Phosphor Icons vs Lucide

Both sets are free for any project, so the choice rests on packaging and on who stands behind them. Phosphor Icons organises its SVG assets by visual weight and leaves fonts and React components to sibling projects. Lucide ships tree-shakable packages with documentation for nine environments and calls itself community-made, under the ISC licence rather than MIT. Both sites skip naming any company or country, which matters if procurement wants a contract counterparty. Phosphor at least credits two creators by name, and Lucide names three maintainers. Costs are zero on both pages we read.

Vendors can pay for more visibility on this website, for example a higher place in a ranking or more room on a page. Commercial relationships can also affect which products we feature and how prominently. Every vendor link is marked the same, whatever the arrangement behind it. How that works.

Both are reviewed in full in our icon libraries ranking: Phosphor Icons and Lucide.

1. 01

   Weights as the organising idea

   Phosphor Icons builds its package around weight variants: the core repository holds the SVG assets grouped by weight and installs through npm as @phosphor-icons/core. The repository also carries catalog data such as tags, categories and release versions. Lucide, by contrast, presents one SVG set as a package for every major package manager, with no weight grouping mentioned in our notes. It also lacks any mention of fonts. If a design system needs the same glyph in several stroke or fill styles, Phosphor describes that directly.

   Edge: Phosphor Icons

2. 02

   Tree-shaking and the nine framework guides

   Lucide states that its icons are tree-shakable, so a build imports only the icons it uses, and its documentation lists JavaScript, React, Vue, Svelte, Solid, Preact, Angular, Astro and React Native, plus 'And more'. Phosphor's core repository is a plain asset package, and the repository says framework components such as the React library are separate projects. For a team wiring icons into several frontends, Lucide asks for less assembly work, and the single set also keeps design review simpler.

   Edge: Lucide

3. 03

   No font in the box

   The Phosphor core repository ships no font. Font implementations such as @phosphor-icons/web use its codepoints, so anyone who wants an icon font adds another package and checks it separately. The GitHub organisation lists 22 public repositories, several individually MIT-licensed, covering react, vue, flutter, swift, sketch and figma. That spread is useful for a mixed team if you want it, and a nuisance if you hoped for a single download. Lucide's site speaks only of SVG packages.

   Edge: Lucide

4. 04

   MIT on one side, ISC on the other

   Phosphor's README reads 'MIT © Phosphor Icons', and the MIT licence is the only usage statement on the repository, with no price anywhere. Lucide says 'Released under the ISC License' and uses no wording about free use or a trial. Both permit the same everyday use by the notices we saw. Lucide's own fit notes warn that some legal teams know ISC less well than MIT, so Phosphor has a small familiarity edge.

   Edge: Phosphor Icons

5. 05

   Who you would call

   Phosphor's homepage credits Helena Zhang and Tobias Fried as creators, gives hello@phosphoricons.com, and states no country. The GitHub organisation profile lists the United States of America, but that is a profile field and not an imprint. Lucide names Eric Fennis, Karsa Rigo and Jakob Guddas, says 'Made by the community', and the copyright line reads Lucide Icons. Neither gives you a contract counterparty, which makes this round a draw. Both sets are free to take, but anyone needing a signed agreement should ask first, since we saw no such offer.

   Depends on the buyer

6. 06

   Sponsorship, hosting and icon counts

   Lucide points supporters to a Sponsor page and Open Collective, says its site is powered by Vercel, and reports a current icon count and version. Our readings differ between 2029 icons at 1.70.0 and 2046 icons at 1.71.0, so treat the number as moving. Phosphor's pages give no icon count, no funding route and no price. Lucide is more transparent about size and money, which helps a team planning dependence on it.

   Edge: Lucide

Can either set be used in a commercial product without paying?

Phosphor's core repository is under the MIT licence and Lucide's site says it is released under the ISC licence. Neither notice carries a price or a paid tier. Read the licence text itself before shipping, since we only read the notices.

Does Phosphor Icons give me an icon font out of the box?

No, the core repository ships no font. Font implementations such as @phosphor-icons/web build on its codepoints, and the React component library is another separate project. You install and check each piece on its own.

Who do I contact if an icon is wrong or the project stalls?

Phosphor lists hello@phosphoricons.com on its homepage, and Lucide names three maintainers and an Open Collective route for funding. Neither shows a company, a support agreement or a country in what we read. Plan on community channels instead of a contracted answer.

• Phosphor core repository: SVG assets grouped by weight, npm package name, MIT line in the README and the missing font.
• Phosphor Icons homepage: the two named creators and the contact address, with no country given.
• Phosphor GitHub organisation: 22 public repositories and the profile location field.
• Lucide homepage: ISC wording, tree-shaking, framework list, named maintainers, Vercel line and sponsorship routes.