Aceternity UI
Animated Tailwind components for marketing pages.
Aceternity UI is motion-first React built with Tailwind CSS and Framer Motion, aimed squarely at landing pages rather than product interfaces. Spotlight effects, 3D cards, animated beams, parallax scroll sections.
At a glance
| Distribution | copy and paste, or the shadcn CLI |
| Stack | React 18+, Next.js 13+ App Router, Framer Motion |
| Styling | Tailwind CSS |
| Machine-readable | JSON component API and an llms.txt |
| MCP server | not published |
| License | MIT, with a paid Pro tier |
Built to be read by agents
Aceternity is unusual here. Beyond a large llms.txt, it publishes a JSON catalogue of every component at ui.aceternity.com/api/components, with a lastUpdated timestamp and the full tech stack declared.
curl https://ui.aceternity.com/api/components
There is no MCP server, but an agent pointed at that endpoint gets an accurate, current component list rather than a guess.
Use it for the right surface
These components are loud by design, and that is the correct choice for a hero section and the wrong one for a settings page. Animation budget is real: several components run continuous motion, which costs battery on mobile and can trip prefers-reduced-motion expectations if you do not handle it.
Choose it if
- You are building a marketing site, a launch page or a portfolio.
- You want visual impact without writing Framer Motion from scratch.
Look elsewhere if
- You are building the product itself. Use a real component library for the app.
- Accessibility is a requirement. Nothing here is documented for it.
