular/componentsMaterial
Install CocoaPods
gem install cocoapodsInstall the pod (after adding pod 'Material', '~> 3.1.0' to your Podfile)
pod installFrequently asked questions
What is the difference between Angular Material and Material?
Angular Material: Official Angular UI component library (Material Design) plus tools for building custom components. Material: A Swift UI framework for iOS apps with Material Design-style components and animations. Angular Material suits angular developers who want ready-made, accessible ui components, while Material suits ios developers who want material design-style components without building them from scratch.
Are Angular Material and Material free?
Angular Material: Free and open source. Material: Free and open source.
Is Angular Material or Material more popular?
Angular Material has more GitHub stars (25k) than Material (12k). Popularity isn't the same as fit — check which one matches your use case above.
What are other alternatives to Angular Material and Material?
Other options people compare them with include Materialize, Material Design In XAML Toolkit, SnapKit, Motion, RAMAnimatedTabBarController.
Keep comparing
Built from our catalogue entries for both products: open-source details come from each project's README (AI-assisted, refreshed weekly) and GitHub data; AI-tool details are editorial. Spotted something wrong? Let us know from either product's page.