This work investigated the pros and cons of aluminum material used for electric trike frame compared with steel material. With a compact design and small dimension, e-trike is suitable to be used in many relatively small road accesses. However, the compact design can cause the frame to receive high and concentrated stress. The aluminum-based frame had lower strength, but lighter weight compared to the steel-based frame. In this study, the stress evaluation for both aluminum-based and steel-based frames is done using the finite element method. The minimum thickness of the aluminum-based frame was iterated to match the strength of the steel-based frame. The results showed that the aluminum-based frame has comparable performance to the steel-based frame but with lighter weight. However, the production cost of the aluminum-based frame might be a challenging issue to be solved.