What are the best full-stack Node.js frameworks?

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12

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Considered

218

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Recs.

Jan 15, 2022

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Updated

Here’s the Deal

9 Options Considered

Best full-stack Node.js frameworks	Price	Written in	Repository
89 Meteor	-	-	-
84 Express.js	-	JavaScript	https://github.com/expressjs/express
73 Sails.js	-	-	https://github.com/balderdashy/sails
-- FeathersJS	-	-	-
-- Nuxt	-	-	-

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score 77 · Answer 1

Meteor

Top Pro

Shared client/server code

The same code can be run on both the server and the client, because Meteor is a full-stack JavaScript-everywhere platform. A common example of code that should run on both the client and the server is input validation - on the client for speed/UX, and on the server for security (the client can't be trusted). See More

Top Con

Uses MongoDB by default

MongoDB advertises scalability but only if you don't care about data-integrity. There are other backend options but none of them are officially supported. See More

Marco Tribuzio's Experience

I used Meteor for 7 projects, and all of these works well. I never had a problem. I love the way Meteor integrate and use MongoDB. I love DDP the new protocol that the dev team developed. I LOVE METEOR See More

Top Pro

Auto reload/refresh (hot code push)

Every time a change in the source file is saved, all connected clients will refresh automatically - browser tabs, mobile apps running in the simulator or on the physical device. Or, deploy a Meteor app (meteor deploy myapp) and all clients, plus all mobile apps with the server set to myapp.meteor.com will automatically reload to use the code changes. This drastically reduces the development cycle for apps in the App Store, where a regular update can wait for one to two weeks before being approved. See More

Top Con

No native SEO support (no server-side rendering)

Meteor does not have support for server-side rendering of views, which is extremely helpful when it comes to SEO. However, there's a third-party server-side rendering package available for download. The Meteor team has also said that server-side rendering is on the roadmap. See More

Adams's Experience

hello See More

Top Pro

Latency compensation

The client will mimic instant server-side response, and updates automatically if it was different once the information is available. See More

Top Con

Long build times

Many users are frustrated at simple code changes taking a long time to build. See More

Top Pro

Full-stack reactivity

Changes in the database will be propagated to all subscribed clients in real time, without you having to write any code. See More

Top Con

Opinionated implementation

It's a very opinionated implementation. Replacing parts of the framework or adding third party library or components that haven't been built specifically for the framework can be challenging. See More

Top Pro

Integrated front-end library

Meteor uses both your existing front-end library and it's own library called Blaze, which is integrated beautifully in the framework and fulfills the purpose of a true MV* front-end framework. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn

Meteor was developed with simplicity in mind, even for beginners who have just started using JavaScript frameworks. One of the reasons that beginners should start with Meteor is that Meteor is a full-stack framework, this way they can get the complete learning experience when it comes to web development (back-end and front-end development), all by using a single platform and a single language. Furthermore, Meteor does not have complex and esoteric concepts that may be hard to grasp by a beginner, it has a clear documentation and well-established coding conventions. There's also a very useful resource for learning Meteor in the form of a book: Discover Meteor, by the authors of many Meteor packages. See More

Top Pro

MongoDB

Meteor uses MongoDB, eliminating the choice among NoSQL databases. MongoDB is highly scalable - used to store petabytes of data and perform billions of operations daily at eBay, FIFA, Adobe, Craigslist, McAffee, Foursquare and others. See More

Top Pro

Real-time testing framework

Meteor also has an official testing framework called Velocity. Velocity enables real-time unit testing and integration with Jasmine or Mocha syntax. Tests are automatically run when code is saved and the testing result is indicated by a green or red dot in the upper right corner of the app. See More

Top Pro

Support for MySQL, PostgreSQL and Redis

While Meteor only supports MongoDB and Redis natively, MySQL support is on the roadmap, and there are 3rd-party packages that integrate MySQL reactively with Meteor to some extent, such as numtel:mysql. For reactive PostgreSQL support, there is numtel:pg. See More

Top Pro

Seamless communication between client and server

Meteor is built on top of Node.js and jQuery on the client. Meteor enables the client and server to communicate data seamlessly, in real-time. You don't have to write any REST API or pub/sub code - Meteor takes care of it all automatically for you. See More

Top Pro

Mobile apps from the same code base

Meteor can generate mobile (iOS and Android) apps from the same codebase as the web app, using the Cordova (PhoneGap) library (which brings native device functionality to JavaScript applications). Meteor-generated mobile apps are JavaScript, HTML and CSS bundles that run in a UIWebView (on iOS) or WebView (on Android). Apps can be run locally in the iOS/Android emulator, or on physical devices. You can also publish them to Google Play Store or Apple's App Store. Moreover, these hybrid mobile apps benefit from hot code push, which dramatically accelerates the development cycle. See More

Top Pro

Built-in GraphQL support through Apollo

GraphQL is a query language for your API, and a server-side runtime for executing queries by using a type system you define for your data. GraphQL isn't tied to any specific database or storage engine and is instead backed by your existing code and data. See More

