21st.dev vs awesome-shadcn/ui (2026)

21st.dev vs awesome-shadcn/ui

2 compared on 6 criteria

On what you get without paying, 21st.dev does not publish it and awesome-shadcn/ui is All of it, MIT. On cheapest paid option, 21st.dev is $6/month, billed yearly (Builder) and awesome-shadcn/ui does not publish it. On what it publishes, 21st.dev is 12,000+ components, templates and themes and awesome-shadcn/ui does not publish it. On how you install from it, 21st.dev is Copy a prompt, or MCP and CLI and awesome-shadcn/ui does not publish it. On how something gets listed, 21st.dev does not publish it and awesome-shadcn/ui is Pull request, against five published rules. On what it says about the code's quality, 21st.dev is Authorship, stated as the guarantee and awesome-shadcn/ui is Human review plus three CI workflows. BlockDex publishes this table and is one of the things in it, so read the case for the other side below rather than taking the table's word for it. Every figure was read off the named company's own page on or since 2026-09-06; the URLs and the dates are at the foot of this page, and a job re-fetches each one on a schedule and fails when a figure is no longer on the page it came from.

compared2criteria6sources read4verified2026-09-06

Criterion21st.devawesome-shadcn/uiWhat you get without payingNot publishedThe pricing page publishes three plans — Builder, Builder + AI and Team — and none of them is a free tier. Browsing the catalogue does not appear to require an account, but the site publishes no free plan, so this is what the page carries rather than what a visitor can infer.All of it, MITA public GitHub repository — 20.3k stars, MIT licence shown in its own sidebar — and free use is also a condition of being listed: "It is free to use. Open source is the norm here … What does not get in is a product that is paid end to end, with no free tier and no public code."Cheapest paid option$6/month, billed yearly (Builder)"Builder — for individuals. $6 per month billed yearly." Builder + AI is $15 a month on the same terms and adds 500–2,000 monthly AI credits; Team is per seat. A yearly/quarterly toggle on the page offers "save 25%".Not publishedThere is nothing to buy: the list is a repository, and it publishes no price, plan or sponsorship tier for readers. Read on the repository's own page on 14 August 2026.What it publishes12,000+ components, templates and themes"The living library of interfaces. 12,000+ crafted React components, templates, and shadcn themes." Broken down on the same page as 2,000+ marketing blocks and 2,100+ UI components, with "used by 3,190,767 builders".Not publishedThe list is a set of markdown tables with a Name, Description, Link and Date column, and publishes no total. Its headline numbers are repository numbers — 20.3k stars, 1.3k forks — not item counts.How you install from itCopy a prompt, or MCP and CLIThe primary route is the prompt — "Copy the prompt. Paste it anywhere" — with unlimited MCP and CLI retrieval listed on every paid tier: "search components via mcp & cli", "unlimited installs via mcp & cli". The only one of the four that installs by pasting into an agent.Not publishedThere is no installer and no manifest; every row is a link, and installation is whatever the linked project documents. What the list does require is that the thing be installable somewhere — its first acceptance rule names "a registry you can install from, a port, a plugin, a tool built for shadcn projects".How something gets listedNot publishedNeither the pricing page nor the front page publishes a submission or contribution route for getting a component into the marketplace, or terms for authors who do. Both were read on 14 August 2026.Pull request, against five published rules"Two ways to submit" — a form on awesomeshadcn.dev that opens the pull request for you, or editing README.md directly — and "either way, one resource per pull request". Acceptance is explicit: "a resource has to clear all five", the first being that it is genuinely about shadcn/ui rather than merely using it.What it says about the code's qualityAuthorship, stated as the guaranteeThe claim is about who wrote it rather than about what checks it: "built by real design engineers", under a pricing-page headline that reads "Keep the web free of AI slop". No review process, test or automated check is published.Human review plus three CI workflows"Three workflows run on your pull request and on main": Format README, which "fails if any name or url is duplicated, or if a row has no usable link"; Add dates, which stamps the date column; and Link check, which "runs weekly across the whole list and reports broken links in an issue". The only automated ongoing check of the four — and it checks that links resolve, not that code works.

BlockDex publishes this table and is not one of the 2 compared. "Not published" means that company does not state the figure on the page cited below. It is not a claim that no such figure exists: this table prints what was read, not what was inferred.

21st.dev vs awesome-shadcn/ui — what you get without paying?

