Magic UI vs Aceternity vs Facade UI: which animated library fits your project

I built Facade, so read this with that in mind. I also use Magic UI and Aceternity components on projects where they fit, and I think the three libraries overlap less than their landing pages suggest. All three are animated React component collections on Tailwind and motion. The difference is what kind of website each one assumes you are building. Get that right and the choice makes itself.

What each library is for

Magic UI is a collection of animated components and templates for SaaS landing pages and marketing sites. Think animated beams between icons, bento grids, shimmering buttons, orbiting logos, number tickers. It is built to make a product page look like it was shipped by a well funded startup, and it does that well. There is a free open source set and a Pro tier with templates and more blocks.

Aceternity UI sits in the same space with a stronger visual signature: 3D cards, spotlight effects, background beams, text generation effects, parallax scrolls. The components lean toward dramatic hero moments and portfolio style sites. It also has a free set and a paid Pro offering with templates and blocks.

Facade UI is for a different site. The 53 items are the sections a plumber, a dental practice, a brokerage or a small agency needs: Opening hours in the business's time zone, a Booking slots picker, a Mortgage calculator, a service area map with a ZIP checker, a listing grid, a valuation funnel. The animation is there, but it is in service of a local business page that has to produce phone calls, not a product launch that has to produce signups.

Magic UI and Aceternity make a page feel like software. Facade makes a page feel like a business that is open right now.

Install method

All three install source into your project rather than a compiled package, the right model for components you will restyle.

Magic UI and Aceternity offer a shadcn CLI compatible install for many components alongside copy and paste from the docs; check each component's page for the exact command.

Facade is a shadcn registry end to end. Every free item installs with one command:

npx shadcn@latest add https://facadeui.com/r/opening-hours.json

Pro items install by name from the private @facade registry once your license key is in components.json, which is a one time setup described in the installation docs:

npx shadcn@latest add @facade/booking-slots @facade/mortgage-calculator

Both land in components/facade/ as TypeScript files you own. The registry index at /r/registry.json lists everything, and every component page has a .md version for tools that read Markdown.

License and price

The free tiers of all three are MIT licensed, which means you can use them in client work without attribution or fees. Facade has 33 free items under MIT, including the opening hours component, the FAQ section with schema, the big footer and the agent card.

The paid tiers differ in model and I would rather you read the current terms on each pricing page than quote numbers that may have changed. What I can state about Facade: Pro is $149 as a one time payment at the launch price, $199 regular, for one developer with unlimited personal and client projects and all future releases. Team is $399 one time for up to ten developers. There is no subscription and no per site fee, because agencies that bill per project do not want a recurring line item they have to apportion across clients.

For Magic UI and Aceternity, check whether the Pro tier is one time or recurring, whether it covers a team, and whether templates are included, because that is where the models diverge.

AI agent and MCP support

This is where the libraries differ most in 2026, and where I expect the gap to matter more each year.

Facade ships an MCP server. Register it once with Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http facade https://facadeui.com/api/mcp

The agent then has four tools: list_components to search by text, kind, category or tier, get_component to read docs, install command, usage and source, get_install_command to get one shadcn command for several items, and suggest_page to get an ordered block list for a business type. Ask Claude Code or Cursor to "build a landing page for an HVAC company in Phoenix with Facade blocks" and it can plan the sections, install them and wire the props without copying from a docs page. There is also an llms.txt index and the Markdown component pages for agents that work from text.

Magic UI and Aceternity are both well documented and agents can work with them from the docs and the shadcn registry JSON. Whether either offers a first party MCP server at the time you read this is worth checking on their sites; I do not want to make a claim about another project's roadmap.

Theming

All three use Tailwind, so restyling is a matter of classes and tokens, but the depth varies.

Facade components use semantic shadcn tokens only: bg-background, text-foreground, bg-muted, bg-brand. Change --brand in your globals.css and every component follows, radius comes from --radius, and dark mode works through the .dark class with no per component work. This is a hard rule in the registry conventions, because an agency theming the same booking picker for a dentist in blue and a barber in black should not open the file.

Magic UI and Aceternity components are also Tailwind based and respond to your theme, but several of their signature effects carry their own color choices, gradients or canvas based rendering that you tune per component. That is appropriate for their use case: a hero effect is supposed to be distinctive. It just means a little more work when the same component appears on ten client sites.

Every Facade component also respects prefers-reduced-motion, through motion's useReducedMotion or the CSS media query for the pure CSS marquees. Check individual components in the other libraries; many do, some effects by nature cannot.

When to pick which

Pick Magic UI when you are building a SaaS marketing site, a developer tool landing page or a product launch, and you want polished, recognizable animated sections fast. The bento grids, beams and tickers are the right vocabulary for software.

Pick Aceternity when the brief calls for visual drama: a portfolio, an agency reel, a product hero that needs to stop a scroll. If the client's first sentence is "we want it to feel premium" and the content is light, Aceternity's effects earn their place.

Pick Facade when the site belongs to a business with a street address. The question is not "how do we make this look impressive" but "is someone open right now, do they come to my ZIP, can I book Thursday at 2, what would the monthly payment be." Those are the components Facade has and the other two do not, because they were never meant to.

Mix them when it makes sense. A brokerage can run the Facade listing grid and valuation funnel under an Aceternity hero. The three install the same way and share Tailwind, so they coexist in one project.

The one thing I would not do is pick an animation library for a local business site and then hand build the opening hours, the booking flow and the service area. Those are the sections that eat the hours on a plumber site, and the plumber page shows what the full stack of them looks like when you do not have to build them.

FAQ

Can I use Facade components inside a Magic UI or Aceternity page?

Yes. All three install as source into your project and use Tailwind, so a Facade booking picker sits inside an Aceternity layout without extra configuration.

Does Facade have the SaaS style components like beams and bento grids?

It has a features bento with live micro animations tuned for local business content, and a few primitives such as marquee, text reveal, spotlight card and tilt card. It does not try to cover the full SaaS vocabulary; Magic UI and Aceternity do that better.

Is the MCP server available on the free tier?

Yes. The server works without a license key for every free item. Pass your license key as a header and the agent can also read and install Pro items.