Tabler: the Bootstrap dashboard kit you install from npm
Tabler is free and open-source HTML Dashboard UI Kit built on Bootstrap
At a glance
- What is it?
- Tabler is an MIT-licensed HTML dashboard UI kit built on Bootstrap, distributed as @tabler/core on npm. It gives you a component library and a preview site; it does not give you a backend, and the repository has not been pushed to since 2025-07-13.
- Who is it for?
- Adopt Tabler if you already write HTML and Sass and want a Bootstrap-based admin shell without designing components from scratch. Skip it if you need an application framework with routing, state and data fetching, because Tabler ships none of that.
- Can I use it commercially?
- Yes. MIT is a permissive licence: you can use, modify and sell software built on it, as long as you keep its copyright and licence notices.
- Is it still maintained?
- Yes. The repository received new commits within the last day.
- What is it written in?
- Mainly Astro, according to GitHub's language statistics.
Answers come from the project's GitHub data, last synced on September 29, 2026, and from our analysis. They are not legal advice.
Editorial analysis
What Tabler solves, and who actually needs it
Most internal tools do not fail because of the backend. They fail because someone has to build a sidebar, a data table, a modal, a dropdown and a form layout before the first useful screen appears. Tabler is a pre-built answer to that part of the work: an HTML dashboard UI kit built on Bootstrap, with over 20 individual pages according to the README, covering components that can be recolored and restyled through Sass.
The audience is narrow and worth stating plainly. The README says the only requirement is basic HTML and CSS knowledge. That is accurate, and it is also the boundary. Tabler is markup and stylesheets plus a JavaScript bundle for interactive components. If you are building a React or Vue application, you will be writing the component glue yourself, or looking for a port. If you are building server-rendered pages in any language, Tabler drops in with a stylesheet link.
The licence is MIT, so commercial use and modification are permitted under that licence's terms. The project is not archived. The last push to the repository was on 2025-07-13, which is when @tabler/[email protected] was released, so treat it as a finished release line rather than a codebase with daily activity.
Bootstrap with a design layer on top
The mechanism is not exotic, and that is the point. Tabler follows Bootstrap's guidelines, per the README, so the grid, spacing utilities and responsive breakpoints behave the way a Bootstrap user expects. What Tabler adds is a visual layer: its own components, its own Sass variables, and a set of demo pages you copy from.
The repository is a pnpm workspace, visible in pnpm-workspace.yaml and the top-level package.json, with turbo.json driving the build pipeline. The published package lives under core/, the preview site under preview/, and the documentation under docs/. The root package.json is marked private, so the repository itself is the development workspace, not the thing you publish. Consumers install the built artifact from npm.
Bootstrap's own JavaScript is not a peer dependency you add separately in 1.5. The README states that Tabler 1.5 ships Bootstrap inside the package. That is convenient for a fresh project and awkward for an existing one, because it means you cannot easily pin a different Bootstrap version underneath Tabler. The same release moves the Sass sources to the module system and drops a few unused variables, which is why the README points at a dedicated upgrade guide listing every breaking change with before-and-after examples.
Styling is driven by Sass, so the intended customisation path is compiling Tabler's sources with your own variable overrides rather than overriding compiled CSS. The build scripts in the root package.json include token generation and CSS variable checks, which suggests the design tokens are treated as a generated artifact rather than hand-edited CSS.
Installing @tabler/core and rendering a first page
Tabler is distributed via npm, per the README. Installing it adds the package to your project's dependencies:
npm install --save @tabler/coreIf you do not use a package manager, the README points at the GitHub releases page for a ZIP archive, and notes that every file in the npm package is also served over a CDN. The quickest first test is a single HTML file with the CDN stylesheet in the head and the CDN script before the closing body tag. The README gives this exact example:
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
<title>Tabler demo</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@tabler/core@latest/dist/css/tabler.min.css" />
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello, Tabler!</h1>
<button class="btn btn-primary">Primary button</button>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@tabler/core@latest/dist/js/tabler.min.js"></script>
</body>
</html>Open that file in a browser and you should see a heading and a styled primary button. The button class is Bootstrap's, which is the clearest sign that your existing Bootstrap markup knowledge transfers.
If you would rather not install anything at all, the README offers the tabler-starter template running on StackBlitz, CodeSandbox or GitHub Codespaces. Note the @latest in both CDN URLs: it tracks the newest release, so pin a version number instead if you need reproducible builds.
Running the Tabler preview and docs locally
Working on Tabler itself is a different job from consuming it, and the README documents two paths. The local path needs Node.js 22.12 or newer and pnpm, with Corepack recommended for installing pnpm. After cloning, the sequence is:
pnpm install
pnpm run devThe README states that the preview website is then at http://localhost:3000 and the documentation website at http://localhost:3010, and that changes to most source files rebuild and refresh the page. A one-off production build is `pnpm run build`.
