Font Awesome vs Sass
When comparing Font Awesome vs Sass, the Slant community recommends Sass for most people. In the question“What are the best web design tools?” Sass is ranked 3rd while Font Awesome is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose Sass is:
You are able to declare custom functions with Sass (for example, converting units) which can be easily invoked, even when using shorthand properties. This results in cleaner, more reusable code.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro 3332 icons to choose from
Font Awesome 5.1 offers 1264 free and 2068 payed icons.
Pro Large variety of icons
There is a wide range of web-related icons to choose from. Categories include web-application, directional, transportation and brand icons. See the full list of icons here.
Pro Easy to use
Pro MIT licence for the code
Pro Screen reader compatible
Other font icons have been known to have issues with this.
Pro Font Aweseome 5 is here with over 929 icons and counting
The Pro version is very reasonable and gives you access to 2316 icons and counting. Across 3 weights! Very Nice!
Pro Designed to be used with Bootstrap
Font Awesome can be used with any framework, however it's especially easy to use with Bootstrap.
Pro Continuously updated
Pro Can employ tree shaking to not bundle unused icons
Pro IE7 support with older versions
IE7 support has been removed from Font Awesome 4.4.0. However you can still use an older version for IE7 support.
Pro Customizable icons through stacking
Icons in Font Awesome can be restyled by stacking different borders and background to modify their meaning. For example, any icon can be turned into a bullet point by stacking it on a circle, or converted into its negative by stacking a red cancel icon on top of it.
Pro Powerful advanced function features
You are able to declare custom functions with Sass (for example, converting units) which can be easily invoked, even when using shorthand properties. This results in cleaner, more reusable code.
Pro Nested selectors
Sass allows you to nest selectors which results in code that is both faster to write and cleaner to read.
For example, this:
.parent
color: blue
.child
color: yellow
Will compile to this:
.parent {
color: blue;
}
.parent .child {
color: yellow;
}
Pro Rapid development
Another big advantage for Sass is the very active community pushing the development forward at a rapid pace. Sass is constantly coming out with bug fixes, and are often the first to come out with improvements.
This is an important factor to keep in mind when picking a preprocessor to invest your time into.
Pro Extends CSS maintaining compatibility with CSS standards specification
It comes with two possible syntaxes:
- Sass - No parens or semicolons allowed and the nesting is dictated with whitespace.
- SCSS - SCSS syntax is a superset of CSS – which means SCSS can be written as CSS, but has been expanded to include the features of Sass as well.
SCSS is easier to pick up for beginners and Sass has a cleaner syntax. Having both syntaxes means you can pick the one that best suits your coding style.
The mandatory syntax rules for both SCSS and Sass results in a more consistent code. For a more detailed analysis between Sass and SCSS go here. To see a nice comparison of the Sass syntax against CSS and SCSS go here.
Pro Output minified CSS
Sass simplifies minifying CSS files by offering a one-line command that will output a minified version.
Pro Easy to learn
It's very comfortable and easy to write/learn Sass, even for beginners.
Pro Compass framework provides added features
Sass can be used with a framework called Compass, which provides additional functions and mixins which can reduce the amount of code you have to write.
For example, Compass will take care of vendor prefixes.
This:
div {
background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(#F00, #000);
background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(#F00, #000);
background-image: -o-linear-gradient(#F00, #000);
background-image: linear-gradient(#F00, #000);
}
Can be written as:
.gradient {
@include background-image(linear-gradient(#F00, #000));
}
For a full list of features, check out the Compass documentation.
Pro Source maps support
Rather than being limited to editing the outputted CSS file in devtools, with source maps you are able to manipulate the original .scss file.
Pro Libsass - C/C++ port of Sass
There is also a C/C++ port of the Sass CSS precompiler called Libsass that decouples Sass from Ruby. It is very fast, portable and easy to build and integrate with a variety of platforms and languages.
Pro New sass package means you no longer need external dependencies
The latest implementation of Sass is written in Dart, and compiles to pure JS with no native code or external dependencies, means you no longer need Ruby or libSass.
Pro Easy to use with ruby apps
Since it's written in Ruby, it's easier and faster to use with Ruby apps.
Cons
Con Too expensive
The icons I need are in the pay plan.
Con You will never use all icons
This means you'll have a lot of useless data (unused icons) being load into your application.
Con Font Awesome slows webpages
Con Requires Ruby or libSass
To compile Sass, it needs either Ruby or libSass installed locally.

Con Noisy syntax
There is many unnecessary characters when using the SCSS syntax.
{}:;@
However using the Sass syntax eliminates them.
