Iconify Design
Worth it
Confidence: Medium
Buy if you build websites or apps and need icons . it's free, open source, and aggregates 300,000+ icons.
Comparison
Iconify Design vs Font Awesome
Iconify Design and Font Awesome both land on Worth it.
Font Awesome
Worth it
Confidence: High
The free tier is a safe default for nearly any web project . mature, huge library, zero cost.
| Compare | Iconify Design | Font Awesome |
|---|---|---|
| Verdict | Worth it | Worth it |
| Best for | Web and app developers | Web projects needing quick, consistent icons |
| Who it's not for | Anyone needing vendor support or SLAs | Performance-critical sites unwilling to subset the icon kit |
| Privacy | No known public vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed.¹ | Core library is largely clean; most CVEs sit in third-party WordPress plugins that integrate Font Awesome. |
| Support quality | No support evidence in sources | Dev/design support gated behind Pro subscription |
| Public sentiment | Dev blogs and bookmark communities consistently recommend Iconify as the fastest way to search and use every major open source icon set.⁶ | Long-time developers largely respect the library's breadth and reliability, but a visible minority has moved to lighter alternatives.13 |
| Biggest gotcha | Licensing varies by package: MIT, Apache 2.0, GPL 2.0 . verify before shipping commercially¹ | Third-party WordPress integrations keep generating CVEs . vet plugins, not just core. |
Pick Iconify Design when
- Web and app developers
- Designers wanting one icon search
- Cost-sensitive side projects
- Teams avoiding icon vendor lock-in
When Iconify Design is not a fit
- Anyone needing vendor support or SLAs
- Buyers wanting a paid product with a company behind it
- Overkill if you need just 10 icons from one set
- Non-technical users who just want PNG downloads
Pick Font Awesome when
- Web projects needing quick, consistent icons
- Prototypes and MVPs
- Teams wanting an open-source default
- WordPress and CMS sites
When Font Awesome is not a fit
- Performance-critical sites unwilling to subset the icon kit
- Design teams wanting one modern, cohesive style . Lucide fits better
- Anyone refusing subscriptions just for icons
- Products needing fully custom iconography
Sources
- Iconify Design official siteiconify.designofficial
- Iconify security page (not found)iconify.designsecurity
- Iconify icon sets in JSON formatgithub.comofficial
- iconify/iconify on npmnpmjs.comofficial
- iconify-icon CDN by jsDelivrjsdelivr.comofficial
- Iconify . open source icon collection (OEGlobal)connect.oeglobal.orgreview
review
- daily.dev . Iconify license overviewdaily.devreview
- iconify usage notes (Japanese dev blog)madogiwa0124.hatenablog.comreview
- Free icon resource roundup (CSDN)blog.csdn.netreview
- Plans & Pricing . Font Awesomefontawesome.comofficial
- FortAwesome/Font-Awesome on GitHubgithub.comofficial
- To me, Iconfiy > Font Awesome (Reddit)reddit.comreview
review
- Font Awesome Reviews . Product Huntproducthunt.comreview
- Font Awesome Speed & Performanceswarmify.comreview