Should We Switch Component Libraries? A Critical Comparison of Alibaba Fusion and Ant Design

Recently I have been pondering a seemingly optional question: "Should we switch to a different component library?"

Why does this question arise?

Our team has used Alibaba Fusion for nearly two years, having upgraded from the internal @alife/next to @alifd/next and built a custom design system and business component library covering over 500 pages for Lazada Seller Center.

Design Quality

Fusion is not ugly, but it lacks the visual polish of Ant Design; its details feel mediocre rather than beautiful. Specific interaction details such as popup animations, button click effects, tooltip arrows, and NumberPicker controls are less refined compared to Ant Design.

Iteration

Ant Design is at version 5.x with active development, while Fusion remains at 1.x with minimal updates, indicating a lack of vision and maintenance from its maintainers.

Performance and Stability

Ant Design benefits from modern techniques like Hooks and CSS‑in‑JS, offering better performance and more stable UI interactions, whereas Fusion still relies on older HOC and class‑based patterns that cause flickering and alignment issues.

Investment

Ant Design boasts over 86 K stars and 25 K commits, dwarfing Fusion’s 4.4 K stars and ~4 K commits, and it enjoys a richer ecosystem of documentation and plugins.

Why is this a problem?

Switching to Ant Design would require a massive effort—estimated at 500+ hours—to migrate the existing Fusion‑centric ecosystem, including design guidelines, 50+ business components, 20+ templates, publishing pipelines, and external integrations.

Existing Ecosystem

Our current workflow, tooling, and assets are tightly coupled to Fusion; replacing it would disrupt a large amount of established work.

Brand Visibility

Ant Design’s UI is instantly recognizable, which can be both a benefit and a drawback when trying to differentiate our product’s look.

CSS Strategy

Recent trends (Vue 3, Vite, Tailwind, “unstyled” UI libraries like Radix UI, Shadcn UI) have sparked a re‑evaluation of CSS‑in‑JS versus atomic CSS. Ant Design’s move to a design‑token system and support for cssinjs , :where , and prefix scoping offers advantages, but some styling gaps remain.

Using <button class="btn"></button> with different CSS implementations illustrates that UI can be decoupled from component logic, yet a full stack change (e.g., from Element to Ant Design) still implies a major technology shift.

Conclusion

Choosing Ant Design means embracing faster iteration, better performance, and a vibrant community, but it also demands a willingness to continuously refactor and adapt. If the team is not prepared for that mindset, staying with Fusion may feel safer, albeit stagnant.