Angular Material Alternatives for Modern Angular Apps (2026 Guide)
To understand why developers move away from this library and what are the other options they explore, this article will take a practical, comparison-driven look at the most popular Angular Material alternatives for 2026.
With a large set of free, pre-built Angular components and backed by Google, Angular Material has become one of the most widely adopted UI libraries. What’s more, its design language is focused on simplicity and intuitiveness, enabling Angular developers to build consistent, accessible UIs quickly without having to define a design system from scratch. Which saves significant amount of time and effort. However, despite advantages like ease of integration, design consistency, and various controls, some teams prefer other Angular Material alternatives.
To understand why developers move away from this library and what are the other options they explore, this article will take a practical, comparison-driven look at the most popular Angular Material alternatives for 2026.
See what they bring to the table.
Why Look for an Alternative to Angular Material?
For many projects, Angular Material works just fine. Nevertheless, it’s not a universal solution and it doesn’t respond to all projects’ requirements and scale. Some Angular applications require more complex components and capabilities that go beyond CRUD workflows or simple forms. Quite often, the decision to choose alternatives to Angular Material is driven by practical constraints. These can include:
Material Design Being Too Restrictive
Angular Material closely follows Google’s Material Design guidelines. While this ensures consistency, it can limit design flexibility. Custom branding or alignment with an existing design system often requires heavy overrides, increasing long-term maintenance.
Limited Support for Data-Heavy Interfaces
Angular Material focuses on general UI components rather than advanced data presentation. Dashboards, analytics, and large datasets may require features like advanced grids, virtualization, and rich charts, which are limited or missing.
Styling and Theming Complexity at Scale
The theming system relies heavily on Sass and predefined tokens. As applications grow, managing themes and overrides can become complex, leading teams to seek more flexible theming options.
Not Always Ideal for Enterprise Applications
Enterprise apps require high performance, complex layouts, and advanced components and Angular Material may fall short in these areas.
Evolving UI Expectations
Modern Angular apps increasingly demand interactive, data-rich experiences. As requirements grow, teams may find Angular Material less aligned with their product’s design or technical direction.
Top Angular Material Alternatives
What to do then when these factors dominate app development? The most logical step is to reassess the current tech stack and explore other Angular UI libraries. Here are the best Angular Material alternatives at a glance.
| Angular Material Alternatives | Design System | Component Coverage | Data Grids & Charts | License | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ignite UI for Angular | Flexible | Very High | Advanced | MIT + commercial | From basic to enterprise & data-heavy apps |
| PrimeNG | Flexible | High | Moderate | MIT | General-purpose Angular apps |
| Syncfusion Angular UI | Custom | Very High | Advanced | Commercial | All-in-one enterprise suites |
| Kendo UI for Angular | Custom | High | Advanced | Commercial | Enterprise with support needs |
| DevExtreme Angular | Custom | High | Advanced | Commercial | Business & admin apps |
| NG Zorro | Ant Design | Medium | Limited | MIT | Ant Design-based apps |
| Taiga UI | Custom | Medium | Limited | MIT | Open-source simplicity |
A Detailed Look at Each Option
Ignite UI for Angular
Ignite UI for Angular is a full-featured Angular component library, delivering 50+ open-source controls and over a hundred enterprise-grade, more advanced components. The MIT-licensed components set includes the brand-new Grid Lite, Accordion, Avatar, Badge, Banner, Button, Calendar, Carousel, Checkbox, Chip, Combo, Date Picker, Drop Down, Input, List, Snackbar, and more. They are great for lightweight applications that need essential functionality without the overhead of enterprise features. You can use them freely in production, customize, fork, and contribute via GitHub.
However, if your app grows in complexity and requires more advanced capabilities, you can easily switch to the Premium controls such as Data Grid, Pivot Grid, Hierarchical Grid, Charts, Graphs, Dashboard Tile, Excel Library, Maps, Gauges, and more.
Best things it offers/does:
- Includes advanced components such as Data Grid, Hierarchical Grid, Pivot Grid, and Tree Grid, Dock Manager, supporting virtualization, advanced filtering, grouping, sorting, exporting, and Excel-like interactions.
