The Best Icon Libraries for Web Agencies

WordPress agency owners share the icon libraries they actually reach for — and why consistency almost always matters more than variety.

Icons are one of those details that nobody notices when they’re done right — and everyone notices when they’re not.

Mix two different styles on the same page and something just feels off, even if the visitor can’t articulate why. Use an icon that’s slightly too heavy, too thin, or too rounded next to one that isn’t, and the whole design loses the sense of craft you worked hard to build.

We asked the members of The Admin Bar which icon libraries they reach for most often. The answers ranged from longtime favorites to hidden gems — plus a few workflow tricks worth stealing.

Here’s what the community had to say.

The Most Mentioned Icon Libraries

• Icônes (icones.js.org)
• Phosphor Icons
• Font Awesome
• The Noun Project
• Flaticon
• Lucide
• Tabler Icons
• Other Libraries Worth Knowing

Why Agencies Choose These Icon Libraries

Icônes

The most-mentioned resource in this thread — and it’s not a single icon library, it’s a search interface across dozens of them.

Icônes lets you browse and copy icons from hundreds of open-source sets in one place, with instant copy-to-SVG or copy-to-clipboard. Scott Farquharson has been using it exclusively for a couple of years. Adam Wright, Jeffrey Sung, and Lysann Kuettner, (and myself!) are regulars too.

The workflow benefit is real: instead of bouncing between five different library sites, you search once and grab what you need. Phosphor is the most commonly cited set within Icônes, but the beauty is you’re not locked into one style.

Best fit: agencies who want a single starting point for icon search across multiple styles and sets.

Phosphor Icons

Phosphor came up as the go-to set for multiple members — often discovered through Icônes, but worth calling out on its own.

Phosphor offers icons in six weights (thin, light, regular, bold, fill, and duotone), which gives you flexibility to match a design’s visual weight without switching libraries. Adam Wright calls it his most-used set. Benjamin Nicholas and I both landed on it after trying other options.

It’s open source, MIT licensed, and available as SVG, React, Vue, and more — which makes it a natural fit for agentic or code-heavy workflows.

Best fit: agencies who want a single flexible library that can adapt across different visual styles.

Font Awesome

Font Awesome is the library most people started with — and a lot of agencies are still using it, for good reason.

The icon coverage is enormous, the brand recognition is high (clients sometimes know it by name), and the implementation is straightforward. Pol Cousineau relies on it as his go-to: “It’s quite flexible and with the libraries it’s easy to have a consistent style and you can easily resize, reshape, or modify them.” Alfian Ridwan keeps a Font Awesome subscription alongside Streamline Icons, using FA for easier implementation and Streamline when he needs more variety.

The main friction points that came up: the pro pricing, and the CDN-loaded version adding weight to pages. For performance-focused builds, swapping to self-hosted SVGs is worth the extra step.

Best fit: agencies who want broad coverage, easy implementation, and a set clients are likely to recognize.

The Noun Project

The Noun Project has one of the most searchable icon databases around — useful for finding obscure icons that don’t exist in tighter, curated libraries.

Peter Melling put it well: “I used to spend hours searching through free icon sets for an obscure icon (e.g. room with balcony), but Noun always seems to turn up something suitable with a quick search.” Mario Marquez Tagliaferro, Brian Redwater, and Maryle Malloy all use it regularly — Maryle specifically picks icons from the same creator on each project to keep style consistent across the board.

Richard Bland’s caveat is worth noting: “Don’t use their API — it does not quite work the way you think.” The site search is solid; the API, apparently, less so.

Best fit: agencies building sites that need unusual or industry-specific icons that don’t exist in curated sets.

Flaticon

Flaticon (part of the Freepik ecosystem) has a massive library and is especially useful when you need to color-match icons to brand guidelines.

“Really easy to change colors to meet the brand’s needs.”

Cathy Larkin

Wesley Peace keeps it in regular rotation alongside Icons8 and The Noun Project. Miroslav Medurić also mentioned a Flaticon/Freepik subscription as worth the cost for the range it provides.

Best fit: agencies who need a wide variety of styles with easy color customization for client brands.

Lucide

Lucide is a community-maintained fork of Feather Icons — clean, simple, and popular in the developer community. It came up as a recommended pick from Mike Mubanga, Jay Taylor, and Miroslav Medurić, who specifically called it out as a good library for agentic workflows.

Lucide is MIT licensed and available as SVG, React, Vue, Svelte, and more — making it easy to drop into almost any project or toolchain.

Best fit: agencies with code-heavy or component-based workflows who want a lightweight, developer-friendly set.

Tabler Icons

Tabler Icons don’t come up as often as some others, but Michael Hanttula made the case for them clearly:

“I find them to have a nice balance of neutral style with just enough uniqueness to make them feel special in a layout. Simple, but modern.”

Michael Hanttula

With 6,000+ icons, consistent stroke widths, and MIT licensing, Tabler is a strong choice when you want something that feels more distinctive than a generic set without being stylistically loud.

Best fit: agencies who want a modern, consistent set with more personality than utility-focused libraries.

