GOV.UK Design System vs react-md

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.

react-md is a free React component library for web interfaces, styled with Sass and SCSS. It provides more than 100 components, over 60 hooks, and 40 utilities, including building blocks for fixed headers, navigation panels, and main content areas. Styles follow Material Design and can be configured during compilation with Sass variables or at runtime with Sass functions and mixins. Customized colors are automatically updated to meet a minimum contrast ratio. More complex widgets follow W3C ARIA authoring practices for screen-reader access and keyboard movement. The default theme uses #2196f3 and #ff9100 as primary and secondary colors, with Roboto as the default font. Icons can come from custom icons, SVG components in @react-md/material-icons, or Material Symbols. Installation requires React and ReactDOM v19 or above, plus @react-md/core and sass. Documentation covers npm, pnpm, yarn, and font setup through Fontsource, Google Fonts CDN, or Next.js.