The Docker path avoids installing Node locally. From the repository root you build the image and run it with both ports published:
docker build -t tabler .
docker run -p 3000:3000 -p 3010:3010 -v $(pwd)/core:/app/core -v $(pwd)/preview:/app/preview -v $(pwd)/docs:/app/docs -v $(pwd)/shared:/app/shared tablerThe Dockerfile is based on node:22-alpine, enables Corepack, copies the tree, and runs `pnpm install --frozen-lockfile` before exposing ports 3000 and 3010. The compose file adds anonymous volumes over the node_modules directories so the host mounts do not overwrite the dependencies installed inside the image. That detail matters: without it, mounting source directories over the container would hide the installed packages.
The README also mentions GitHub Codespaces with a dev container that installs everything, and the repository carries a .devcontainer/ directory to support it.
Where Tabler is the wrong tool
Tabler has no opinion about your data. There is no router, no state management, no API client, no authentication flow and no server component anywhere in the described package. The README's framing is explicit that this is a template and component kit, not a framework. If you pick it expecting an admin panel you configure and deploy, you will be building the application yourself behind the markup.
The second limitation is release cadence. The last push was on 2025-07-13, the same day @tabler/[email protected] was tagged, following 1.3.0 on 2025-05-19 and 1.2.0 on 2025-04-16. Three releases in three months and then nothing after that date is a pattern worth noticing before you build a long-lived product on top of it. The MIT licence means you can fork and maintain it yourself, which is the practical mitigation.
The third is the bundled Bootstrap in 1.5. If your project already loads Bootstrap for other reasons, you now have two copies of overlapping CSS and JavaScript unless you untangle them. The upgrade guide is the place that documents the breakage, and the README's instruction is to read it before updating from 1.4.
Finally, the documentation is a separate website, docs.tabler.io, not a file in the repository you can grep offline. That is a mild annoyance for anyone working without network access.
Alternatives and the actual difference in approach
The closest comparison is Bootstrap itself. Tabler is Bootstrap plus a component and design layer, so the honest question is whether you want the layer. If your team already has a design system built on Bootstrap's grid and utilities, Tabler's components will fight your existing styles for the same class names and variables. If you have no design system, Tabler saves you the component work.
A different approach is a JavaScript-framework admin template, where the components are framework components with props and state rather than HTML classes. That trades the HTML and CSS learning curve for a framework learning curve, and it ties the UI kit to a specific framework version. Tabler's HTML-first design means the markup works in any server-side language, and it also means every interactive behaviour has to be wired by hand or through the bundled JavaScript.
A third approach is a utility-first CSS framework, where you compose styles directly in markup with no component classes at all. That gives you total control and no pre-built pages. Tabler's value proposition is the opposite: over 20 ready pages you can copy and adapt, at the cost of inheriting someone else's class names and Sass structure.
Maintenance, upgrades and licence cost
The upgrade cost is real and documented. The README devotes a section to upgrading to 1.5 and states that it ships Bootstrap inside the package, moves Sass sources to the module system and drops unused variables. Any project that overrode those variables or imported the Sass files directly will need to follow the before-and-after examples in the upgrade guide. This is not a drop-in version bump.
The repository's tooling suggests the maintainers treat consistency as a build concern. The root package.json defines checks for documentation links, CSS variables, HTML validity, markup classes and open-source compliance, plus a token generation step with a check mode. For a consumer this is mostly invisible, but it means the published CSS is generated from tokens rather than hand-maintained.
The licence is MIT. Under that licence you may use, copy, modify, merge, publish and distribute the software, subject to the licence's own conditions, which the LICENSE file in the repository states in full. It permits commercial products. It does not grant trademark rights, and it does not obligate the maintainers to support you. Nothing here is legal advice; read the LICENSE file and the licence of the bundled Bootstrap dependency if the distinction matters to your organisation.
Editorial conclusion
Adopt Tabler if you already write HTML and Sass and want a Bootstrap-based admin shell without designing components from scratch. Skip it if you need an application framework with routing, state and data fetching, because Tabler ships none of that. Before committing, read the upgrade guide at docs.tabler.io for the 1.5 breaking changes and check whether the Bootstrap version bundled in the package matches the one your project already uses, since Tabler 1.5 ships Bootstrap inside the package.
Frequently asked questions
What is Tabler used for?
Tabler is an HTML dashboard UI kit built on Bootstrap, used to build admin panels and internal interfaces. The README describes it as a dashboard template with over 20 individual pages using various components, requiring only basic HTML and CSS knowledge.
Is Tabler a legitimate app?
Tabler is an open source project published on npm as @tabler/core under the MIT licence, with a repository at github.com/tabler/tabler and a live demo at preview.tabler.io. It is a UI kit for developers, not an end-user application you sign up for.
Is Tabler a dating app?
No. The repository describes Tabler as a dashboard template and UI kit built on Bootstrap, distributed via npm and CDN. Nothing in the README or the repository files describes a consumer social or dating product.
Is Tabler safe to use?
Tabler is distributed as source through npm and GitHub under the MIT licence, and the repository includes a SECURITY.md file. The README does not describe any hosted service that would store your data, so the safety question is about the dependency itself rather than an account.
Is Tabler free?
Yes. Tabler is described as free and open source under the MIT licence, and the README notes that sponsorship and donations are optional ways to support the project. The @tabler/core package installs from npm at no cost.
Official sources
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