Top Pro

Extensive ecosystem

Meteor's package repository called Atmosphere has more than 5000 packages available. What's more is that Meteor can also use into the packages available for the Node ecosystem. See More

Top Pro

Isomorphic package system

A Meteor package can supply code for both the client and the server, and for mobile (Cordova) apps. For example, an autocomplete package supplies both server code to search a collection, and client code to display the results. The mdg:camera package supports the native camera if the app is built for mobile, or the HTML getUserMedia API to take pictures from the browser. See More

Top Pro

Gets rid of Node's callbacks

Although Meteor's server side runs on top of Node.js, it manages to avoid callbacks by making use of Fibers. See More

Top Pro

Built-in security

Meteor takes care of many concerns with it's out-of-the-box security measures. See More

Top Pro

Powerful performance monitoring tools

Meteor uses Kadira which is an excellent performance monitoring tool for Meteor apps. It profiles CPU and RAM consumption, subscription latency and throughput etc. See More

Top Pro

In-app debugging

The community behind Meteor has created a useful application for debugging Meteor apps that will automatically delete collections and display client-side documents, allow you to control subscriptions and lets you modify the documents. Meteor also has great support for server-side debugging, and WebStorm has also released full support for Meteor, including debugging capabilities. See More

See All

score 28 · Answer 2

Express.js

Top Pro

Has detailed documentation

Top Con

Provides no universal way of organizing things

Adams's Experience

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Specs

Written in:JavaScript

Repository:https://github.com/expressjs/express

Platforms:Cross-platform

License:MIT

See All Specs

Top Pro

Supports many third-party plugins

Top Con

Demands manual labor-intensive tasks

Top Pro

Powerful routed API

Top Pro

Very simple and fast

Look at this research here. See More

Top Pro

Has the largest userbase

It's by far the most popular framework for node. See More

Top Pro

Great routing API

Express' extremely powerful routing API allows developers to do tasks ranging from building a REST API to building the routes for a simple web app and then take it to the next level by using route parameters and query strings. See More

Top Pro

Setting up is very easy

Setting up a new Express project is very easy. It consists of installing a handful of libraries through NPM run a single npm install and everything is ready to go. See More

Top Pro

Huge supporting community

Top Pro

Lightweight

Top Pro

It initializes resources in Drawable, Values folders and others

See All

score 41 · Answer 3

Sails.js

Top Con

Poor ORM

The built-in Waterline is not well designed and is not suitable for production environments. Populating more than 1 level deep is a nightmare, there is no transaction support, new features/bug fixes are not implemented anywhere near a timely manner (the most requested feature 'deep populate' has been lingering in their github issues list for over a year and a half now). See More

Top Pro

MVC architecture

If you prefer to build your apps using the Model View Controller architecture. Using Sails.js you'll find the task of separating the business logic from the user interface and keeping the interactions between them in a separate layer, extremely easy. See More

Specs

Repository:https://github.com/balderdashy/sails

Top Con

Very long start-up time

Takes very long to fully start. See More

Top Pro

Easy to build

Top Con

Out of the box test support is missing

When generating a new Sails project, it comes without any support for unit testing, everything has to be installed and configured manually later by the developer themselves. See More

Top Pro

ORM that can be plugged into any database, or even custom web service

Sails.js uses Waterline ORM at its backend which means you can store your data in any datastore that you like; all you have to do is make a change to the Waterline adapter, this will allow you to store your data in MySQL/Redis or any other kind of database. See More

Top Con

Pathologically poor performance

So bad that it gives Node a bad name. See: link. Sails can be nearly 300x slower than Express. Not worth the overhead. See More

Top Pro

Start a project quickly

Sails helps a lot when starting a project, you simply run new appname to create a project skeleton. Then, for example if you want to create a Controller and Model you can run sails generate modelname. So you can create an application and a controller with just a couple of lines of code. See More

Top Pro

JSON REST API generated for free

Exposes public JSON REST API for free. No additional routing to be defined. Makes it pretty easy to access data from anywhere. See More

Top Pro

Permission policies

Sails has separate files for permission policies. This way it keeps controllers and permissions code separate. Sails' policies decouple permissions in the same way that data from views and events are decoupled. See More

Top Pro

Transparent support for Socket.io

Sails.js is built with a focus on building real time communication apps such as chat or multiplayer games, so naturally it has Socket.io extremely well supported. See More

See All

score 15 · Answer 4

FeathersJS

Top Pro

Easy REST APIs

Through services, Feathers provides instant CRUD functionality, it also can easily expose a RESTful and real-time API through HTTP/HTTPS and websockets. See More

Top Con

Not so widely used

Could be problematic to convince the client use this framework in his/her project. See More

Top Pro

Support for different socket transports

FeatherJS uses primus which is a universal wrapper for real-time frameworks. Through primus you can easily choose which socket transport you want to use. See More

Top Con

Not very beginner friendly

Although the documentation for Feathers is very good, it still needs some configuration in order to get Feathers up for developing something with it. See More

