Choosing the right modern Drupal Bootstrap base theme

A high-level comparison of some of the most-widely used Bootstrap framework-focused base themes, including feedback from some of their maintainers.

With more than 150 Bootstrap compatible Drupal 10 contributed themes on Drupal.org, selecting the best Bootstrap-powered base theme for you, your development team, and your project can sometimes come down to a superficial popularity contest. The lack of a clear comparison between the most widely-used and/or most well-known options is frustrating.

Rather than attempting the futile task of comparing all 150+ themes, based on my experience and conversations, I have selected the six (of what I consider to be) leading Bootstrap 5 compatible base themes for this task.

As someone who is not a dedicated front-end or theme developer, but is somewhat comfortable with the Bootstrap framework, I've used several of the options included in this comparison. This very site uses the Bootstrap base theme, our DrupalEasy Academy curriculum site and the Drupal Career Online theming lessons uses Bootstrap Barrio, and our Single Directory Component workshop utilizes Radix.

Despite my experience with several of the Bootstrap 5-powered base themes, I still didn't have a clear understanding of which one I should use or recommend based on different projects and teams. Gaining clarity in this area is the goal of this blog post.

In addition to my own experiences and research, I also contacted the most active maintainer(s) of each base theme and asked each to provide some feedback about their projects.

The base themes I decided to compare in this blog post were based on previous experiences, usage numbers on drupal.org and comments on a social media post about this topic that I posted in early April, 2025.

*Note: It is not lost on me the potential confusion between the three base themes with "Bootstrap" in their name! 

*Commits on current release branch in 2025

From the data above, it is clear to see that Bootstrap has (by far) the most usage, half have had a release in the last six months (November 2024 - April 2025,) with the other half having no commits on the listed branch in 2025 yet.

Front-end tools

One of the first things I do when evaluating a base theme is to take a look at how they handle CSS compiling. Generally, this falls into one of three categories:

• no built-in support (meaning the base theme is primarily designed for CSS, not Sass)
• Sass files provided along with CSS compilation tools (usually in the form of a package.json file)
• Sass files provided, but un-opinionated about compiling CSS (meaning it is up the developer)

Note: a developer or team's front-end tool chain can take many different forms, so this section is mostly geared towards folks not comfortable setting up their own toolchain.

For our contenders, here's what I found:

• Artisan: recommended subtheme includes Sass files and package.json featuring Laravel Mix.
• Bootstrap: provides both a CSS-only subtheme and a Sass-based subtheme that includes a package.json featuring Gulp.
• Bootstrap 5: recommended subtheme includes Sass files and a package.json file.
• Bootstrap Barrio: provides both a CSS-only subtheme and a Sass-based subtheme that includes a package.json featuring Gulp.
• Radix: recommended subtheme includes Sass files and package.json featuring Laravel Mix and BiomeJS
• UI Suite Bootstrap: recommended subtheme includes Sass files

Single directory components

With the Drupal community's love affair with single directory components (SDCs) not looking to wane anytime soon, it is becoming more-and-more common for base themes to include a useful set of components that can be utilized.

Ideally, (IMHO) SDCs should be entirely self-contained, not relying on libraries or Sass source files that don't reside in the SDC. Unfortunately, this is not always possible, but it is something that I definitely consider when doing my evaluation. Here's how our contenders incorporate SDCs:

• Artisan: includes components both in base theme and recommended subtheme
• Bootstrap: includes components in base theme
• Bootstrap 5: no components included
• Bootstrap Barrio: includes components in base theme
• Radix: includes components in base theme
• UI Suite Bootstrap: includes components in base theme

Drupal's Appearance theme settings

I honestly didn't consider this aspect until one of the base theme maintainers I interviewed mentioned it. Some base themes expose a lot of configuration options through Drupal's Appearance admin UI settings pages and some do not. Different theme developers might have different preferences - often those newer to theme development (or those for whom it is not a full-time job) prefer more configuration options exposed in the Drupal admin UI.

• Artisan: Many configuration options including colors, fonts and column widths. Many configurations utilize CSS variables.
• Bootstrap: Some configuration options including Color module and Bootswatch integration.
• Bootstrap 5: Few configuration options.
• Bootstrap Barrio: Many configuration options including Bootstrap grid classes.
• Radix: Very few configuration options.
• UI Suite Bootstrap: Very few configuration options.

Documentation

For base themes, I find that a little bit of documentation goes a long way. I don't expect base theme contributors to document every single possible use case, but I do hope that enough documentation exists for a developer to understand the theme's pros and cons and provide enough step-by-step instructions to demonstrate (with examples) best practices when building out a subtheme.

• Artisan: Limited to project page and project README file.
• Bootstrap: Drupal.org doc pages
• Bootstrap 5: Limited to project page and project README file.
• Bootstrap Barrio: Many links from project page, but not all are up-to-date
• Radix: Dedicated documentation site
• UI Suite Bootstrap: Limited to project page and project README file.

What do the maintainers say?

About half-way through my research for this blog post, I realized that without direct experience with all of them (which I do not have,) it would be best if I gave each project's maintainers a chance to provide some feedback.

I contacted the most active maintainer(s) for each project (based on number of commits over the past six months) and asked them the same three questions:

1. What are the advantages of (your base theme) over other modern Drupal Bootstrap-based base themes?
2. What are the disadvantages?
3. Is your base theme designed for a particular level of front-end developer (beginner, intermediate, advanced?)

