Spring Boot vs Node.js: Complete Comparison Guide
Compare Spring Boot and Node.js on performance, enterprise features, scalability, and development speed. Discover which platform is the best fit for your backend.
Spring Boot
An enterprise-grade Java/Kotlin framework offering convention-over-configuration for building production-ready applications. Spring Boot provides dependency injection, comprehensive security modules, and seamless integration with the Spring ecosystem. It is widely deployed at banks, insurers, and large corporations.
Node.js
A JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 engine providing event-driven, non-blocking I/O. Node.js enables using JavaScript on both server and browser, allowing full-stack development with a single language. The NPM ecosystem contains over two million packages.
Comparison table
| Feature | Spring Boot | Node.js |
|---|---|---|
| Programming language | Java or Kotlin — statically typed, enterprise standard | JavaScript/TypeScript — dynamic, broadly applicable |
| Performance (CPU) | Strong for CPU-intensive tasks thanks to JVM optimization | Less suited for CPU-bound work — single-threaded event loop |
| Performance (I/O) | Traditional thread-per-request — WebFlux for reactive | Excellent — non-blocking I/O by design |
| Enterprise features | Comprehensive — Spring Security, Spring Data, Spring Cloud | Via external packages — Passport, TypeORM, Prisma |
| Startup time | Slow — JVM startup of 2-10 seconds | Fast — milliseconds to first request |
| Memory usage | High — JVM requires 256MB+ for simple applications | Low to medium — 50-100MB for typical applications |
Verdict
Spring Boot is the standard for enterprise environments where reliability, security, and scalability are the highest priority. The extensive Spring ecosystem provides solutions for virtually every enterprise need. Node.js excels in I/O-intensive applications, rapid development cycles, and sharing code between frontend and backend. For real-time applications and APIs, Node.js is often the better choice. The decision depends on your team, existing infrastructure, and the nature of your application.
Our recommendation
At MG Software, Node.js with TypeScript is our primary backend technology due to rapid development cycles and the ability to use one language for both frontend and backend. We build scalable APIs and real-time systems that perform excellently for our clients. We recommend Spring Boot when clients have an existing Java team or when enterprise compliance imposes strict framework requirements. For most web applications and SaaS products, our Node.js stack provides the same reliability with higher development velocity.
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