This article is still accurate as of the Xanadu release

We field a lot of questions about when to use UI Builder vs when to use Service Portal, and also when customers will be able to build requester-facing enterprise service portals with UIB. The best answer I can give you to the second question is "not yet" but I'm going to attempt to answer the first one in this article.

UI Builder

• UI Builder is ServiceNow's web user interface page builder for agent and fulfiller experiences.
• It is built on and uses a ServiceNow JavaScript framework called the Next Experience UI Framework built on web components standards, similar to React.
• You can use one of our 20+ workspaces or use App Engine Studio to create a starter workspace or a starter portal experience. These portal experiences should be small, departmental-type portals that do not need extensive catalog or knowledge interfaces.

Service Portal

• Service Portal is ServiceNow’s web user interface portal builder for requester experiences.
• It is built on and uses Angular widgets as its tech stack.
• Employee Center is our current recommended Service Portal.

Both of these technologies, UI Builder and Service Portal, are supported methods for building custom user experiences on the Now Platform.

UI Builder vs Service Portal

The first decision point in deciding whether to use UIB vs SP is whether the audience for your experience is a requester or fulfiller persona. Requesters typically need service catalog, responsive designs, and public page access, which are all fairly easy and straightforward in Service Portal.

If your app does not follow the standard requester/fulfiller model you can use the rest of the chart to determine which tool to use to build your experience.

Hopefully, this is helpful, and if you've got more questions please leave a comment.