Ant Design Review: A Comprehensive Design System for Enterprise Web Applications

Ant Design is an open-source design system created by Ant Group, an affiliate company of Alibaba Group. It supports React, Angular, and Vue frameworks.

Originally developed to meet the complex needs of financial platforms, Ant Design today has evolved into a powerful tool for creating scalable web applications, with a strong focus on productivity tools and B2B solutions. 

Ant Design has been praised by developers for the minimal amount of manual work required to achieve good-looking results that “just work”. And for product managers, this makes it a great option for getting products off the ground fast, and enabling teams to focus their efforts on more impactful areas.

Ideal Use Cases for Ant Design

Ant Design can be a powerful choice if these points describe your project: 

• Desktop-Centric Applications: Projects optimized for desktop use will benefit from AntD’s focus on desktop layouts. This is especially relevant for industries where users predominantly work on larger screens. Note that AntD also has a library for the mobile platform.
• B2B productivity solutions: AntD’s scalable structure and robust library makes it ideal for enterprise projects involving multiple teams or projects, particularly those that prioritize technical tasks and are productivity-focused. 
• Complex or data-heavy user workflows: Teams dealing with complex user workflows will appreciate AntD’s specialized components, which cater to requirements not often met by other design systems.

When Not to Use Ant Design

While we like Ant Design, it’s not appropriate for every project. It’s best to look elsewhere if these are your requirements:

• Smaller Projects with Minimal Component Needs: For smaller projects that don’t require a vast array of components, AntD might introduce unwanted complexity and bloat the project with unnecessary features.
• Projects with Strict Accessibility Requirements: Companies with strict accessibility standards should be cautious about using AntD. Although WCAG AAA compliance can be reached, the lack of accessibility documentation and limited support for screen readers and keyboard navigation may not meet all accessibility needs.
• Visually Expressive Designs: If your project demands a high level of creative freedom, AntD’s strict color system may hinder the brand expression you’re aiming for.

Ant Design has many strengths, but there are a few unique offerings that we want to spotlight. If any of these features are important for your project, then you should definitely consider Ant Design.

While not specifically unique to AntD, we also appreciate these strengths because they are factors that we hold to be important in a design system.

Overarching Design Philosophy and UX Principles

Ant Design provides high-level design guidance with core values and principles inspired by nature, that help design and development teams align on how to make decisions, and allows non-design team members to gain a holistic understanding. The guidelines are detailed and cover the concepts of user psychology, UX patterns, copywriting, visual design, and even motion design. This is a great mental foundation, especially for teams who are less experienced in design.

Ecosystem of Tools and Resources

Ant Design offers an ecosystem of tools and resources to support designers and developers:

• For Figma: AntD endorses several third-party resources for Figma, including the Ant for Figma library file (a paid resource, starts at $ 219), the AI Dev Figma plugin that converts designs into React code, and the Theme Buddy plugin that copies style settings from Figma to code. All of these resources are available with Ant for Figma.
• For Sketch: AntD provides official plugins, a complete design kit, templates, and chart resources for Sketch.
• Color Generator: The color generator tool helps create consistent color palettes that align with brand guidelines.
• Illustrations: AntD also provides a collection of illustrations designed to enhance the user interface, adding a polished and user-friendly touch.
• Charts: A React library for charts and data visualisation is provided, called AntV.

Scalable and Themable Token Structure

Ant Design’s token structure allows teams to manage theming aspects like color, radius, spacing, and density separately, making the system highly adaptable. 

Most notably:

AntD offers both compact and default densities (documentation). System-level color tokens are separated from product-level ones (documentation). This flexibility ensures that users can adjust the interface density to meet specific needs or application requirements.

While Ant Design has numerous strengths, it also presents certain challenges and limitations. If these aspects are important to you, you should think about using a different design system. We have compared the best design systems 2025 for you.

Accessibility Challenges

Although the color generator adheres to WCAG contrast ratios, accessibility compliance in component functionality is lacking. There is no dedicated accessibility documentation for Ant Design, which indicates that it may not be a priority for the team. And there have been complaints about inconsistent implementation and limited support for screen readers and keyboard navigation.

Language Barriers in Documentation

Originally developed and released in Chinese, parts of Ant Design’s documentation may lack the precision of native-level English fluency. Although this does not lead to significant misunderstandings, it can impact overall clarity and ease of use, potentially requiring additional effort to fully understand the information.

Lack of Component-Level Guidance

Ant Design provides high-level guidance but lacks specific “do’s and don’ts” at the component level. This can make it challenging for designers and developers to know when to use certain components or whether there might be a more suitable component. Although there is guidance on UX patterns, the wrong usage of individual components could lead to UX inconsistencies, ultimately affecting product cohesion.

Lack of Official Figma Resources

While Ant Design does provide official design resources, they are only for Sketch. Designers using Figma will have to pay for a third-party resource instead.

Ant Design Basic and Pro are open source and licensed under the MIT License, making it free for both personal and commercial use. This makes it financially attractive for enterprises looking for a powerful design system without licensing fees.

However, while the developer and Sketch resources are free, the Figma resources are from third-parties and can be costly, especially the officially-endorsed Ant for Figma. Other non-endorsed Figma kits are available for free but may be outdated and lack comprehensive support.

Ant Design stands out as a powerful design system for large-scale business applications, and provides a strong foundation for teams working on complex, data-heavy user workflows. While it may not fully meet the needs of every project, especially those with creative or accessibility demands, AntD offers a rich ecosystem and strong documentation that makes it an excellent starting point. For large enterprises, customization and refinement will be necessary to align AntD with unique branding or functionality requirements. Still, as a widely adopted tool with proven success in various industries, AntD offers a great blueprint for developing scalable, consistent user interfaces. We hope that our experience has offered you some insight into how Ant Design can be useful for you, whether you’re a project manager, developer, or designer.