When comparing Kendo UI vs Onsen UI, the Slant community recommends Onsen UI for most people. In the question“What are the best frameworks for developing cross-platform mobile apps with JavaScript?” Onsen UI is ranked 4th while Kendo UI is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Onsen UI is:
Onsen UI is open source, and completely free to use.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Free Core tools
Kendo UI is separated into a commercial and open source frameworks. The core of Kendo UI is in the open source frameworks, but some usability and benefits of Kendo UI are lost without the commercial version.
Pro Platform-based UI
Kendo knows what device it is being viewed on so it can adjust the UI accordingly. If a user is on a PC the user will see things differently than on a mobile device. Between iOS and Android the user will also notice a different as it pulls from the core UI of those core systems.
Pro Theme Builder
An interactive tool that has been created to customize an apps theme. Users are able to select from many pre-defined themes, edit them, and download the theme to bring into a project.
Pro Open source and free
Onsen UI is open source, and completely free to use.
Pro Can be used for web apps as well
Onsen UI is usable for classic web development as well as mobile.
Pro Large selection of components
Onsen UI provides a wide selection of components that are ready to use out of the box and are easily customizable.
Pro Easy to use
Onsen UI provides very clear, well-written and detailed documentation.
It uses popular technologies that are likely already familiar to developers (such as jQuery and Angular).
The framework is semantic and intuitive to use, making it quite fast to learn.
Pro Supports React
React is the most trending front-end UI framework, naturally supporting that is a plus.
Cons
Con Expensive commercial tools [$699, $1,499]
The other core tools developed with Kendo are the commercial tools. There is the Professional version for $699 that will result in more jQuery UI widgets and client support. The $1499 "DevCraft" Complete edition gets developers the DevCraft .NET toolbox, testing and debugging frameworks and applications, as well as priority support.