Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Heroicons VS Font Awesome

Compare Heroicons VS Font Awesome and see what are their differences

Heroicons logo Heroicons

Beautiful, free SVG icons from the makers of Tailwind CSS.

Font Awesome logo Font Awesome

Font Awesome makes it easy to add vector icons and social logos to your website. And version 5 is redesigned and built from the ground up!
  • Heroicons Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-02-25
  • Font Awesome Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-02-09

Heroicons features and specs

  • Open Source
    Heroicons is an open-source project, which means it is free to use, modify, and distribute without licensing concerns.
  • Comprehensive Collection
    Heroicons offers a broad range of icons that cover many common use cases, providing designers and developers with a versatile set of tools.
  • High Quality
    The icons are meticulously designed, ensuring they are visually appealing and consistent. This enhances the overall aesthetic of any project they are used in.
  • Easy Integration
    Heroicons can be easily integrated into projects via SVG or as a React component, making it user-friendly for different development environments.
  • Regular Updates
    The project is actively maintained with regular updates and new icon additions, ensuring that users have access to the latest design trends and functionality.
  • Variety of Styles
    Heroicons comes in both outline and solid styles, giving users flexibility to choose the best fit for their design needs.

Possible disadvantages of Heroicons

  • Limited Customization
    While Heroicons provides high-quality icons, the customization options are limited compared to some premium icon libraries that offer extensive customization capabilities.
  • Performance Impact
    Depending on how they are implemented, using a large number of SVGs can have a performance impact on page load times, especially for resource-constrained devices.
  • Dependency on React
    For users who prefer using the icons as React components, there is a dependency on the React library, which might not be ideal for projects using other frameworks.
  • No Enterprise Support
    As an open-source project, Heroicons does not come with enterprise-level support, which may be a concern for larger organizations needing guaranteed assistance.
  • Icon Coverage Gaps
    Although Heroicons covers many common use cases, it might lack specific icons needed for niche industries or specialized applications.

Font Awesome features and specs

  • Comprehensive Icon Library
    Font Awesome offers a vast collection of icons, providing a wide range of options for different use cases and making it easier for developers to find the perfect icon to fit their needs.
  • Easy Integration
    Font Awesome can be easily integrated into web projects using either a CDN link or by downloading the icon set. This makes it convenient for developers to start using icons quickly without extensive setup.
  • Scalability
    Since Font Awesome icons are vector-based, they are infinitely scalable without losing quality. This ensures that icons look sharp on all devices and screen resolutions.
  • Customizable
    Font Awesome icons can be customized easily with CSS, allowing developers to change colors, sizes, and even create animations to match the design of their projects.
  • Consistent Design
    The icons in Font Awesome are designed to be consistent with each other in terms of style, line weight, and aesthetic, which helps in maintaining a uniform look across a web project.
  • Accessibility
    Font Awesome includes ARIA attributes and support for screen readers, ensuring that icons can be interpreted correctly by assistive technologies for better accessibility.

Possible disadvantages of Font Awesome

  • File Size
    Font Awesome can add substantial size to web projects, particularly if the entire library is imported. This can slow down load times, especially on mobile devices or slower internet connections.
  • Dependence on External Resources
    Using a CDN for Font Awesome can create a dependency on external resources. If the CDN is down or blocked, the icons will not display correctly.
  • License Fees
    While Font Awesome offers a free version, the Pro version with more icons and features requires a subscription. This can be a limitation for projects with tight budgets.
  • Overhead for Simple Projects
    For small projects that only require a few icons, using Font Awesome can be overkill. The overhead of including the entire library may not be justified when only a handful of icons are needed.
  • Potential for Version Conflicts
    Using Font Awesome alongside other libraries or different versions of Font Awesome can sometimes lead to conflicts, resulting in icons not displaying correctly or styling issues.
  • Limited to Available Icons
    Despite its large collection, users are restricted to the icons available in Font Awesome. Custom or niche icons that aren't included in the library will need to be sourced or created elsewhere.

