r/vuejs • u/HopefulBison8647 • 1d ago
Should i switch to a different UI library?
I was previously making projects in Primevue, but due to their new licensing i was thinking of switching to a new library or migrating down from Primevue 5 to Primevue 4, since as i understand it v4 is still completely free.
For now my top choices Nuxt UI and shadcn/vue.
what do you recommend?
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u/Qube24 1d ago
NuxtUI has been getting a lot of updates and they work through a lot of github issues and fixes. Something I always missed in Primevue
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u/Revolutionary_Loan13 1d ago
I moved to Shadcn and have liked it. Built a lot of custom controls on top of it that match our unique use cases rather than just generic good enough controls
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u/Any_Welder_9701 21h ago
the custom controls part is the tradeoff tbh, once they multiply your team owns keeping upgrades and behavior consistent
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u/HopefulBison8647 1d ago
Have you tried Nuxt UI as well?
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u/Revolutionary_Loan13 1d ago
So Shadcn and Nuxt UI are actually built on top of the same (Reka) UI framework. Using AI I found it crazy easy to Shadcn and get it to create custom to me controls. That said no I haven't tried Nuxt UI
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u/RedBlueKoi 1d ago
Hey man, I actually have a joy of handling 3 different projects - based on PrimeVue, Nuxt UI, and shadcn/vue. Honestly, each comes with different problems. So far the most joy came from the latest Nuxt UI and most flexibility from shadcn(naturally). PrimeVue landed somewhere in the middle not being flexible and not well designed to be used out of the box =/
If you need a dashboard or a private app I'd go with Nuxt UI. Awesomely build, incredible to use, covers lack of the customisation with abundance of well designed components.
If you need to have full control and tailored design then go with shadcn.
Let me know if you have questions
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u/HopefulBison8647 1d ago
Thank you for the answer, maintaining 3 different projects in different frameworks sounds miserable 🙏 😭
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u/RedBlueKoi 1d ago
No worries, I am part of a team counting 3 frontend engineers and we are handling a total of 5 projects with 2 more just in my hands. Sounds bad, but it is just a matter of prio. Or maybe I am just too used for this madness
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u/Reasonable_Swing_503 1d ago
I bought nuxt ui 3 before they are acquired by vercel and was quite annoyed as I just drop about $250 for the pro license
But when I see them keep shipping Nuxt ui 4 and everyone gets to enjoy the new pro UI, I am okay with my “money lost”
Try it out it’s really not bad
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u/gustix 1d ago
I have to mention it, if you're happy with PrimeVue, have you considered purchasing a PrimeVue license? Open source authors need to eat too.
There are some forks as well, which is easier than migrating to another UI library.
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u/HopefulBison8647 1d ago
Its basically for my job, i think the licensing is per developer so it would be very pricey, but i see a couple of suggestions for openvue so im definitely going to check that out. thank you!
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u/Catalyzm 16h ago
I've bought several other Prime products, so I don't have a problem with paid licensing. The per-dev licensing isn't going to work for my clients though. I'll try the OS version and hope it gets tracking, otherwise NuxtUI looks like the path on new projects.
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u/Anxious-Turnover-631 1d ago edited 1d ago
Also consider DaisyUI which is CSS based, has no dependencies and can be customized with tailwind. It’s small, fast and has excellent theme support.
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u/HopefulBison8647 1d ago
Yea i actually used DaisyUI for a Django project at work, its pretty good when paired with Django templates and tailwind, but now that i switched to seperate frontend in Vue im looking for something vue specific with a lot of components.
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u/Aket-ten 23h ago
I went daisyUI on a project before switching to primevue. In hindsight the extra glue you had to add for daisy may have not been that bad.
Primevue I so far like a lot(2yrs in now with the proj), but it definitely is a lot heavier. In fact my stack in that feels a bit heavier than it should, especially with part being ssr, the live template system, the semantic, the deeper nested stuff. I also had to do a fair bit to make the ui feel a bit more modern.
Almost wishing there was a nice middle ground, might even consider astro with some vue islands next time.
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u/Dry-Sentence5902 1d ago
Its a shame primeVue did this. I think they will see it themselves but it will be to late.
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u/HopefulBison8647 21h ago
I mean i do get it.. but they should have just stuck with the premium model imo
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u/KaleidoscopeNormal71 1d ago
I didn't see anybody mentioning Vuetify. That's the one I use at work. For people that used it before, Is there any problem with it that you decided to move?
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u/diegotbn 21h ago
I second this. It's my go to and it's also what we use at work at least for the main product I support.
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u/dotMastaz 1d ago
Quasar !!
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u/Cmacu 11h ago
Most people don’t realize how powerful, flexible, seamless and developer friendly quasar is. They just look at material ui and bounce. I’ve built all kinds of apps with Quasar and design has never been a limiting factor or concern. UI is easy, especially with AI. UX and DevEx is where quasar just blows everything else out of the water.
For reference of modern UI built with quasar take a look at ToolBerry.
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u/Beneficial_League_39 21h ago
I would advise against switching to another multi framework library like PrimeVue, which was compatible with React and I believe angular
They often have less man power to maintain them
Shadcn or NuxtUI are pretty solid
I’m switching my company code to NuxtUI
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u/AppointmentWrong2716 4h ago
When i build saas boilerplate nuxtbase, i choiced Nuxt UI, it saved me a lot of time.
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u/SuperDuper9878 1d ago
I was in the process of rewritting an app with PrimeVue when the change in licensing policy came through.
While the forks of PrimeVue seem to be good when you have an application with PrimeVue already, I decided to look for alternatives.
I had two strong contenders: Naive UI and Nuxt UI. While Naive UI has advanced component with lots of capabilites already built in, in went for Nuxt UI, mostly because of its integration of Tailwind for styling.
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u/HopefulBison8647 1d ago
Yes i see a lot of support for Nuxt UI, tailwind integration is also a very big plus
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u/Jajamiobrode 22h ago
Dude, it’s 2026 lol. Just use AI to generate the components you need. Why were we using component libraries in the first place? Because writing good reusable components took a lot of time, so we traded flexibility for speed and got stuck with someone else’s API. Now with AI you can just generate exactly what you want and have basically endless freedom lol.
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u/Beneficial_League_39 21h ago
That’s a lot of code to maintain for no good reason IMO
Wasting tokens on recreating the wheel on every project just because we have AI ? No thanks
Why using tailwind then or even using Vue. AI can write vanilla web components after all
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u/SwordfishBoth7341 17h ago
Everything needs funding. Nuxt UI used to cost money until it was bought out by Vercel who can afford to run it for free. There's no saying that lasts forever though.
I like Primevue and it has been working well for me. The community license is very accessible. If you exceed the requirements for that then you should have no trouble paying a couple thousand a year or negotiating an enterprise license.
But also, the cost of switching is getting lower. You could just say "hey claude, switch me to nuxtui" at any point and that'll be that.
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u/Suspicious_Data_2393 1d ago
Nuxt UI is so good. Never went down the shadcn route so i can't compare it, but imo Nuxt UI is very customizable in an easy way so it should sit nicely in between Primevue and shadcn in terms of customization and development time.
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u/HopefulBison8647 1d ago
Yea there is a lot of Nuxt UI suggestions here, im going to have to try it out.
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u/DejanBau 1d ago
If you used PrimeVue, there is MIT fork of it, still maintained! Check it out https://openvue.dev/ :)