Hoverlab vs Aceternity UI
Both of these are catalogs of ready-made interface code, and the interesting differences are not the component counts. They are what each one gives away, what each one charges for, and what you are actually buying when you pay.
Aceternity UI’s figures below were read from their own site on 10 September 2026. Ours are computed from the catalog at build time. Prices move; go and check theirs.
What Aceternity UI does better than we do
Sells community as a feature — a private Discord where other buyers answer each other. We publish response targets at /support and beat the 48 hours, but a room full of people who already solved your problem is not something a target replaces.
This is the first thing on the page on purpose. You would have found it out anyway, and a comparison where the author wins every row is an advertisement — which readers of this particular kind of page recognise faster than most.
Side by side
| Row | Hoverlab | Aceternity UI |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $79 one-time | $199 one-time |
| Price ladder | $79 Pro / $299 Studio / $999 Enterprise, one-time, plus a per-seat Team plan | $169/yr, $199 lifetime, $1,590 for 10 seats — all currently discounted |
| What ships | 1,126 effects, 307 blocks, 126 pages, 32 templates | 200+ premium blocks, 12+ templates |
| Free tier | The whole catalog — readable, copyable and installable, with no account. Plus the CLI, the MCP server and an unauthenticated HTTP API. | Free copy-paste components for React and Next.js; no count published |
| Design files | Importable Figma frames and Dev Mode pairing — frames, not a component library | No |
| Agent access | MCP server, packaged agent skills, a public API and a shadcn registry. No key, no metering. | Sells "AI-ready prompts" for v0 and Lovable |
| What is behind the wall | The licence — everything is readable and copyable, you buy the right to ship | The source — you can look, you buy the code |
The difference that is not a number
Every catalog in this market withholds something until you pay, and this is where the two businesses actually diverge.
Hoverlab
The licence — everything is readable and copyable, you buy the right to ship
Everything is readable, copyable and installable before you pay anything. What Pro buys is the commercial licence.
Aceternity UI
The source — you can look, you buy the code
Read as of 10 September 2026. Check it yourself.
Decide for yourself
You do not have to take any of this on trust — the catalog is open without an account, so the fastest way to settle it is to install one thing from each and read the code.