Top 7 CSS Frameworks for Developers in 2025
What Are CSS Frameworks?
A CSS framework is a collection of pre-built CSS stylesheets designed for web developers and designers. These stylesheets come ready with standard design elements such as layouts, colors, fonts, navbars, and more. Often, CSS frameworks are supported by scripting technologies like SASS and JavaScript to enhance functionality.
With a CSS framework, developers only need to structure their HTML using predefined classes, IDs, and structures. Built-in classes for common website components – such as navigation bars, sliders, and column layouts – simplify the development process.
Advantages of Using CSS Frameworks
Advanced Features: Quickly implement forms, buttons, navbars, breadcrumbs, and clean, symmetrical layouts.
Cross-Browser Compatibility: Frameworks simplify the process of making websites compatible with multiple browsers, reducing bugs during cross-browser testing.
Faster Development: Ready-to-use stylesheets speed up development by eliminating the need to write extensive CSS from scratch.
Modifiable UI: Frameworks allow developers to create visually appealing, user-friendly interfaces that can be modified without starting over.
Top 7 CSS Frameworks for Developers and Designers in 2024
1. Bootstrap
Bootstrap was developed by Jacob Thornton and Mark Otto at Twitter to ensure consistency across internal tools. This open-source framework includes CSS and JavaScript-based templates for building responsive user interfaces.
Bootstrap popularized mobile-first design by introducing a grid system that partitions the screen into invisible columns, making responsive design easier.
Why Choose Bootstrap?
Massive Ecosystem: Extensive libraries of layouts, themes, UI elements, buttons, modals, and alerts, backed by strong community support.
Accelerated Prototyping: Quickly achieve responsive design without worrying about browser incompatibility or CSS positioning.
Backed by Twitter: A major player like Twitter ensures Bootstrap’s longevity and credibility.
Supports SASS and LESS: Flexible for projects requiring advanced styling tools.
2. Tailwind CSS
Tailwind CSS is described as a “utility-first CSS framework” for building custom UIs directly within the markup. Unlike traditional frameworks, Tailwind focuses on utility classes for inline styling, reducing the need to write custom CSS.
Why Choose Tailwind CSS?
Highly Customizable: Override defaults easily using the tailwind.config.js file to customize themes, spacing, and palettes.
Utility Patterns: Simplify class naming and create custom components quickly by deriving values from configuration files with the theme() function.
PurgeCSS Optimization: Reduce CSS file size by removing unused classes, ensuring cleaner and lighter files before deployment.
Mobile-First Responsiveness: Built-in utilities allow seamless responsive design across breakpoints.
Strong Community Support: Engage with an active community to resolve issues and accelerate development.
3. Foundation
Foundation describes itself as “the most advanced responsive front-end framework.” It provides a comprehensive grid system, HTML, SASS, CSS UI components, templates, and optional JavaScript functionalities.
Originally managed by ZURB, Foundation has been maintained as an open-source project since 2019. It is particularly suited for building large-scale web applications requiring robust designs.
Why Choose Foundation?
Extensive Toolkit: Foundation includes modular tools tailored for websites and emails, along with a command-line interface (CLI) for bundlers like Webpack.
Greater Flexibility: It gives developers full control over UI design without enforcing specific styles or languages.
Beyond UI Components: Offers advanced features like responsive image systems, pricing tables, embeds, form validation, and RTL support.
Training Options: ZURB provides training and consulting services, making it ideal for companies tackling large-scale projects.
4. Bulma
Bulma is a responsive, open-source CSS framework built on Flexbox. It offers a wide range of pre-built components that enable faster development with minimal manual CSS coding. By leveraging tiles, Bulma simplifies the creation of Metro-style grids, resulting in clean and efficient page layouts. Users can also import only the components they need, further streamlining the process.
As an open-source project, Bulma’s code can be extended or customized as required. Its no-JavaScript, CSS-only approach with visually appealing defaults makes it popular, especially within the Laravel community.
Why Choose Bulma?
Easy to Use: Bulma’s modular design and responsive templates make it a favorite for quick, clean designs. It offers components like navbars, panels, dropdowns, and more, along with starter templates and tutorials.
Easy to Learn: Designed to solve practical problems, Bulma is intuitive and beginner-friendly.
Browser-Agnostic: Ensures compatibility with all major browsers, simplifying cross-browser testing.
Robust Updates: Regular updates introduce new features and fix existing bugs, keeping the framework reliable.
5. Skeleton
Skeleton describes itself as a “dead simple, responsive boilerplate” rather than a traditional CSS framework. It is highly minimalist, with only 400 lines of source code, making it ideal for small projects that require clean, responsive designs.
Skeleton uses a 12-column grid system with a default maximum width of 960px, adaptable for small, medium, and large screens. The minimal syntax simplifies implementation, making it perfect for developers looking for lightweight solutions.
Why Choose Skeleton?
Lightweight: Minimal overhead makes it easy to manage and implement.
Mobile-First Design: Built to ensure responsiveness across all devices.
Ideal for Small Projects: Provides essential components without unnecessary complexity.
