Head to head
Stop guessing which one. Put them side by side.
Up to 4 tools, same rows for each: what it is, what it really costs, the trap, and how to wire it up. The URL carries your picks — send it to anyone.
Iconly (Animations)LucideIdeogram
Quick read
- Free with no card: Lucide.
- Editor's picks: Lucide, Ideogram.
| Field | Iconly (Animations)web.iconly.pro | Lucidelucide.dev | Ideogramideogram.ai |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | 40,000+ icons across flat, 3D and animated categories, delivered through a web app and Figma plugin. Exports SVG, PNG, JSX, TSX, and for the animated packs Lottie JSON, dotLottie, GIF and MP4. No npm package or React runtime. | Community fork and continuation of Feather Icons — same 24px grid and 2px stroke, vastly expanded. Already in your Lovable project, because shadcn/ui ships with it. Named exports, so props and Tailwind classes pass straight through to the SVG. | Ideogram 4.0 (June 2026, 9.3B params, native 2K, first open-weight model in the family). Its differentiator is confirmed, not marketing: reliable, legible text rendered inside images — headlines, packaging copy, signage — at multilingual and small-type scale. |
| Category | Images & asset pipelines | Images & asset pipelines | Images & asset pipelines |
| Cost tier | mixed | free | mixed |
| Pricing | 2,500 free · $8/mo · $189 lifetime | Free · ISC | Free · $20/mo · $60/mo · API $0.03–$0.10/img |
| Why builders pick it | A few deliberate moments only — a subscribe confirmation, an empty archive state, an onboarding step. Not interface chrome. | Default to this for the entire interface icon layer and only reach elsewhere when a glyph genuinely does not exist. | The cover-art and hero-image answer. Bounding-box layout control lets you reserve space for the masthead; Layerize Text (free on every tier, API-accessible) pulls generated type onto its own editable layer so you can change a headline without regenerating. Character reference keeps an illustrated persona consistent across an issue. At $0.03–$0.10/image the API is cheap enough to script batch cover variants. |
| Watch out for | Not a drop-in: playing Lottie needs a runtime (lottie-react or @lottiefiles/dotlottie-react), which is meaningfully heavier than an inline SVG. Licence bars embedding icons in templates for resale or in logo marks — and it does not state what happens to downloaded assets if a subscription lapses. | Never do import * as Icons from 'lucide-react' or dynamic-name lookups — it defeats tree-shaking and pulls all 1,768 icons into the bundle. Stroke-only; if the design needs filled icons you are managing two sets. | The free tier makes every generation public — not viable for unreleased covers. Priority credits do not roll over, and every output image bills separately, so batch size is a direct cost multiplier. |
| How to wire it up | not logged | npm install lucide-react | not logged |
| Editor's pick | No | Yes | Yes |
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# Tool comparison — Iconly (Animations) vs Lucide vs Ideogram Source: Kbaise, a directory of tools that work with Lovable projects. Pick one and tell me why before writing any integration code. ## Iconly (Animations) (iconly) - URL: https://web.iconly.pro/animations - Category: Images & asset pipelines - Cost: mixed — 2,500 free · $8/mo · $189 lifetime - What it is: 40,000+ icons across flat, 3D and animated categories, delivered through a web app and Figma plugin. Exports SVG, PNG, JSX, TSX, and for the animated packs Lottie JSON, dotLottie, GIF and MP4. No npm package or React runtime. - Why builders pick it: A few deliberate moments only — a subscribe confirmation, an empty archive state, an onboarding step. Not interface chrome. - Trap: Not a drop-in: playing Lottie needs a runtime (lottie-react or @lottiefiles/dotlottie-react), which is meaningfully heavier than an inline SVG. Licence bars embedding icons in templates for resale or in logo marks — and it does not state what happens to downloaded assets if a subscription lapses. - Full dossier: /api/public/tools/iconly ## Lucide (lucide) - URL: https://lucide.dev/ - Category: Images & asset pipelines - Cost: free — Free · ISC - What it is: Community fork and continuation of Feather Icons — same 24px grid and 2px stroke, vastly expanded. Already in your Lovable project, because shadcn/ui ships with it. Named exports, so props and Tailwind classes pass straight through to the SVG. - Why builders pick it: Default to this for the entire interface icon layer and only reach elsewhere when a glyph genuinely does not exist. - Trap: Never do import * as Icons from 'lucide-react' or dynamic-name lookups — it defeats tree-shaking and pulls all 1,768 icons into the bundle. Stroke-only; if the design needs filled icons you are managing two sets. - Wiring: npm install lucide-react - Full dossier: /api/public/tools/lucide ## Ideogram (ideogram) - URL: https://ideogram.ai/ - Category: Images & asset pipelines - Cost: mixed — Free · $20/mo · $60/mo · API $0.03–$0.10/img - What it is: Ideogram 4.0 (June 2026, 9.3B params, native 2K, first open-weight model in the family). Its differentiator is confirmed, not marketing: reliable, legible text rendered inside images — headlines, packaging copy, signage — at multilingual and small-type scale. - Why builders pick it: The cover-art and hero-image answer. Bounding-box layout control lets you reserve space for the masthead; Layerize Text (free on every tier, API-accessible) pulls generated type onto its own editable layer so you can change a headline without regenerating. Character reference keeps an illustrated persona consistent across an issue. At $0.03–$0.10/image the API is cheap enough to script batch cover variants. - Trap: The free tier makes every generation public — not viable for unreleased covers. Priority credits do not roll over, and every output image bills separately, so batch size is a direct cost multiplier. - Full dossier: /api/public/tools/ideogram ## Quick read - Free with no card: Lucide. - Editor's picks: Lucide, Ideogram. ## Rules 1. Prefer the free tier when no budget was stated, and say what the ceiling is. 2. Read the full dossier before integrating. 3. Fetch /api/public/models before writing any AI model ID.
Agents can fetch the same thing: GET /api/public/compare?slugs=iconly,lucide,ideogram