A free BoardUI alternative for shadcn/ui dashboards

If you searched for dashboard components for React and Tailwind, you probably found BoardUI. It is a well made design system: 72 components, 17 chart cards, 8 templates, and a Figma file, built on React Aria and Tailwind CSS v4. A subset is free under MIT. The rest is BoardUI Pro, sold per developer as an annual or lifetime license, with a five-seat plan for startups.

dashboardcn exists because we think that is the wrong deal for UI code. This page is for anyone weighing the two. It is written by the people behind dashboardcn, so read it with that in mind, and check BoardUI's own license page for their current terms.

The short version#

• Price. dashboardcn is MIT licensed, all of it. There is no Pro tier and there never will be. BoardUI has a free MIT subset and a paid Pro source with a license key.
• What you get. 25 data components and 22 composed blocks today: KPI cards, trend and composed charts, donuts, funnels, bar lists, heatmaps, gauges, a full data table, and the cards that combine them. BoardUI is broader, since it is a whole design system with buttons, inputs, and app shells too. We do not ship those, because shadcn/ui already does.
• How it fits your app. dashboardcn is built on shadcn/ui: its Card, Table, and Chart primitives, its theme variables, its CLI. If your app is already on shadcn/ui, the components land in your theme with nothing to reconcile. BoardUI is its own system with its own 400+ tokens, which is great if you adopt it wholesale and awkward if you only want a chart card.
• Ownership. Both copy source into your project. With dashboardcn that source is MIT, so you can fork it, publish it, or build a competitor with it. BoardUI Pro source cannot be redistributed, and their license says you may not use it to build something that competes with BoardUI.

Same install, no checkout#

Every component installs with the shadcn CLI, the same command you use for a shadcn/ui button. The CLI pulls in any shadcn primitives the component needs, like Card and Tooltip, and any npm dependencies, like recharts.

npx shadcn@latest add https://dashboardcn.com/r/kpi-card.json

Or register the @dashboardcn namespace once and install by name. Details are in Installation.

What a block looks like#

BoardUI's strongest feature is its chart cards. Here is one of ours: a period switcher, a row of KPI tiles with sparklines and deltas, and a footer summary, composed from the KPI card, sparkline, and delta badge primitives. Click the code tab for the full source.

import { AlertTriangle, Boxes, PackageX, Timer } from "lucide-react"

import { KpiRowCard } from "@/registry/dashboardcn/blocks/kpi-row-card"

When BoardUI is the better choice#

To be fair about it: if you are starting a product from a blank page, want a complete design language with a matching Figma file, and are not on shadcn/ui, BoardUI gives you more in one place. Its React Aria foundation is also a good reason to pick it if accessibility of complex widgets matters more to you than fitting an existing theme.

If you already have a shadcn/ui app and need the data-heavy parts, KPI rows, charts, tables, and the cards around them, dashboardcn is the smaller, free tool that fits what you have. Start with the blocks, or read why we will not charge for any of it.