Bootstrap Icons and Boxicons are two of the most widely used open-source icon sets. Both are free, both ship framework packages, and both will look perfectly reasonable in a product UI — which is exactly why the choice is annoying. This page puts the two side by side using the actual artwork and the real numbers.
| Bootstrap Icons | Boxicons | |
|---|---|---|
| Icons | 2,090 | 3,389 |
| Visual variants per concept | 3 — outline, filled and more | 3 — regular, solid and logos |
| Design grid | 16×16 | 24×24 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Attribution required | No | No |
| Official React package | bootstrap-icons | boxicons |
Every pair below is the same concept rendered from each library's own source files. This is the part you cannot get from a written review — the difference in stroke weight, corner rounding and optical size is the thing you will actually notice in your interface.
Bootstrap-based projects, admin templates, and compact interfaces where icons sit next to 14px text and need to hold their own at 16px.
Consider otherwise if: If you need strict visual consistency, the mixed fill and stroke treatment can look uneven next to Lucide or Feather. For a larger set with similar small-size optimisation, compare Octicons.
Websites and apps that need UI icons and brand logos from one package — particularly portfolios, link-in-bio pages, tech stack sections, and footers.
Consider otherwise if: For pure brand logos with a cleaner license, Simple Icons is CC0 and has 3,714 marks. For UI icons alone, Remix Icon and Tabler are more consistent.
Bootstrap Icons contains 2,090 icons and Boxicons contains 3,389. Bootstrap Icons is the official icon set for the Bootstrap framework, built by the Bootstrap team. The 2,090 icons are drawn on a 16×16 grid — tighter than the 24×24 used by most libraries — which makes them pair naturally with Bootstrap's default typography and compact control sizing.
Boxicons is a long-running free icon pack by Atisa, with 3,389 icons across three families: Regular (outline), Solid (filled), and Logos. The logo set is a significant part of the appeal — hundreds of brand marks maintained alongside the UI icons.
Bootstrap Icons is released under MIT. Commercial use, modification and redistribution with no attribution required.
Boxicons is released under MIT. Commercial use, modification and redistribution with no attribution required.
You do not have to commit to one. IconStash indexes both libraries, so you can search a concept once and see how each set drew it, then export SVG or PNG at any size and colour. Start with Bootstrap Icons or Boxicons, or browse every library comparison.
Both have first-party React packages: bootstrap-icons and boxicons. Bootstrap has the smaller catalogue, so for a React app the practical difference is coverage and visual style rather than integration effort. Both tree-shake, so bundle size tracks the number of icons you import, not the size of the library.
Bootstrap Icons has 2,090 icons and Boxicons has 3,389. Boxicons is larger by about 62%. Raw count is not the whole story though — a 20,000-icon set with many near-duplicate variants can be slower to search than a tightly edited 2,000-icon set.
You can, but it usually looks wrong. Each library draws to its own grid and stroke weight — Bootstrap uses 16×16 and Boxicons uses 24×24 — so icons from both sit slightly differently next to each other. If you must mix them, keep each library to a distinct area of the interface rather than interleaving them in the same toolbar.
Bootstrap Icons is MIT: Commercial use, modification and redistribution with no attribution required. Boxicons is MIT: Commercial use, modification and redistribution with no attribution required. Neither requires payment, but attribution rules differ, so check before shipping in a product where credit is inconvenient.
Bootstrap Icons offers outline, filled and more; Boxicons offers regular, solid and logos. If you need to express selected and unselected states with the same glyph, the library with more variants saves you from importing a second set.
At 16px, stroke weight and counter size matter more than coverage. Bootstrap draws on a 16×16 grid and Boxicons on 24×24. Libraries that redraw per size rather than scaling — such as Fluent UI — generally hold up best. The reliable test is to preview both at your actual render size, which you can do on any icon page on IconStash.