Beginner-Friendly: Simple and quick to learn, perfect for those new to CSS frameworks.
6. UIkit
UIkit is a modular and lightweight front-end framework designed for rapid interface development. It provides an extensive collection of intuitive components that can be selectively used, ensuring optimized performance and faster page loads.
UIkit combines simplicity with customizability, offering clean APIs and extensive options for modular integration. Its flexibility makes it suitable for projects where speed, efficiency, and adaptability are critical.
Why Choose UIkit?
Modular Architecture: Developers can include only the components they need, reducing the CSS and JavaScript footprint.
Customization-Friendly: Extensive support for LESS and SASS enables easy design customization.
Strong Community and Documentation: Well-documented resources and active community support make it accessible for both beginners and experts.
Performance-Oriented: Optimized for speed and efficiency in delivering responsive interfaces.
7. Milligram
Milligram is a minimalist CSS framework focused on performance and simplicity. Weighing just 2kb (gzipped), it provides an efficient starting point for styling without imposing unnecessary design choices.
Milligram is ideal for developers who need a lightweight framework for small projects or want a solid foundation to build upon for more complex designs.
Why Choose Milligram?
Lean and Fast: Minimal file size ensures faster load times and improved performance.
Focus on Essentials: Provides just enough tools for basic styling without adding bloat.
Highly Flexible: Integrates seamlessly with other frameworks or libraries to extend its capabilities.
Perfect for Small Projects: Best suited for lightweight projects needing clean, simple designs.
Criteria for Evaluating CSS Frameworks
When selecting the best CSS framework for your project in 2024, consider the following factors:
Features and Components: Assess the availability of pre-built components, responsive grids, typography, and form elements to ensure they align with project requirements.
Customizability: Check whether the framework allows easy modifications to colors, styles, and layouts without compromising maintainability.
Responsiveness: Ensure the framework includes features like responsive grids, breakpoints, and utility classes to simplify responsive design.
Performance: Prioritize frameworks that minimize CSS file size and optimize load times for better user experiences.
Browser Compatibility: Verify that the framework works seamlessly across major browsers and supports older versions if needed for your target audience.
Cross Browser Compatibility of CSS Frameworks
Cross-browser compatibility ensures that websites function and appear consistently across various browsers, providing all users with a reliable experience. With browsers differing in rendering capabilities and supported features, achieving compatibility is critical for modern web development.
Which CSS Frameworks Offer the Best Browser Compatibility?
Popular CSS frameworks such as Bootstrap, Foundation, and Bulma are designed to support cross-browser compatibility. These frameworks include:
Pre-written styles and components that ensure consistent and responsive behavior.
CSS resets to normalize styles across different browsers and environments.
Best Practices for Cross-Browser Compatibility with CSS Frameworks
To ensure smooth compatibility across browsers when using a CSS framework, follow these best practices:
Testing: Regularly test your website on multiple browsers and devices.
Progressive Enhancement: Start with semantic HTML as the foundation, then incrementally add CSS for advanced design, ensuring functionality even in older browsers.
Vendor Prefixes: Include necessary vendor prefixes for CSS properties (e.g., -webkit-, -moz-, -o-) to support older browsers.
Polyfills: Use polyfills to emulate modern CSS features in browsers lacking native support.
CSS Gradients: Apply CSS gradients with vendor prefixes to ensure consistent rendering across browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer.
Border-Radius: Modern browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera universally support the border-radius property for smooth, rounded corners.
Background Images for Select Tags: Customize <select> tags using CSS but test across multiple browsers for consistent results, as adjustments might be needed.
Compatibility of Specific CSS Features and Methods
CSS Grid
CSS Grid simplifies content layout by enabling developers to define rows and columns.
Browser Support (as of July 2020):
Chrome: Enable via the “Experimental Web Platform Features” flag at chrome://flags.
Internet Explorer: Partial support for an older specification.
Firefox: Activate through the layout.css.grid.enabled flag.
Known Issues: Bugs related to overflow exist in Firefox (tracking numbers: 1356820, 1348857, 1350925).
CSS Nesting
CSS Nesting allows style rules to be embedded within other rules, improving readability and reducing redundancy. Previously achievable only with CSS pre-processors, it is now natively supported in modern CSS.
Browser Support (as of December 2023):
General Availability: Accessible via the “Experimental Web Platform Features” flag.
Firefox: Enable through the layout.css.nesting.enabled flag.
Limitations: In Chromium, type selectors cannot be nested unless they start with a symbol like &.
Conclusion
CSS frameworks, particularly those with responsive grid systems, remain indispensable tools for web developers and designers. When selecting a framework, developers must ensure it meets project requirements and aligns with their workflows.
However, achieving full cross-browser compatibility requires rigorous real-world testing on actual browsers and devices. Emulators and simulators cannot replicate genuine user conditions, which makes their results less reliable. Testing on a real device cloud equipped with the latest devices, browsers, and OS versions is essential for both manual and automated testing to ensure accuracy and reliability.
By learning CSS and be able to combine the right framework with diligent testing and best practices, developers can deliver a seamless and consistent user experience across all browsers.