- Free components.
- Comes with a comprehensive charting library, including financial charts, stock charts, indicators, and BI-focused visualizations.
- Optimized for high-performance rendering of large datasets with built-in row and column virtualization.
- Offers customizable themes beyond Material Design and enterprise UX patterns.
- There are feature-packed and optimized Angular sample apps, helping teams get started more easily, inspect best practices, the code behind each app, and more.
- Provides commercial-grade support with SLAs, priority bug fixes, and transparent product roadmaps.
- With proven UI patterns like the Master-Detail layout for presenting related data.
- Ships with hundreds of live, runnable code samples and extensive documentation to accelerate development.
- Seamlessly integrates into Angular projects, fully supporting Angular’s dependency injection and reactive forms.
- Allows teams to consolidate their UI stack by reducing reliance on third-party libraries for grids, charts, or dashboards.
- Designed with accessibility and internationalization (i18n) in mind, ensuring enterprise compliance.
- Different subscription plans.
The downside: The list of open-source components isn’t as encompassing as that of Premium controls.
Best for: Enterprise-grade apps, requiring feature-packed and fast grids, charts, dashboards, internal tools, SaaS platforms, basic and less complex apps.
PrimeNG
If you search on Reddit, one of the most recommended Angular Material alternatives is precisely PrimeNG, delivering a comprehensive set of 80+ customizable UI controls.
The components it packs: Grids, Forms, Charts, Tables, Buttons, Dialogs, Menus, and others.
Best things it offers/does:
- Different prebuilt themes.
- Active community and good documentation.
- Frequently updated, ensuring ongoing improvements.
- With modular architecture.
- Excellent TypeScript support and tooling.
The downside:
- Compared to Angular Material, PrimeNG components are considered to be slightly more difficult to customize.
- PrimeNG users share on Reddit that they have experienced performance bottlenecks with large data grids and complex interfaces.
- Frequent updates can introduce breaking changes.
Best for: Broad component coverage with flexible theming
If you want, you can read our full Angular Material vs PrimeNG comparison article.
Syncfusion
Syncfusion is another alternative to Angular Material, delivering a vast set of components for building enterprise-grade apps. The controls this library offers are touch-friendly and have been built as modules to enable selective referencing.
The components it packs: Data Grid, Pivot Grid, Tree Grid, Chat UI, Charts, Scheduler, Diagram, Maps, PDF Viewer, Word Processor, Calendar, ListView, Dropdowns, Buttons, Inputs, and more.
Best things it offers/does:
- 90+ Angular components with strong accessibility (ADA, Section 508, WCAG 2.2).
- High-performance Data Grid with virtualization, editing, and export.
- Supports Material, Bootstrap, Tailwind, and Fabric themes.
- Complete source code and test files on GitHub.
- Great documentation and live demos.
The downside:
- The breadth of components can increase app size if not tree-shaken carefully.
- Some developers report occasional complexity in component configuration.
Best for: All-in-one enterprise component coverage
Kendo UI
Kendo UI is another popular Angular library and one of the top Angular Material alternatives, offering a comprehensive set of controls. It is preferred for its deep support for Angular-specific features, consistent theming, 110+ UI components, and integrations with reporting and testing tools.
The components it packs: Data Grid, Pivot Grid, Charts, DropDowns, Navigation, Inputs, Date Pickers, Scheduler, Editor, TreeView, Layout tools, Dialogs, Notifications, Tooltips, and more.
Best things it offers/does:
- 30-day free trial with full support.
- Strong focus on enterprise apps: Scheduler, Pivot Grid, etc.
- Consistent theming (Material, Bootstrap, Kendo).
- Handles 1M+ data cells efficiently.
- AI tools for Angular.
- Day-zero Angular version support and Figma → CSS theming via ThemeBuilder.
- Excellent docs and API reference.
The downside:
- Some users cite a steeper learning curve for advanced components.
- Performance can require optimization for large datasets.
Best for: Polished enterprise UI and support-driven teams
DevExtreme
DevExpress is also part of our Angular Material alternatives list and it offers a set of 80+ Angular components for data-heavy apps. While the company is more established in desktop development, its Angular tools bring similar capabilities, particularly in grid performance, charting, and reporting.
