Remix Icon and Ionicons 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.
| Remix Icon | Ionicons | |
|---|---|---|
| Icons | 3,244 | 2,607 |
| Visual variants per concept | 2 — line and fill | 3 — outline, filled and sharp |
| Design grid | 24×24 | 24×24 |
| License | Apache 2.0 | MIT |
| Attribution required | No | No |
| Official React package | remixicon | ionicons |
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.
Products that already have a strong visual identity and need icons that adapt to it. The lighter stroke and neutral construction make Remix easy to pair with custom typography and colour systems.
Consider otherwise if: If you want a heavier, more characterful outline, Lucide and Tabler read bolder. For more than two variants per icon, Phosphor and Solar go further.
Mobile and hybrid apps, cross-platform products, and interfaces that want three clear icon variants from one consistent source.
Consider otherwise if: For a more modern, minimal aesthetic, Lucide and Heroicons are the current defaults. Material Design Icons offers five themes if you need more range.
Remix Icon contains 3,244 icons and Ionicons contains 2,607. Remix Icon is a neutral-style system icon set maintained by Remix Design, organised across 25 categories. Its 3,244 icons are drawn on a 24×24 grid with a 1.5px stroke — noticeably lighter than the 2px default of Lucide or Tabler, which gives the set a more refined, technical feel.
Ionicons was built for the Ionic Framework and has been refined since 2013, which makes it one of the longest-maintained icon sets here. The 2,607 icons ship in three variants — Outline, Filled, and Sharp — each drawn on a 24×24 grid.
Remix Icon is released under Apache 2.0. No attribution required, but carries an explicit patent grant and requires notice for modified files.
Ionicons 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 Remix Icon or Ionicons, or browse every library comparison.
Both have first-party React packages: remixicon and ionicons. Remix has the larger 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.
Remix Icon has 3,244 icons and Ionicons has 2,607. Remix Icon is larger by about 24%. 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 — Remix uses 24×24 and Ionicons 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.
Remix Icon is Apache 2.0: No attribution required, but carries an explicit patent grant and requires notice for modified files. Ionicons 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.
Remix Icon offers line and fill; Ionicons offers outline, filled and sharp. 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. Remix draws on a 24×24 grid and Ionicons 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.