Play vs Spring Boot: Top 5 Differences

Choosing the right framework plays a key role in the growth of your website.

In this article, we will compare and highlight the top 5 differences between Play and SpringBoot. This will help you decide which one is best for your project in the case of Spring Boot vs Play.

What’s Play?

Play is a free, open-source web development framework developed by Lightbend, Zengularity, and the community using Scala. It is developed under the Apache License 2.0 and it’s built on Akka.

It was developed as an alternative to Ruby On Rails.

What’s Spring Boot?

Spring Boot is also a free, open-source web development framework written in Java.

It’s an updated version of the Spring framework and includes an updated version of the Spring MVC framework. It was developed by Rod Johnson but then acquired by VMware in 2009.

Pros of Play and Spring Boot

Cons of Play and Spring Boot

Top 5 Differences Between Play and Spring Boot

Some things make a huge difference between Play and Spring Boot. It also helps you to decide which framework is best for you.

Following are the top 5 differences between Play and Spring Boot:

1. Programming Languages Used

The main difference between Play and Spring Boot is the programming language in which they both are written.

Play is written in Scala, while Spring Boot is based on the Spring framework written in Java.

2. Ease of Learn and Use

This aspect is very important for beginners who are just starting with web development. Scala is easy to learn than Spring Boot because of its easy-to-understand syntax but the downside is that you have to learn a lot of things for it.

On the other hand, Spring Boot is a little hard to learn because of its Java syntax.

3. Speed Difference

Choosing a backend programming language hugely affects your website speed. The play framework is faster than Spring Boot. Faster websites are also recommended by Google for better ranking.

Since Play is written in Scala and Spring Boot in Java and Scala is faster in Java hence Play is faster than Spring Boot.

4. Suitability and Used for

Play and Spring Boot both are used for different purposes and different types of websites. Play is suited for big and scalable projects, while Spring Boot is used for small websites with basic backend functionalities.

5. Architectures Used

Play is based on a lightweight and stateless architecture which also makes it fast and easy to use. While Spring Boot is based on Layered Architecture which is a little hard to understand.

Stats of Play and Spring Boot

Both Play and Spring Boot are very popular web development frameworks. They are used by thousands of websites on the internet.

Following are some of the main stats of the Play and Spring Boot framework:

Stats of Play

• 12.1K stars and 4K forks on GitHub.
• ~700 questions on StackOverFlow.
• The growth of Play is 0.2%

Stats of Spring Boot

• 61.6K stars and 36.5K forks on GitHub.
• Used by about 1016 companies.
• 123K questions on StackOverFlow.
• The growth of Spring Boot is 1.1%.

Companies Using Play and Spring Boot

As Play and Spring Boot are very powerful and popular web development frameworks. That’s why many famous companies use them.

Following are some of the famous companies that use Play and Spring Boot:

Companies That Use Play

• LinkedIn
• Coursera
• Zalando
• SoFi
• Accenture

Companies That Use Spring Boot

• Udemy
• iFood
• Rappi
• Microsoft
• Amazon

Alternatives of Play and Spring Boot

If you don’t want to use Play or Spring Boot for any reason then you should have a look at the following popular frameworks:

Django

A very popular web development framework written in Python is mostly compared with PHP.

Laravel

Web development framework with elegant design and syntax written in PHP.

Flask

Flask is a high-level Python web development framework that provides many features. It’s mostly compared with Django.

Spring

A very popular and powerful web development framework written in Java. It was released in June 2003.

Is Scala the Same as Java?

Scala is a newer language as compared to Java.

It is a machine-compiled language while Java is an object-oriented language with objects and classes. Scala is not too much popular as Java

Syntax Comparison

The syntax of Java is very complex, hence the syntax of Spring Boot is very hard to understand. While the syntax of Scala and Play is straightforward.

Below is a comparison between the syntax of Play and Spring Boot

Syntax of Play

import play._
import play.mvc._

object Application extends Controller {
    import views.Application._
    def index = {
        html.index("Hello, TechTrim!")
    }
}

Syntax of Spring Boot

package com.javatpoint.controller;  
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;  
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;  
@RestController  
public class HelloWorldController   
{
@RequestMapping("/")  
public String hello()   
{
return "Hello, TechTrim!";  
}
}

Code Execution Time

The code in Scalar is executed much fastly than in Java. That’s why Scalar is quite faster than Java. According to a study by Google, Scala is a lot faster than Java.

As Scalar is faster than Java, hence Play is also faster than Spring Boot. Play is around 1.6x faster than Spring Boot.

Which One To Choose?

There’s no specific answer to this question. It depends on your needs and which framework you want to use.

If you want the speed of Scala then use Play and if you want the features of Java and you don’t care about speed then you can use Spring Boot.

What Are Some Tips For Using Spring Boot?

Some tips for learning Spring Boot include reading the official documentation for Spring Boot, searching on the internet; watching YouTube videos, searching for answers on StackOverFlow and Quora, and joining communities on chat platforms like Slack.

What Is The Difference Between Spring and Spring Boot?

One of the main differences between Spring and Spring Boot is that Spring is a framework written in Java and Spring Boot is a sub-framework of Spring.

Conclusion

In this article, we have discussed the top 5 differences between Play and Spring Boot.

Play is recommended for big and scalable projects while Spring Boot is recommended for small websites that just need only a little backend functionality.

We have also discussed some of the pros and cons of Play and Spring Boot. Many big and famous companies also use Play and Spring Boot.

What do you think which one is better in the case of Spring Boot vs Play? Let us know in the comments.