Pure is a set of small CSS modules from Yahoo, and it still works. The Pure site runs on v3.1.0 and lists the whole set at 3.5KB minified and gzipped: base, grids, forms, buttons, tables and menus. npm shows 3.1.0 published on September 28, 2026, almost four years after 3.0.0. The code is BSD-licensed.
That quiet pace is the main reason people look elsewhere. Pure has no dark mode, no JavaScript components and no design tokens, and the README only claims testing in the latest Firefox, Chrome and Safari. If you also outgrew Skeleton, our Skeleton alternatives page covers the same small-stylesheet group from a different starting point.
The first four picks stay close to Pure's size. The last four trade bytes for more features.
Prices below are as of November 6, 2026. Our method is on How we review tools.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Best for | Price | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pico CSS | Styled semantic HTML with dark mode | Free (MIT) | Any browser, CDN or npm |
| Simple.css | Blogs and docs with no classes at all | Free (MIT) | Any browser, CDN or npm |
| MVP.css | Fast prototypes from bare HTML | Free (MIT) | Any browser, CDN or npm |
| Open Props | Design tokens for hand-written CSS | Free (MIT) | Any browser, CDN or npm |
| Bulma | A class-based grid and components with no JavaScript | Free (MIT) | Any browser, Sass or CDN |
| Tailwind CSS | Projects with a build step and custom designs | Free (MIT); Tailwind Plus paid | Chrome 111, Safari 16.4, Firefox 128+ |
| Bootstrap | Full component set and the biggest ecosystem | Free (MIT) | Any modern browser |
| UIkit | Many components with JavaScript included | Free (MIT); YOOtheme Pro from €129/year | Any modern browser |
Pico CSS
Pure gives you classes to add. Pico styles the HTML you already wrote: a plain button, form or table looks finished with no class names. It also ships a fully class-less build and 20 precompiled color themes with light and dark modes.
The latest release is 2.1.1 from March 15, 2025, under the MIT licence. Pico includes a simple grid class, and anything more complex is left to native CSS Grid and Flexbox.
Best for: Landing pages, admin screens and small apps written in clean semantic HTML.
Pricing:
- Free, MIT licence
- No paid edition
Watch out for:
- No JavaScript is included. The modal docs say you have to write your own script to open and close dialogs.
Official site: Pico CSS.
Simple.css
Drop one link tag into a page and Simple.css styles headings, text, code blocks, forms and tables. The project site calls it mostly classless, puts it at about 10KB, and switches to dark mode on its own when the visitor's system asks for it.
The npm package is simpledotcss, at 2.3.7 from May 29, 2025, MIT licensed. There is no grid at all, so it suits text-first pages rather than dashboards.
Best for: Personal sites, docs and blogs where the content is the layout.
Pricing:
- Free, MIT licence
- No paid edition
Watch out for:
- Releases are slow: 2.3.7 from May 2025 is the newest on npm, and there are no layout classes to fall back on.
Official site: Simple.css.
MVP.css
MVP.css aims at the first version of a product. Raw HTML elements such as header, nav, section and form get styled with no classes, in about 10 KB. Colors and spacing sit in CSS variables in :root, so a rebrand is a few lines.
Version 1.18.0 was published on September 14, 2026, under MIT, which makes it the most recently updated of the classless picks. Load it from unpkg or install it from npm.
Best for: Prototypes and side projects you want online the same afternoon.
Pricing:
- Free, MIT licence
- No paid edition
Watch out for:
- Dark mode is off by default. The MVP.css docs say light mode is forced unless you set color-mode to user.
Official site: MVP.css.
Open Props
Some teams leave Pure because they want to write their own CSS, just with better defaults. Open Props is a set of CSS custom properties for colors, gradients, shadows, typography, easings, animations, sizes and media queries, and you build the components yourself.
Version 1.7.23 is from January 31, 2026, MIT licensed. The package also exports the same values as design tokens in JSON for Figma and Style Dictionary, plus an optional normalize stylesheet with light and dark themes.
Best for: Developers who write their own components and only want a consistent scale.
Pricing:
- Free, MIT licence
- No paid edition
Watch out for:
- It is not a framework. There is no grid, button or form styling, so it replaces Pure's base module at most, not its grids or menus.
Official site: Open Props.
Bulma
Class names in Bulma read like English: columns, is-half, button is-primary. Like Pure it is CSS only, but it covers much more ground, with cards, navbars, modals, tabs and a Flexbox grid. Version 1.0 moved theming to CSS variables and added dark and light modes.
The newest release is 1.0.4 from April 19, 2025, MIT licensed. You can load the compiled CSS from a CDN or customise it with Dart Sass.
Best for: Teams that want Pure's no-JavaScript approach with a full set of components.