Other Libraries Worth Knowing

These also came up in the thread and are worth bookmarking:

• Iconify — 200,000+ open-source icons across hundreds of sets, similar concept to Icônes but with a broader API and framework integrations. Ken Sim recommended it.
• Iconbuddy — another multi-library search tool. Crystal Grave uses it as a fallback when she can’t find what she needs in HugeIcons. Stacey Watson also recommended it.
• HugeIcons — a large, well-organized paid library. Tye Brown and Crystal Grave both use it as a primary source.
• Remix Icon — open source, dual-tone icons with a clean neutral style. Amanda Lucas uses it regularly.
• SVG Repo — a broad searchable library of SVG icons and vectors. Sadie Michaela’s go-to.
• Streamline Icons — a premium subscription library with significant variety and multiple styles. Alfian Ridwan keeps a subscription alongside Font Awesome.
• Bootstrap Icons — Jan Souček’s default. Simple, consistent, and useful if you’re already in the Bootstrap ecosystem.
• Susty Icons — Rose Newell’s own open-source, performance-focused icon set. With 767 icons and tools to customize them on-site, it’s built with file size and sustainability in mind. Worth a look for performance-obsessed builds.
• Super Tiny Icons — Rose also flagged this one for brand/logo icons. Dramatically smaller file sizes than official brand logos.
• Icons8 — Wesley Peace and Pol Cousineau both keep it in the toolkit for larger-format icon needs like hero illustrations and blurbs.
• Nucleo — a desktop app for managing your own icon collections across libraries, with easy color and stroke editing. Asing De Naam uses it alongside curated sets to keep everything organized.
• SVGL — a library of SVG brand/tech logos. Brian Mayle shared it as a useful niche resource.

Patterns We Noticed

A few things stood out across the whole thread:

Consistency beats variety. Multiple members made the same point independently: mixing icon styles across a project creates visual inconsistency that undermines the design. Gavin Fenton put it bluntly: “Essential to use the same set — mix and match and you’re creating problems.” Maryle Malloy takes it a step further, choosing icons from the same creator within The Noun Project on every project.

Multi-library search tools are winning. Icônes and Iconbuddy came up repeatedly as the go-to starting point precisely because they remove the need to commit to one library upfront. You search across everything and grab what fits the project.

SVG sprite sheets are underused. George Leon and Rose Newell both use sprite sheets to manage reused icons efficiently. It’s a performance-friendly approach that keeps SVGs cacheable and reduces inline bloat — and Rose has a guide on doing it well if you want to go deeper.

Agentic workflows are changing the equation. George Leon uses a global Claude Code memory to automatically pull icons from Google’s icon library into a project sprite sheet. Miroslav Medurić called out Lucide and Simple Icons as particularly good for agentic use. As more agencies incorporate AI into their build workflows, “can my tools find and use this icon automatically?” is becoming a real selection criteria.

LTDs aren’t always the win they look like. Josh McAdams’s honest take on LordIcon got a lot of laughs: “Bought it, never used it once. Seemed like a cool idea. ‘Seemed.'” If you’re browsing AppSumo for icon deals, his experience is a good gut check.

How to Choose an Icon Library

These are the questions worth asking before you commit to a set:

Do you need a curated style or maximum coverage? Phosphor, Lucide, and Tabler give you a consistent, cohesive look. The Noun Project, Flaticon, and Iconify give you the broadest possible search coverage.

How are you delivering the icons? SVG inline, sprite sheet, icon font, and CDN-loaded all have different performance implications. For performance-obsessed builds, inline SVG or sprite sheets are usually the right call.

Does your workflow include AI or code generation? Libraries with good API access and permissive licenses (Lucide, Phosphor, Iconify) are more compatible with agentic workflows.

Are you managing a library across multiple projects? A desktop app like Nucleo — or a search tool like Icônes — can save real time compared to bouncing between individual library sites.

Frequently Asked Questions About Icon Libraries

What’s the best free icon library for WordPress agencies? Based on this community thread, Phosphor Icons and Lucide are the most recommended free sets for quality and flexibility. For searching across multiple free libraries at once, Icônes is the go-to starting point.

Should I use an icon font or SVG icons? Most agency owners in this community use SVG — either inline or via sprite sheet. SVG gives you better performance, easier color control, and more accessibility options than icon fonts. Icon fonts (like Font Awesome’s CDN version) are convenient but add weight and can cause rendering issues.

How do I keep icons consistent across a project? Stick to one library — or at minimum, one style weight — for the whole project. If you’re using a multi-library tool like Icônes, filter to a single set before you start pulling icons.

What’s an SVG sprite sheet and why should I use one? A sprite sheet is a single SVG file containing multiple icons, referenced individually where needed. It loads once, caches efficiently, and reduces the HTTP overhead of loading many separate SVG files. Rose Newell’s guide on efficient SVG use is a good starting point.

What icon library works best for agentic/AI-assisted workflows? Lucide, Phosphor, and Iconify all have well-documented APIs and permissive licenses that make them easier to use in automated or AI-assisted build workflows.