Compare design systems
Choosing a design system is mostly choosing an approach. This page compares the approaches, links to the head-to-head pages, and says plainly where Orvain UI is the weaker choice.
Head to head#
- Orvain UI vs shadcn/ui: shadcn/ui is the default answer for a React project that wants owned, Tailwind-styled components and nothing else to manage. Orvain is aimed at teams who also need the design file and the code to stay the same thing.
- Orvain UI vs Untitled UI: Untitled UI is the most established answer to wanting a very large Figma library with React components alongside it. Orvain is a narrower system built around the design file and the code being generated from one description of a component.
Other tools are described by how they are built, never by price or version, because those change and a wrong claim about someone else's product is worse than none.
What kinds of design system are there?#
These are categories, not rankings, and the examples are illustrations of an approach. Real products often combine two of them.
How do you choose?#
Pick Orvain UI when design-to-code parity, React and Vue from one source, or letting AI tools read your real components matters most. Pick something else when you need the widest catalogue today, a long production track record, or a free, open-source base you can copy and own outright. The Orvain code library and MCP server are not shipped yet, so the Figma library is the part you can use now.
For a longer read on the criteria, see how to choose a React design system.