Pricing:
- Free, MIT licence
- Funded by Patreon and GitHub sponsors
Watch out for:
- Upkeep is slow for its size: the GitHub repository shows 348 open issues and 179 open pull requests, and nothing has shipped since April 2025.
Official site: Bulma.
Tailwind CSS
Tailwind sits at the opposite end from Pure. Instead of a few component classes, you compose every element from utility classes, and the build step keeps only the ones you used. Version 4.3.5 shipped on November 6, 2026, MIT licensed.
A build step is the price, usually through Vite or the Tailwind CLI. The compatibility page says v4 needs Chrome 111, Safari 16.4 or Firefox 128 and is not designed to be used with Sass, Less or Stylus.
Best for: Product teams with a JavaScript build pipeline and a custom design.
Pricing:
- Framework: free, MIT licence
- Tailwind Plus templates and components: paid; see tailwindcss.com/plus
Watch out for:
- Tailwind Labs laid off three of its four engineers in January 2026 after revenue fell almost 80 percent, DevClass reported. Releases continue, but the core team is small.
Official site: Tailwind CSS. Our listing: Tailwind CSS.
Bootstrap
Bootstrap is the safe default when Pure's six modules are not enough. You get a grid, utilities, and JavaScript components such as dropdowns, modals and tooltips, and a large share of commercial themes and admin templates are built on it. The stable line is 5.3.8 from August 2025, MIT licensed.
Bootstrap 6.0.0-alpha.1 arrived on October 8, 2026. It moves to CSS layers and Sass modules, builds its dialog on the native dialog element and drops UMD builds for ES modules only.
Best for: Projects that need ready-made components and lots of third-party themes.
Pricing:
- Free, MIT licence
- Paid themes are sold by third parties
Watch out for:
- Version 6 renames responsive classes to a prefix style such as .md:d-none and raises the browser floor to Chrome 130, Firefox 132 and Safari 18. Starting on 5.3 now means a migration later.
Official site: Bootstrap. Our listing: Bootstrap.
UIkit
UIkit is the heaviest pick here and the most complete. The UIkit site lists 81 components, from sliders and lightboxes to sticky navs and scroll animations, all with JavaScript included and no jQuery. Themes are built with Less or Sass.
YOOtheme GmbH holds the copyright and maintains it, and releases come often: 3.25.29 landed on November 2, 2026, MIT licensed. The same company sells YOOtheme Pro, a WordPress and Joomla page builder that outputs UIkit markup.
Best for: Marketing sites that need sliders, modals and animation without extra libraries.
Pricing:
- Framework: free, MIT licence
- YOOtheme Pro Standard: €129 per year for 3 sites; Developer €329 per year; Agency €529 per year
Watch out for:
- The GitHub repository has 575 open issues, and the uk- prefix on every class makes markup verbose next to Pure's pure- classes.
Official site: UIkit.
How to choose
| If you need | Pick |
|---|---|
| Good-looking forms and tables from plain HTML | Pico CSS |
| A text-first site with zero classes | Simple.css |
| A product demo page online today | MVP.css |
| Consistent spacing and colors for hand-written CSS | Open Props |
| Components and a grid with no JavaScript | Bulma |
| A custom design built through Vite | Tailwind CSS |
| The widest choice of themes and templates | Bootstrap |
| Sliders, modals and animations in one package | UIkit |
When to stay with Pure CSS
Keep Pure if your pages already use it and you only need a reset, a grid, forms and buttons. At 3.5KB it is still lighter than every class-based option here, and the 3.1.0 release shows the project is still maintained. Remember to load grids-responsive-min.css next to pure-min.css, since the grids docs say the responsive grid is not part of the main file.
Frequently asked questions
What is Pure CSS?
Pure.css is a free set of small CSS modules made by Yahoo. It includes base styles built on Normalize.css, a grid, forms, buttons, tables and menus. You add classes such as pure-button and pure-u-1-2 to your HTML, and it ships no JavaScript.
Is Pure CSS still maintained?
Yes, though slowly. Version 3.1.0 came out on September 28, 2026, nearly four years after 3.0.0 in October 2022. The site still carries a Yahoo copyright.
Why do Pure CSS responsive grids not work?
Usually because grids-responsive-min.css is missing. Media query classes such as pure-u-md-1-2 live in that separate file. Its breakpoints start at 568px for sm, then 768px, 1024px, 1280px and 1920px for md through xxl.
Is Pure CSS better than Bootstrap?
Pure is smaller and simpler, at 3.5KB for everything. Bootstrap is much larger but includes JavaScript components, utility classes and a huge theme market. Pick Pure for light pages you style yourself and Bootstrap when you want finished components.
