Ant Design Icons vs GOV.UK Design System
Ant Design Icons
ant.design
GOV.UK Design System
design-system.service.gov.ukSide by side
| Figure | Ant Design Icons | GOV.UK Design System |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Ui Frameworks | 8.7 (#1) | 8.0 (#3) |
| Spec score · UI Kit Libraries | 8.7 (#2) | 7.9 (#9) |
| Installation | The documentation shows installing the React package with npm, yarn, pnpm, or Bun and recommends matching @ant-design/icons 6.x with antd 6.x. | For production projects, GOV.UK Frontend can be installed with npm or used by including compiled stylesheets, JavaScript and asset files. |
| License | The project repository identifies its license as MIT. | The system's code is public and freely available under the MIT license. |
| Purpose | Ant Design Icons provides semantic vector graphics for use in interfaces. | The system helps teams make government services consistent with GOV.UK and learn from research and experience across service teams. |
| Styles | Icons are available in outlined, filled, and two-tone themes. | It provides guidance for applying GOV.UK layout, typography, colour and images. |
| Support | The Ant Design docs link to GitHub issues, discussions, Stack Overflow, and SegmentFault for help. | The team focuses support on central UK government digital services and says it cannot reliably provide guidance for different contexts. |
Plans
In their own words
Ant Design Icons
Ant Design Icons provides semantic vector graphics for interfaces, with 498 icons in outlined, filled, and two-tone styles. Icons render as SVG and accept styling properties such as size and color; two-tone icons can use one or two specified colors. The API also supports rotation, animation, and custom icon components. Packages are listed for Vanilla, React, React Native, Angular, and Vue. Developers can integrate their own SVGs through webpack with @svgr/webpack or Vite with vite-plugin-svgr, or use SVG sprite symbols generated by iconfont.cn projects. The React package can be installed with npm, yarn, pnpm, or Bun, and the documentation recommends matching @ant-design/icons 6.x with antd 6.x. SVG icons support offline use without a CDN-hosted font file. Importing the full set can add bundle size, so the documentation points to importing icons as needed. The project repository identifies its license as MIT; commercial use is allowed. It is free, with a free plan and no free trial. The project was founded in 2018 and is headquartered in Hangzhou, China.
GOV.UK Design System
The GOV.UK Design System helps government teams build services with shared styles, reusable components and patterns for user-focused tasks. Its guidance covers page structure, typography, colour and images; components include coded examples, and patterns address particular tasks and page types. Published guidance includes details about user-research testing. Teams can add GOV.UK Frontend through npm or include compiled files. In production projects, components can be used as HTML or as Nunjucks macros when Frontend is installed with npm and the application uses Node.js. Prototyping requires GOV.UK Prototype Kit version 7 or later. The code is public under the MIT License, and the listed plan is free. The system aims for WCAG level AA compliance, but its use alone does not make a service accessible; component accessibility checks combine tools, automated deployment tests and manual testing. The Government Digital Service maintains the system, with a focus on central UK government digital services. Support may be limited for other contexts. Compiled files include all Frontend CSS and JavaScript, without selective component assets or a customizable build.