Font Awesome has been the default icon library for so long that most of us reach for it without thinking. And to be fair, it earned that spot. It is huge, it is everywhere, and the CDN link has been muscle memory since about 2014.
But "the default" and "the right choice" are not the same thing. Maybe you are tired of the bundle size. Maybe you hit the Pro paywall on the one icon you needed. Maybe you just want something that does not feel like it was designed a decade ago. Whatever the reason, there are a lot of good options now, and switching is far less painful than it used to be.
Here are eight worth knowing, what each is actually good at, and where it falls short. I have tried to be honest, including about where some of these beat us.
How to think about the choice
Before the list, a quick gut check. Most icon decisions come down to four questions:
- Style: do you want filled (solid) icons, outlined (stroke) icons, or both? This narrows the field fast.
- Delivery: a font loaded over a CDN, individual SVG components in your bundle, or self-hosted files? Each has real performance tradeoffs.
- Coverage: a tight, curated set, or thousands of icons so you never have to leave the library?
- Cost: free and open, free with a paid tier, or paid up front?
Keep your answers in mind as you read. The "best" library is just the one that matches them.
1. Iconfyra
I will get our own bias out of the way first, then spend the rest of the article being fair to everyone else.
Iconfyra is an icon font built for the modern web: 4,510+ icons across Classic and Duotone themes, in four weights (Solid, Regular, Light, and Thin). The part people tend to like is the delivery model. Instead of pulling in the entire library, you create a Collection of just the icons you use, and you get a single embed URL served from a CDN. Your page loads the icons you actually need and nothing else.
Good for: teams who want font-style simplicity (one line in the head, then <i> tags) without shipping a bloated font file. The four weights and duotone support also make it a fit for design-conscious products that want more than flat solid icons.
Watch out for: it is a hosted service with a free tier and paid plans, not a download-and-forget open source set. If you specifically want zero dependencies and full local ownership of every file, weigh that. (You can self-host and export, but the sweet spot is the CDN workflow.)
2. Lucide
Lucide is the community-driven fork of Feather, and it has quietly become the icon set a lot of developers actually reach for now. Clean, consistent stroke icons, an open license, and first-class packages for React, Vue, Svelte, and more.
Good for: modern apps that want a tasteful outlined look and tree-shakeable components. If you are in a React or Vue codebase and want each icon to be its own import, Lucide is hard to beat.
Watch out for: it is stroke-only. If you need solid or duotone styles, or a giant catalogue of brand and niche icons, you will run out of road.
3. Heroicons
Made by the Tailwind CSS team, Heroicons pairs naturally with a Tailwind workflow. You get each icon in outline and solid, plus a smaller "mini" size optimised for tight UI like buttons and inputs.
Good for: Tailwind projects that want icons matching that house style with zero friction. The mini variants are genuinely useful and underrated.
Watch out for: the set is deliberately small. It covers common UI needs well but is not where you go hunting for an obscure icon.
4. Phosphor Icons
Phosphor is flexible and a little playful, with six weights ranging from thin to fill and even a duotone option. Thousands of icons, a friendly license, and good framework support.
Good for: products that want personality and want to vary icon weight across different parts of the UI. The range of weights is its standout feature.
Watch out for: with that much flexibility, it takes a little discipline to stay consistent. Pick your weights and stick to them.
5. Material Symbols
Google's icon system, and the spiritual successor to Material Icons. It is delivered as a variable font, so you can tune weight, fill, and optical size with CSS. If your product follows Material Design, this is the obvious pick.
Good for: Android-adjacent and Google-ecosystem products, or anyone who wants that one variable font to flex across a whole design system.
Watch out for: the variable font can be heavy if you load it carelessly, and the visual style is unmistakably Google. That is a feature if you want Material and a drawback if you do not.
6. Tabler Icons
A large, free, MIT-licensed set of stroke icons drawn on a consistent grid. Over four thousand of them, which is a lot for a free outlined library, and the coverage of admin and dashboard concepts is excellent.
Good for: dashboards, admin panels, and internal tools where you need a wide outlined vocabulary without paying for it.
Watch out for: stroke-only again. And like any very large set, the consistency is good but not flawless across every single icon.
7. Remix Icon
Remix offers both line and filled versions of each icon under an open license, with solid coverage of common interface, brand, and system icons. A nice middle ground between the outlined-only sets and the heavier all-in-one libraries.
Good for: teams who want the choice between outlined and filled per icon, without committing to a paid platform.
Watch out for: only two weights (line and fill), so it is less expressive than the multi-weight options if typography-grade control matters to you.
8. Bootstrap Icons
From the Bootstrap team, free and open, and available as SVGs, an icon font, or a sprite. If you are already in a Bootstrap project, it slots in with no thought required.
Good for: Bootstrap sites and anyone who wants a no-fuss, MIT-licensed set that works as either a font or individual SVGs.
Watch out for: the style is fairly generic, and the catalogue, while solid, is smaller than the heavyweight libraries.
So which one should you pick?
Short version:
- Want outlined icons in a React or Vue app? Lucide.
- Already using Tailwind? Heroicons.
- Following Material Design? Material Symbols.
- Building a dashboard and want lots of free outlined icons? Tabler.
- Want multiple weights, duotone, and a CDN that only ships the icons you use? Iconfyra.
There is no universally correct answer, and that is genuinely good news. Font Awesome was the default because the alternatives used to be thin. They are not thin anymore.
What about migrating?
The fear that keeps people on Font Awesome is usually the switch itself, all those <i> tags scattered across the codebase. In practice it is mostly find-and-replace on class names, plus reconciling a few icons that are named differently. Pick a handful of high-traffic pages, swap them first, and you will quickly see whether the new library feels right before committing fully.
If you want to try the Collection approach, you can create a free Iconfyra account, build a collection of the icons you currently use, and drop the embed URL in next to your existing setup to compare them side by side. No credit card, and it takes about two minutes.
Whatever you choose, the lesson is the same: it is worth occasionally questioning the default. Sometimes the default is still right. Sometimes you have just been carrying it out of habit.
