affectUI vs Aceternity UI and Magic UI
Aceternity UI and Magic UI are mostly for landing pages – animated heroes, backgrounds, text effects and marketing sections, built with Tailwind CSS and Framer Motion. affectUI is mostly for the product itself – chat, agents, approvals, dashboards – plus a smaller set of landing illustrations and motion effects that need no animation library. For the marketing site, start with them; for the AI app behind the sign-in, affectUI fits better.
What each one is
- Aceternity UI – animated components, blocks and templates for landing pages and marketing sites, built with Tailwind CSS and Framer Motion; many free components and a paid all-access plan
- Magic UI – open-source (MIT) animated components for landing pages – text animations, backgrounds, special effects – built with Tailwind CSS and Framer Motion, with a paid Pro tier of templates and premium components
- affectUI – 126 components, screens, blocks, illustrations and motion effects for AI products, each a single .tsx file with its own CSS and motion
Where they differ
- Focus: Aceternity UI and Magic UI make a marketing page stand out; affectUI makes the product work – composer, tool calls, traces, approvals, tables, settings
- Dependencies: both build on Tailwind CSS and Framer Motion; affectUI components carry their own CSS and animate with CSS and the Web Animations API, without a motion library
- Motion: their effects are meant to be noticed; affectUI's motion is quiet and tells people what changed – a status that settles, a number that rolls, a row that slides in
- Price: all three have free components and a one-time paid tier
Where they overlap
affectUI also has animated illustrations for feature cards and empty states, and motion effects such as Number Ticker, Text Reveal and Grid Background. They follow light and dark mode and need no Lottie files or animation library – useful when the landing page should look like the product.
- Integration Beam – Your product between the tools it connects – light pulses flow along curved beams, hover to focus a tool, click to pause it
- Model Wheel – AI model names on a turning drum – the rows bend away at the edges and each model lands on a soft gray fill
- Number Ticker – Odometer-style numbers – every digit rolls to its new value and counts in from zero when it scrolls into view
Which to pick
- A landing page with a big animated hero – Aceternity UI or Magic UI
- The AI product itself – chat, agents, approvals, dashboards – affectUI
- Many teams use one of them for the marketing site and affectUI inside the app; they don't clash, since affectUI's styles stay inside its components
- Chat Composer – Prompt composer with model picker, voice input, app connections and approval request
- Agent Tree – Who started whom – an orchestrator and its sub-agents as a live tree, with status, cost and time on every card, costs rolling up each branch, and branches that fold to one line
- Approval Card – An agent asks before it acts – risk badge, preview, Approve and Deny with shortcuts, a pausing countdown, and a smooth morph into a resolved row
Questions
Is affectUI an alternative to Aceternity UI or Magic UI?
Only in part. affectUI has some landing illustrations and motion effects, but most of it is product UI for AI apps, which Aceternity UI and Magic UI don't focus on.
Does affectUI need Framer Motion or Tailwind CSS?
No. Each component animates with CSS and the Web Animations API and carries its own styles, so it needs only React 19.
Can I use affectUI with Magic UI or Aceternity UI in one project?
Yes. They install through the same shadcn CLI, and affectUI's CSS is scoped to its own class names.
Updated 2026-10-29