Laravel vs Spring Boot: Top Differences

Laravel and Spring Boot are the two most popular tools used to develop applications. A comparison between the two can be seen as a scenario where you need to build a house. You can either use all the tools that will help build the house with wood or tools that will help build the house with metal. The wood tools are easy to use, and building a house using wood is easier, but it is not as strong as compared to a house built using more sturdy materials like metal.

Laravel can be seen as a wooden tool that makes development easy but not that strong. Spring Boot can be viewed as the tools used to make the house using metal, which is stronger. Both of them can build your application, but it’s the use case that helps choose between the two. In this article, we will discuss the differences between Laravel and Spring Boot.

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What is Laravel?

Laravel is an open-source PHP framework used to build websites and apps. It was developed by Taylor Otwell in 2011. It is a server-side-based framework, so it can handle routing, HTML authentication, templating, and more. It follows the MVC architecture, where business logic is separated from presentation logic. The following are some features of Laravel:

• MVC Architecture: Laravel follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture, where scalability is possible due to the separation of the presentation layer and logic.
• Authorization and Authentication: Laravel has built-in support for authentication and authorization.
• Testing: Laravel offers both unit and feature testing.
• Artisan CLI: Laravel provides a built-in command-line tool that comes with pre-built commands to avoid repetitive tasks being performed by the user.

Use Cases

• Apps with a microservices architecture
• Real-time Applications
• Gaming apps
• Streaming applications (music and video)

Applications using Laravel are Laracasts, Barchar, Asgard CMS, World Walking, and Neighbourhood Lender.

What is Spring Boot?

Spring Boot is a popular open-source micro-framework actively supported by Pivotal. It is a Java-based framework designed to simplify the development of production-ready applications. It facilitates Rapid Application Development (RAD) capabilities. It is a combination of the Spring Framework and embedded servers. Following are some features of Spring Boot.

• Inversion of Control (IoC): IoC is a mechanism for managing an application’s dependencies. 
• Externalised Configuration: It allows you to work on the same application in different environments by externalising the configurations.
• Automatic Configuration: Springboot saves time and effort by providing automatic configuration rather than manual configuration.
• Admin Support: It provides admin-related features for the application that can be used to access and manage applications remotely.

Use Cases

• Restful Services
• Stateful applications
• Microservices architecture
• Cloud integration with Spring

Applications using Spring Boot are Udemy, Trivago, Intuit, iFood, Quinto Andar, etc.

Laravel vs. SpringBoot

Laravel and Spring Boot are popular frameworks used for web application development. Laravel is based on PHP whereas Spring Boot is based on Java. Let us look at the key differences between the two and which one is better under which circumstances.

1. Performance and Speed Comparison

Following is the performance and speed comparison for Laravel and Spring Boot.

Laravel

• PHP Version: Historically, PHP is much slower than Java. Different versions of PHP have different performance metrics. The use of the latest versions of PHP, like PHP 9 and above, with advanced features, functionalities, and improvisations provides great performance.
• Caching: Various caching mechanisms can be applied to your Laravel application to improve its performance.
• Autoloaded Services: Laravel comes with a lot of autoloaded services to improve the programming experience, but at the same time, it increases overhead. Reducing these services to the only important ones improves performance by a great deal.

Spring Boot

• Java Speed: Spring Boot is built on Java, which has a fast execution speed, and it can be further optimised with the JVM.
• MVC Model: The MVC architecture of Spring Boot differentiates between the app’s model, view, and controller, thus reducing complexity and increasing speed and performance metrics.
• Asynchronous Processing: Using asynchronous programming, multiple tasks can be executed concurrently. This feature of Java can be used by Spring Boot applications to improve performance.

2. Application Architecture

Following is the application architecture comparison for Laravel and Spring Boot.

Laravel

• MVC Architecture: Laravel follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern, where the application is divided into three components: model, view, and controller. 
• Eloquent ORM: It simplifies database interaction. Eloquent simplifies database operations by allowing developers to work with database records as objects and providing features like relationships, query builders, and migrations.
• Blade Templating Engine: Laravel’s templating engine provides easy ways to create dynamic views. You can embed PHP code within your HTML while maintaining clean and readable syntax.

Spring Boot

• Core Container: It provides the fundamental functionality and includes dependency injection, the Bean module, the Expression Language module, and more. 
• Data Integration: It provides support for integrating with databases and other data sources. It includes Spring JDBC, Spring ORM, Spring Data, and Spring Transaction.
• Web: The Web area provides support for building web applications, including the Spring MVC and Spring WebFlux modules.

3. Scalability

Following is the scalability comparison for Laravel and Spring Boot.