The components it packs: Data Grid, Pivot Grid, TreeList (Tree View and List View Hybrid), Card View, Forms and Editors, Charts, Scheduler, File Manager, Google, Bing, and Vector Maps, and more.
Best things it offers/does:
- 80+ responsive Angular controls across data and visualization.
- 30+ chart types and gauges with real-time update support.
- An intuitive and easy-to-use Angular TreeList widget.
- UI Template gallery, which includes responsive Angular UI templates for various usage.
- Optimized Pivot Grid handling up to 1M records.
- Strong enterprise workflows: spreadsheets, scheduling, reports.
- 30-day trial and 60-day money-back guarantee.
The downside:
- Smaller Angular-specific community compared to other frameworks they support.
- Updates can lag slightly behind Angular version releases.
Best for: Customization-heavy business applications
NG Zorro
This is an open-source Angular component library built on top of Ant Design, bringing a polished, enterprise-grade UI aesthetic to Angular projects. It’s maintained by the NG-ZORRO team and community contributors, making it one of the most visually refined free Angular libraries available.
The components it packs: Buttons, Forms, Tables, Grids, Modals, Date Pickers, Tree Views, Tabs, Menus, and a wide range of Ant Design-inspired layout and navigation elements.
Best things it offers/does:
- A clean, professional Ant Design look suited for enterprise dashboards and SaaS products.
- Comprehensive component coverage, rivaling many commercial suites.
- Accessible and responsive by default, with TypeScript support.
- Active open-source community and regular updates aligned with Angular releases.
- Free under the MIT license, ideal for teams with limited budgets.
The downside:
- Performance can dip with very large data sets compared to optimized commercial grids.
- Customization is somewhat constrained by Ant Design’s opinionated styling.
- Limited professional support (relies mostly on community contributions).
Best for: Angular teams that want a polished, open-source UI library based on Ant Design.
Taiga UI
This one is open source, making it an ideal choice for developers with a limited budget or those who want to build basic apps. What are the other features that made us include it in our list of Angular Material alternatives?
The components it packs: Accordion, ActionBar, Alert, Badges, Buttons, Carousel, Dialog, DropDown, Icon, Label, SheetDialog, Table, Tree, and more.
Best things it offers/does:
- It is modular and fully treeshakable.
- The components are very flexible and are ready for any use case.
- They use CSS custom properties for all the styling and provide easy methods to customize the controls with dark themes out of the box.
- The UI components use OnPush and the whole project is developed with strict TypeScript mode.
- There are 130+ components, 100+ directives, dozens of tokens, utils and tools.
The downside:
- Smaller ecosystem and fewer advanced components (e.g., charts).
- Limited documentation compared to older projects.
Best for: Teams prioritizing open-source simplicity.
What to Look for in an Angular Material Alternative
When evaluating Angular Material alternatives, teams should consider:
- Performance and Scalability: Does the library handle large datasets, virtualization, and complex UI states efficiently?
- Data Components: Does it deliver advanced grids, charts, and data visualizations or will you need third-party integrations?
- Design Flexibility: Is the library locked to a design system, or can it adapt to your brand?
- Accessibility & i18n: Does it meet accessibility standards and support internationalization?
- Open-Source Sustainability: Is the project actively maintained with transparent governance?
Wrapping Up Angular Material vs Alternatives: When Should You Switch?
Angular Material remains a strong choice when applications closely follow Material Design guidelines. Teams that develop form-driven or UI-light applications often benefit from its simplicity, consistency, and tight integration with Angular. If your project prioritizes ease of use, accessibility, and a familiar design language over deep customization, Angular Material can continue to be an effective solution.
However, alternatives to Angular Material become more compelling when the complexity of Angular apps grows. Teams that build dashboards, analytics platforms, or data-heavy tools often need advanced grids, charts, and performance optimizations that go beyond Angular Material’s scope. Similarly, if greater control over visual design, theming, or user experience is required, exploring other Angular UI libraries can offer more flexibility and better alignment with long-term product needs.