Clarity Design System vs Lightning Design System
Clarity Design System
clarity.design
Lightning Design System
lightningdesignsystem.comSide by side
| Figure | Clarity Design System | Lightning Design System |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · UI Kit Libraries | 7.8 (#11) | 6.8 (#26) |
| Accessibility | Clarity follows WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines and has a dedicated accessibility team. | The accessibility guidance recommends reviewing applications before release for WCAG 2.1 AA conformance. |
| Components | The toolkit includes 30+ components and over 200 icons. | The development guide recommends Lightning base components first, then component blueprints, then custom components when needed. |
| Design resources | Clarity provides Figma themes, icons, color libraries, fonts and downloadable SVG icon assets. | SLDS 2 includes reusable Figma components, style guides, design principles, and patterns. |
| Purpose | Clarity is an open-source, enterprise-focused design system centered on inclusion. | SLDS 2 provides reusable design tools and development guidance for building consistent Salesforce interfaces. |
Plans
In their own words
Clarity Design System
Clarity Design System is a free, open-source toolkit for enterprise-focused interface design, with inclusion at its center. It combines design assets—including Figma themes, icons, color libraries, fonts and downloadable SVG icons—with more than 30 components and over 200 icons. Clarity Core provides reusable Web Components for Angular, React, Vue, other JavaScript frameworks, or projects without a framework. It is compatible with Webpack, RollupJS, Parcel and most framework CLIs. React projects need the additional @cds/react wrapper because React does not fully interoperate with custom elements. The datagrid supports more than a dozen features and thousands of data entries. Clarity follows WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines and has a dedicated accessibility team; accessibility checks cover multiple tools, screen readers and browser combinations. The code is licensed under MIT. Community questions go through GitHub Discussions, while issues and feature requests are tracked in GitHub Issues. Each major release is actively supported for six months after the next major release becomes available. Clarity Core currently requires a JavaScript bundler to import its dependencies.
Lightning Design System
Lightning Design System has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.