Heroicons videos

The Perfect Icons for Tailwind CSS: Heroicons

Font Awesome videos

Star Ratings With JavaScript & Font Awesome

More videos:

  • Review - Add Font Awesome Icons to our Buttons, freeCodeCamp Bootstrap Review, lesson 13
  • Review - Add Font Awesome Icons to all of our Buttons, freeCodeCamp Bootstrap Review, lesson 14

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Heroicons and Font Awesome)
Web Icons
36 36%
64% 64
Vector Icons
30 30%
70% 70
Design Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Icon Fonts
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Heroicons and Font Awesome. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Heroicons and Font Awesome

Font Awesome Reviews

Revolutionize Your Icon Collection: 5 CSS Icon Sites to Boost Your Web Designs
Font Awesome is one of the most comprehensive libraries of CSS icons available, with over 1,500 scalable vector icons that can be customized using CSS classes.
7 Best Free Icon Libraries
While Font Awesome was a font-based asset library i.e font icon library, Bootstrap chose to use SVG-based icons. At this time, Bootstrap Icons consists of over 1,000 ready-to-use library icons in the alpha version.
Source: www.atatus.com
The Best Free And Paid Icon Fonts - Font Awesome Alternatives
On the Internet, you can easily find many services that give everyone thousands of beautiful icons for free or for a fee. With their help, you can design a website or a page on a social network. There are many alternatives to Font Awesome, but, unfortunately, there are few Russian-language sites. Although, even without translation, it is clear how to find the desired icon...
Source: www.wcido.com
9 FontAwesome Alternatives That Are Equally As Good
FontAwesome is by far one of the most popular source for font icons, with a huge collection of icons. But it is highly unnecessary to download the whole collection when you need to use just a few.
10 Best Fontello Alternatives 2021
Similar to other vector makers and Fontello, you can use Font Awesome to create custom icons of your own using a variety of colors, shapes, and font styles. When you’re done, you can share your newly minted icons with others or save them directly on your computer.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Font Awesome should be more popular than Heroicons. It has been mentiond 128 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Heroicons mentions (72)

  • 2024 Nuxt3 Annual Ecosystem Summary🚀
    Document Address: Heroicons Official Document. - Source: dev.to / 15 days ago
  • Day 11: There's a Hero! 🦸
    Today I'd like to share with you a beautiful icon library: Heroicons. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • 10 game-changing tools that level up Svelte developers in 2025 💪
    Svelte Heros is a collection of free, open-source SVG icons built specifically for Svelte. It’s based on Heroicons and is incredibly easy to integrate into your Svelte projects. With over 200 icons, Svelte Heros offers easy access to a wide range of icons while keeping your app lightweight and performant. Github repository →. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Marrying Tailwind with Jekyll
    Surprisingly, in many projects, I don't really need more than what Jekyll can offer. So, I remain a loyal user. Until recently, I didn't have much to complain about, not until I decided to rebuild poshtui.com with Tailwind CSS. The only way to add Tailwind and Heroicons was through a JavaScript bundler, and I'm no longer used to that approach. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Icons gem for Phlex
    When it comes to building sleek, interactive UIs, having access to a robust set of icons is essential. Over the last few weeks, I've been migrating one of my projects from ERBs to Phlex. During this process, I found myself frequently reaching for SVG icons from popular libraries like Heroicons, Bootstrap icons, and Flag icons. After some frustration with manual integration into a Shared::Icon Phlex component, I... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
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Font Awesome mentions (128)

  • 17 Free Open-source Icon Libraries (Carefully Curated List, Filterable & Sortable) - Need Feedback
    FontAwesome - Internet's icon library and toolkits. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Creating Gradient Buttons with Animated Text using CSS
    The I element is the icon of the button, I'm using fontawesome.com for the icon, the class fa-apple retrives Apple icon for us. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • How to build a Good Portfolio Website - My Approach.
    Icons: Fontawesome Development: HTML, SCSS, JavaScript Deployment: Github + Netlify. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Adding Symbols in text.
    For generic icons (i.e. You just need a d6 and not a system-specific d6 option), Foundry has Font Awesome which are easy to search, then copy and insert, and always look good inline. Source: about 1 year ago
  • [Accessibility] Points to Consider When Adding aria-label to Icon Font Elements
    The following is an example of defining Font Awesome:. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Heroicons and Font Awesome, you can also consider the following products

Feather Icons - Simply beautiful open source icons

Flaticon - A database of free vector icons.

Tabler Icons - 550+ free fully customizable SVG icons

The Noun Project - Creating, Sharing and Celebrating the World's Visual Language

Icons8 - Free app for Mac & Windows already containing 39,800 icons. Allows to search and import icons…

IconStore - Free icon packs by first-class designers