I considered asking an additional question about how well positioned each base theme is for integration with Experience Builder, but I decided against it as we're still at least 5 months away from its initial release and didn't think it was an entirely fair question.

I received responses from maintainers of Bootstrap, Bootstrap Barrio, Radix, and UI Suite Bootstrap, and have included summaries of each of their responses here.

Artisan

Unfortunately, the maintainer didn't respond to my message.

Bootstrap and Bootstrap Barrio

Alberto Siles (hatuhay on drupal.org) is one of the maintainers of both Bootstrap and Bootstrap Barrio. He mentioned that he took over maintenance of Bootstrap after it was abandoned - originally only to provide updates to it, "but now it depends on the community if they embrace the new code or not." He will continue to maintain both base themes (wow!) and improvements to each will depend on feedback (and help) he receives in each issue queue.

About Bootstrap Barrio's advantages, he wrote, "Long term stability, proven code, but mostly, the theme is designed in a way that makes it easy to upgrade in both Bootstrap and Drupal major versions seamlessly. Now, the code is constantly updated for both Drupal and Bootstrap enhancements, this is also a modern theme in every aspect."

He also mentioned that Bootstrap Barrio is designed for developers of all skill levels, as it is the "subtheme that discriminates. The basic subtheme will let you work with predefined color pallets, Google fonts and other backend configuration and some css, while the Sass version will setup, in minutes, a custom compiled version of Bootstrap."

Bootstrap 5

Vladimir Roudakov (vladimiraus on drupal.org) replied, "Janna (jannakha on drupal.org) and I created the Bootstrap 4 and consequently Bootstrap 5 themes as simple, non-prescriptive, and very flexible Bootstrap themes. At the time, 2020-2021, there were no lightweight Bootstrap-based themes, and the original Bootstrap theme was heavily outdated."

He also mentioned that this base theme is geared towards intermediate-level developers and requires "minor tweaking for Sass setup."

Radix

Sohail Lajevardi (doxigo on drupal.org) said that some of Radix's advantages include being one of the first Drupal base themes to include SDCs, the use of modern front-end tools (including Laravel Mix and BiomeJS), its own command-line utility, very good documentation (including YouTube videos), and an effort to minimize Drupal-isms.

Interestingly, he also mentioned that, "I always considered Radix to be a theme and not a configuration vehicle, so we do everything where it needs to be, in the theme. No configuration mix up." I found this an especially interesting contrast to several of the other contenders, notably Bootstrap Barrio and Artisan, both of which utilize a good number of configuration options in Drupal's Appearance settings.

He did mention a disadvantage being "Not easy to understand all the tools and bells of the theme for a newcomer." But he did reiterate Radix's documentation being a solution for this - especially for those new to it. 

UI Suite Bootstrap

This base theme is a bit of an outlier, as it is very closely tied to the UI Suite project. I don't have a good handle on how likely it would be for a team to decide to use this base theme if they aren't UI Suite module users as well.

Florent Torregrosa (grimreaper on drupal.org) stressed that this project is a "production ready, design-system-oriented-first theme." He went on to say that together with UI Suite, the base theme provides "tools to allow site builders to configure how they want the design system artifacts (components, styles, Icons, CSS variables, etc.) to fit their business needs. And so we have nothing hardcoded for specific content types or other content entities, bundles, or fields."

Michael Fanini (g4mbini on drupal.org) added that it "packages in one place all Bootstrap specification & designs artifacts (components, style utilities, icons, forms, …) with modern tools from core (SDC, Icon API)" and together with other UI Suite modules provides a no/low-code method for Site-builders to connect Drupal fields to Bootstrap components.

In fact, as I've learned more and more about the UI Suite eco-system of projects, the more it is evident that one of its primary goals is to make it as "design-system-oriented" as possible, as well as prioritize no/low code field-to-component mapping. Much of this means that rather than the Drupal developers providing the Drupal-y templates to the non-Drupal-y front-end developers, it is the front-end developers who provide the components to the Drupal developers to wire to Drupal entities, bundles, and fields. The UI Suite ecosystem maintainers refer to this concept as "inverting the workflow."

As for disadvantages, he notes that its current dependencies on other UI Suite ecosystem modules is less-than-ideal, but as each of the dependencies are at different stages of being added to Drupal core, this is likely a short-term issue. 

Conclusions?

Ugh - I figured I'd have to write this section, even though I knew it would not be possible to have a single "I recommend using base theme X" statement. Instead, here's my one-line opinion for each:

• Artisan: With so many configuration options, this might be the best option for beginners or lower-budget sites. It is, however, not used by very many sites (yet?) and the documentation could be better.
• Bootstrap: Nothing compelling over any of the other contenders.
• Bootstrap 5: Less prescriptive than Bootstrap Barrio - could be a solid choice for more intermediate-level theme developers.
• Bootstrap Barrio: A comfortable and solid choice for me, despite a few annoyances (probably due to the fact that I currently use this project the most.) But, moving forward, I'd like to see this base theme leading the way into a no-Sass future. (One that utilizes PostCSS instead, perhaps?)
• Radix: I'm a sucker for good documentation and do appreciate the opinionated nature of Radix minimizing the configuration options. I like the fact that it is SDC-forward and will definitely consider using this for my next custom theme project.
• UI Suite Bootstrap: A very compelling option for those projects that are design-system first. The close ties to the UI Suite of modules could complicate things though. Finally, it's installation requires a few more manual steps than the other contenders. 

AI was used in the authoring of this blog post for the social media share image.