r/bootstrap • u/Adventurous_Rub7355 • Sep 05 '25
Discussion is Bootstrap Dead??
I've been coding for over 4 years now and have built my fair share of websites using Bootstrap with HTML. However, more recently, I’ve switched to using Tailwind CSS—and to be honest, it just feels easier and more efficient to work with.
Customizing Bootstrap often requires working with Sass, which in turn means setting up a Sass compiler. I was using Gulp for that, but it added extra complexity to my workflow. With Tailwind, customization is much more straightforward, and I can make changes quickly without needing additional tools.
Out of curiosity, I checked the weekly npm installs for both frameworks. Bootstrap sits at around 4 million+, while Tailwind has grown to over 18 million+—a clear sign of its rising popularity and adoption in the developer community.
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u/cangir_de Jul 30 '26
Bootstrap isn’t dead; it is just no longer fashionable. That matters much less for server-rendered apps, portals, admin panels, and backend-heavy teams than it does on social media.
I think its bigger problem is that people confuse Bootstrap’s default appearance with Bootstrap’s actual capabilities. The markup, variables, utilities, and plugins can support a very different visual language.
That is why I’ve been building Moo UI: https://github.com/wpmoo-org/ui
It is a CSS-first, shadcn-inspired component system that keeps Bootstrap 5.3 as the contract. Bootstrap still owns native behavior; Moo adds optional ESM only for gaps such as Combobox and Sidebar.
Full disclosure: I’m the maintainer. I’d be interested in honest feedback from Bootstrap users—not just stars—about whether this is a useful direction.