Top Pro

Can be integrated in an existing ExpressJS project

Since Feathers itself is built on top of Express (it's a thin wrapper over socket.io, primus and Express) and because of Feathers' highly modular nature, it's very easy to integrate Feathers in an existing Express project. See More

Top Pro

Can sync events between different Node instances

Feather can sync events happening in two different Node processes or even servers in real-time. For example: an event happens in server A, the user connected to server B is instantly notified of that event. This is done through a central Redis or Mongo collection or through a websocket libraries' clustering library. See More

Top Pro

Plug-in any feature you need

Feathers makes extensive use of modules (which are called Feathers services). These services work like ExpressJS middleware and can be used with app.use('/path', serviceObject). Services help developers keep their applications modular and as minimal as possible, without any unnecessary libraries or bloat. See More

Top Pro

Very lightweight and easy to debug

Feathers is very concisely implemented compared to most other tools with similar capabilities. Its code base is small enough to understand for an outsider. Debugging really is feasible with this framework and the low complexity and stack-depths. See More

See All

score 7 · Answer 5

Nuxt

Top Pro

Vue.js on the frontend

Top Pro

Server side rendering out of the box

Top Pro

Fullstack solution

Top Pro

SEO support

Top Pro

Application will be optimized out of the box

Nuxt includes a bundle analyzer and lots of opportunities to fine-tune the app. See More

See All

score 4 · Answer 6

NestJS

Top Con

Few examples

Top Pro

Uses Typescript

There is a lot of cool stuff, like decorators, full-fledged object-oriented programming and static types. See More

Specs

Written in:TypeScript

Top Pro

Modern

Allows you to structure your code using modern concepts. See More

See All

score 3 · Answer 7

Derby

Top Pro

Real time communication between server and client

Derby enables the client and server to sync models across the board in real-time. See More

Top Con

Small community

Derby seems to have a small community of followers, at least compared to other Node full-stack frameworks. So it could be difficult for a beginner to find examples or help if they get stuck somewhere in their development. See More

Top Pro

Views are rendered on the server

Derby renders it's client-side views on the server. This means that there's no "delay" in serving the content to the browser when the user requests it. It's also very helpful for SEO purposes. See More

Top Pro

Same code can be run on the client and server

The same code can be run on both the server and the client, because Derby is a full-stack JavaScript-everywhere platform. See More

See All

score 3 · Answer 8

Koa

Top Pro

async/await keywords are supported and has transcended beyond generator functions

Generators functions are of course a huge plus, but at the time Koa team has transcended generations functions and shifted towards async/await style programming. It has made the Koa best framework available in the market. See More

Top Con

Community is relatively small

score 7 · Answer 9

Wakanda

Top Pro

Built for business web apps primarily

Wakanda with it's Model driven approach is a very good choice for B2B and B2E Web app, although that doesn't mean that it's not good for other kinds of apps, such as social media ones. See More

Top Con

Low open-source community interest

Wakanda's community is pretty small. It has about 10 stars on GitHub and few questions on Stackoverflow. See More

score 1 · Answer 10

9 Options Considered

My Recommendation for Meteor

My Recommendation for Meteor

Shared client/server code

Uses MongoDB by default

Auto reload/refresh (hot code push)

No native SEO support (no server-side rendering)

Latency compensation

Long build times

Full-stack reactivity

Opinionated implementation

Integrated front-end library

Easy to learn

MongoDB

Real-time testing framework

Support for MySQL, PostgreSQL and Redis

Popular

Seamless communication between client and server

Mobile apps from the same code base

Built-in GraphQL support through Apollo

Extensive ecosystem

Isomorphic package system

Gets rid of Node's callbacks

Built-in security

Powerful performance monitoring tools

In-app debugging

My Recommendation for Express.js

My Recommendation for Express.js

Has detailed documentation

Provides no universal way of organizing things

Supports many third-party plugins

Demands manual labor-intensive tasks

Powerful routed API

Very simple and fast

Has the largest userbase

Great routing API

Setting up is very easy

Huge supporting community

Lightweight

It initializes resources in Drawable, Values folders and others

My Recommendation for Sails.js

My Recommendation for Sails.js

Poor ORM

MVC architecture

Very long start-up time

Easy to build

Out of the box test support is missing

ORM that can be plugged into any database, or even custom web service

Pathologically poor performance

Start a project quickly

JSON REST API generated for free

Permission policies

Transparent support for Socket.io

My Recommendation for FeathersJS

My Recommendation for FeathersJS

Easy REST APIs

Not so widely used

Support for different socket transports

Not very beginner friendly

Can be integrated in an existing ExpressJS project

Can sync events between different Node instances

Plug-in any feature you need

Very lightweight and easy to debug

My Recommendation for Nuxt

My Recommendation for Nuxt

Vue.js on the frontend

Server side rendering out of the box

Fullstack solution

SEO support

Application will be optimized out of the box

My Recommendation for NestJS

My Recommendation for NestJS

Few examples

Uses Typescript

Modern

My Recommendation for Derby

My Recommendation for Derby

Real time communication between server and client

Small community

Views are rendered on the server