Scrolltide alternatives: prompts with the source included

Scrolltide sells 127 library items, and every one of them ships the source alongside the prompt. The archive is a real React and Vite project, not a snippet, and it is the thing that separates this from every other prompt library worth comparing.

That is the whole decision in one line. You are choosing between text you paste and a repository you open, and the two suit different weeks.

What they sell, counted#

Prompt depth is stated at roughly 12,000 characters, which sits at the deep end of this category if it holds across the library. Previews are genuine self-hosted recordings with posters rather than compressed gifs, so what you watch before buying is the real motion at the real timing.

The ladder is $29 a month, $129 a year, or $239 once, with a $49 ebook sold separately. Checkout runs through PayPal.

Source included, and what that changes#

On a deadline this is worth more than anything else on this page. A working repository removes the entire class of problem where a model produces something almost right and you spend the afternoon arguing with it. You open the project, you change the copy, you ship.

What it costs is the other half of the same sentence. Source you did not write is source you now maintain: its dependency tree, its build config, its upgrade path and, eventually, its bug at eleven at night. A prompt leaves you with code your own tooling produced, in the shape your own project already uses.

The licence draws the line where you would expect. You may build with it. You may not resell the prompts, and you may not reuse their preview videos to promote your own work.

The free part you have probably never opened#

Their Academy is the most substantial free thing anybody in this category publishes: eleven build-along tutorials plus supporting pages, running to roughly 17,000 words. It is free, it is good, and there is no navigation item pointing at it anywhere on the site.

They also publish a page arguing their own case that carries real motion values in public: one site-wide easing curve written as a cubic-bezier, a 750ms entry, a 60ms stagger, transform-only animation, a reduced-motion gate and a 4.5:1 contrast floor.

Read both before you spend anything. They will tell you whether this house style is one you want in your own work, which is a better test than any feature list.

Before you buy, three things in the terms#

Two of them are unusually good and one is the reason to decide carefully.

1. No refunds, at all. Stated in the FAQ, in the terms and on the refunds page. On a $239 one-time purchase that is a real commitment, and the free Academy plus the five free templates are how you de-risk it.
2. Written grandfathering. If the terms tighten, existing buyers keep the terms they bought under. Almost nobody in this category writes that down.
3. Upgrade credit that carries remaining days across. Move from monthly to annual and the time you already paid for follows you. Also rare, also written down.

What a repository does not come with#

A finished template solves one page. What it cannot solve is the next one, and this is where every catalogue in this category runs out.

• The template's decisions are not transferable. The type scale that works in that hero is tuned to that hero. Your client's word count is different.
• Motion is a system, not an effect. One curve at one duration across every structural move is what makes a site feel deliberate. Copying one entrance animation out of one project does not give you that.
• Section order is the argument. Which section carries the weight and which one gets out of the way is decided per project, by somebody, and a repository decides it once for the project it was built for.

The reusable thing is the specification, not the artefact. A brief that names the curve, the duration, the scale and the order builds the next page too, and the one after that.

The rest of the field, briefly#

Most things sold as a Scrolltide alternative solve a different half of the job, and knowing which half you are missing is the whole search.

• Component libraries. 21st.dev, Aceternity UI, Magic UI and React Bits are free and genuinely good. They give you a card that flips and a border that animates, and they take no position on whether either belongs on your page, which is what a free component leaves for you to decide.
• Free prompt collections. Several sites publish more than a hundred website prompts at no cost, and four of the five results on the front page for the obvious search give the product away. Depth varies from a paragraph to a page.
• The builders themselves. Bolt ships web design guidelines and visual edits, Lovable put design systems on every paid plan, v0 runs a free design mode. Each one enforces consistency with the tokens you bring to it.

None of those three authors a decision. They apply one, install one, or police one, which is exactly right for what they are and exactly why the choosing still lands on you.

If you are choosing today#

So which one#

• Buying one site, this week, with a deadline? A source archive is the fastest route and Scrolltide is one of the few places that sells one.
• Buying an education? Their Academy is free and better than most paid courses in this area.
• Buying a way of working, so every page you build carries a type scale with a ratio, a named curve at a real duration, a chosen section order and a list of the defaults the model must not reach for? That is what a Thanor brief is, and it goes into the builder you already use.

Read one and see how much of the deciding arrives already done.