21st.dev does not state it on 21st.dev. The pricing page publishes three plans — Builder, Builder + AI and Team — and none of them is a free tier. Browsing the catalogue does not appear to require an account, but the site publishes no free plan, so this is what the page carries rather than what a visitor can infer. awesome-shadcn/ui: All of it, MIT. A public GitHub repository — 20.3k stars, MIT licence shown in its own sidebar — and free use is also a condition of being listed: "It is free to use. Open source is the norm here … What does not get in is a product that is paid end to end, with no free tier and no public code.". Read from 21st.dev and github.com on 2026-09-06.

21st.dev vs awesome-shadcn/ui — cheapest paid option?

21st.dev: $6/month, billed yearly (Builder). "Builder — for individuals. $6 per month billed yearly." Builder + AI is $15 a month on the same terms and adds 500–2,000 monthly AI credits; Team is per seat. A yearly/quarterly toggle on the page offers "save 25%". awesome-shadcn/ui does not state it on github.com. There is nothing to buy: the list is a repository, and it publishes no price, plan or sponsorship tier for readers. Read on the repository's own page on 14 August 2026. Read from 21st.dev and github.com on 2026-09-06.

21st.dev vs awesome-shadcn/ui — what it publishes?

21st.dev: 12,000+ components, templates and themes. "The living library of interfaces. 12,000+ crafted React components, templates, and shadcn themes." Broken down on the same page as 2,000+ marketing blocks and 2,100+ UI components, with "used by 3,190,767 builders". awesome-shadcn/ui does not state it on github.com. The list is a set of markdown tables with a Name, Description, Link and Date column, and publishes no total. Its headline numbers are repository numbers — 20.3k stars, 1.3k forks — not item counts. Read from 21st.dev and github.com on 2026-09-06.

When should I pick 21st.dev, and when awesome-shadcn/ui?

21st.dev — You want breadth and you work by pasting a prompt into an agent rather than by running a CLI. It is the largest catalogue of the four at "12,000+ crafted React components, templates, and shadcn themes", it is the only one whose delivery mechanism is the prompt itself — "every component ships as a prompt. One copy - and it builds itself in whatever tool you live in" — and it is the cheapest recurring entry here at $6 a month billed yearly, with unlimited MCP and CLI retrieval on that tier. awesome-shadcn/ui — You want the rules a listing was judged by written down where you can read them, and you want to browse rather than install. It is the only one of the four that publishes its acceptance criteria in full — "this page is the full set of rules a submission is judged by - nothing is checked that isn't written here", five conditions, one resource per pull request — and the only one running an automated link check across its whole list every week. It is also the only one whose free-to-use requirement is a listing criterion rather than a pricing decision.

When each of these is the right pick

BlockDex does not sell any of these and scores them. Each case below is the one that option wins.

21st.dev: You want breadth and you work by pasting a prompt into an agent rather than by running a CLI. It is the largest catalogue of the four at "12,000+ crafted React components, templates, and shadcn themes", it is the only one whose delivery mechanism is the prompt itself — "every component ships as a prompt. One copy - and it builds itself in whatever tool you live in" — and it is the cheapest recurring entry here at $6 a month billed yearly, with unlimited MCP and CLI retrieval on that tier.
awesome-shadcn/ui: You want the rules a listing was judged by written down where you can read them, and you want to browse rather than install. It is the only one of the four that publishes its acceptance criteria in full — "this page is the full set of rules a submission is judged by - nothing is checked that isn't written here", five conditions, one resource per pull request — and the only one running an automated link check across its whole list every week. It is also the only one whose free-to-use requirement is a listing criterion rather than a pricing decision.

Other shadcn registries and block libraries compared head to head

What was checked, and when

Prices and limits move. Every source is printed here so a reader can check it on the day they read this, and a job re-fetches each of these URLs on a schedule and fails when a figure above no longer appears on the page it came from.

21st.dev, 21st.dev/pricing: What you get without paying, Cheapest paid option, How you install from it, How something gets listed. Read 2026-09-06.
21st.dev, 21st.dev/: What it publishes, What it says about the code's quality. Read 2026-09-06.
awesome-shadcn/ui, github.com/birobirobiro/awesome-shadcn-ui: What you get without paying, Cheapest paid option, What it publishes. Read 2026-09-06.
awesome-shadcn/ui, github.com/birobirobiro/awesome-shadcn-ui/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md: How you install from it, How something gets listed, What it says about the code's quality. Read 2026-09-06.

Every cell above was confirmed against its own source on or since 2026-09-06. /compare/21st-dev-vs-awesome-shadcn-ui