Laravel

• Horizontal and Vertical Scaling: Horizontal scaling involves adding more servers to your application, and vertical scaling involves adding more power to your server.
• Queue System: Laravel’s in-built queue system offers the feature of deferring a lengthy task during peak traffic hours.
• Load Balancing: In cases where a single server is incapable of handling multiple requests, a load balancer distributes the traffic across multiple servers. This reduces the load on all the servers in the application.

Spring Boot

• Horizontal and Vertical Scaling: Vertical scaling is suitable for applications with a limited number of users or transactions. Horizontal scaling is suitable for applications with a large number of users or transactions. It distributes the workload across multiple servers.
• Caching: Caching is storing frequently accessed data in memory. Thus reducing the number of requests to the database or external services.
• Asynchronous Processing: Using asynchronous programming, multiple tasks can be executed concurrently. This feature of Java can be used by Spring Boot applications to improve the execution of many tasks.

4. Testing

Following is the testing comparison for Laravel and Spring Boot.

Laravel

• PHPUnit: PHPUnit allows you to easily test your code. It supports various types of tests, including unit tests, integration tests, and functional tests.
• Feature Test: It evaluates the functionality of larger components or features in the application.
• Browser Test: It simulates user interactions with the application to test front-end behaviour and user experience.

Spring Boot

• Unit Test: Unit testing involves testing individual units or components of the application isolated from other components. In Spring Boot, you can use JUnit or any other testing framework to write unit tests for your application.
• Integration Test: Integration testing involves verifying the end-to-end behaviour of a system.
• Automated Testing: Spring Boot supports automated testing giving developers the power to check if their code is working by writing scripts and without manual intervention.

5. Microservices Compatibility

Following is the microservices compatibility comparison for Laravel and Spring Boot.

Laravel

• Lumen: Lumen is a fast PHP micro-framework for building web applications with expressive, elegant syntax.
• Features: It provides features like routing, middleware, and dependency injection.
• RESTful APIs: Laravel can be used to develop RESTful APIs. It is easy to define API endpoints and handle HTTP requests due to Laravel’s routing system, controllers, and resourceful routing.

Spring Boot

• Spring Cloud: Spring Cloud is a lightweight event-driven microservices framework to quickly build applications that can connect to external systems.
• Loosely coupled applications: It leverages the power of microservices, allowing developers to create loosely coupled applications that can be independently developed, deployed, and scaled.
• Cloud Platforms: Compatible with various cloud platforms, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform.

6. Database Support

Following is the database support comparison for Laravel and Spring Boot.

Laravel

• Eloquent ORM: It simplifies database interaction. Eloquent simplifies database operations by allowing developers to work with database records as objects and providing features like relationships, query builders, and migrations.
• Relational Database Support: Laravel supports a wide range of relational databases, like MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, SQL Server, and MariaDB. 
• Migrations: Laravel’s migration system allows developers to define database schema changes using PHP code rather than SQL scripts.

Spring Boot

• Spring Data: Spring Boot integrates with Spring Data, providing a high-level abstraction for working with relational databases in Java applications.
• Relational Database Support: Spring Boot supports a wide range of relational databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, and H2. 
• NoSQL Database Support: Spring Boot also supports NoSQL databases like MongoDB.

7. Community

Following is the community comparison for Laravel and Spring Boot.

Laravel

• Large Community: Laravel has a big community of developers, designers and enthusiasts.
• User-Friendly Documentation: The official documentation for Laravel is easy to understand, even for beginners.
• Community Contributions: There are lots of extra features and improvements for Laravel made by the community, which keep the framework up-to-date and better.

SpringBoot

• Diverse Spring Boot Community: Spring Boot has a big community of engineers, architects, and companies.
• Thorough Documentation: Its documentation is detailed and regularly updated.
• Community-Created Tools and Features: Developers can find many extra tools and features made by the community on platforms like GitHub.

Laravel vs. SpringBoot: Key Differences

	Laravel	SpringBoot
Language	Laravel is based on PHP.	SpringBoot is based on Java.
Framework	Full-featured framework	Microservices framework
Learning Curve	Easy for PHP Developers	Steep at the beginning, but gets easy with documentation.
Database Support	ORM with support for various databases.	Spring Data provides support for relational and NoSQL databases.
Architecture	MVC Architecture	Modular Architecture
Performance	Moderate performance	High performance
Use Cases	Web applications, APIs, etc.	Microservices

Conclusion

Laravel and Spring Boot are two frameworks that can be used to develop applications. Laravel is an open-source PHP framework, and Spring Boot is a Java-based framework. Laravel can be used to build apps with a microservices architecture and real-time applications. Spring Boot can be used to build restful services and stateful applications. We have also discussed the comparison between the two on performance, app architecture, scalability, testing, microservices compatibility, database support, and community.