For the longest time the only way to write backend code (after the dark times of pure PHP) was to use JavaScript on the frontend and something like Ruby, Python, or Java on the backend. It was a glorious time when classes ruled the world, great people came up with mantras like "fat models, skinny controllers", and the only thing you had to worry about was the next version of jQuery.

But then the world changed. The frontend became more complex, JavaScript evolved beyond jQuery, and we came to understand what the hell was a JS engine. That's when Node.js was born. It was a revolution. We reinvented everything with the promise of "JavaScript everywhere". And it was good. We allowed frontend developers to touch the backend, and backend developers to touch the frontend. We had a new era of full-stack developers.

But with great power comes great responsibility. We had to choose a backend framework. And we had options. So many god damn options. We developed modules and libraries as we needed them and it was great. But one by one, from those amazing new features, problems arose. We created MVPs using Express and we refactored our SQL strings to use Sequelize. We added parsers and serializers, health checks and logging, and we realized that we were reinventing the wheel. And then we went ahead and reinvented the wheel nontheless. And that nonesense gave birth to absolute miracles like NestJS, AdonisJS, and Strapi.

The Era of Laravel/Rails/Django but in JS

With this sub-title and "hilarious", not at all repititve and first of it's kind introduction I've got up there you might think I'm against using JS backend frameworks. But you'd be wrong. I'm all for them. I think we're well past the point of "JavaScript is not a real language" and "JavaScript is only for frontend". I have been developing as much as possible using JavaScript (or to be honest, TypeScript) and I've been loving it. My belief is that the JavaScript ecosystem, as convoluted as it is, has been a great place to be right now and specially since the introduction of Deno 2.0 (which I will be checking out soon, I promise) much of the concern around the ecosystem will slowly fade out and we will finally have a stable and secure environment to work with.

But I digress. Let's get back to the main topic of this post. The comparison of the top backend JavaScript frameworks. I've chosen three of the top contenders for this comparison. NestJS, AdonisJS, and Strapi. I've chosen these three because they are the most popular and most used frameworks in the JavaScript ecosystem right now, and I've worked with them either extensively or as a go to for my projects.

These are not your "I'm gonna build a blog" frameworks. These are the "I am going to lay the first brick of what's going to be a skyscraper" frameworks. They are powerful, they are complex, and they are absolutely amazing. They are the Laravel, Rails, and Django of the JS. And they are here to stay. The teams behind these projects are huge, the communities are vast, and the scalability is immense.

Nest and Adonis

From all of the different JavaScript frameworks out there, I love Nest the most. From it's amazing documentation to it's powerful CLI, it's amazing decorators and it's vast ecosystem, Nest is the framework to go for if you're looking for a scalable and powerful backend framework. It provides you with everything you need to build a powerful backend application and makes it easy for new developers to come in and continue your work.

1npm i -g @nestjs/cli
2nest new project-name
3
4# Or
5
6git clone https://github.com/nestjs/typescript-starter.git project
7cd project
8npm install
9npm run start

Adonis is another great framework. It's Laravel in JS. It's powerful, it's vast, and it's amazing. It's got everything you need to build a powerful backend application and it's got a great community behind it. It's a great choice for those who are looking for a Laravel-like experience in JS. My only qualm with Adonis is the bad upgrade experience we got from v5 to v6. It was a nightmare. For some time there was no documentation on how to upgrade and it was a mess. But they've fixed it now and it's a great framework to work with.

1# Create a project and get prompted for all options
2npm init adonisjs@latest hello-world
3
4# Create a project with MySQL
5npm init adonisjs@latest hello-world -- --db=mysql
6
7# Create a project with PostgreSQL and API starter kit
8npm init adonisjs@latest hello-world -- --db=postgres --kit=api
9
10# Create a project with API starter kit and access tokens guard
11npm init adonisjs@latest hello-world -- --kit=api --auth-guard=access_tokens

Although Adonis is absolutely amazing and I love it, I still prefer Nest over it. In my opinion, Nest provides a more team friendly experience and it's more scalable than Adonis. I love the way Nest is built and I love the way it's structured. It's a great framework and I highly recommend it. That's not to say Adonis is bad. It's great. It's just that I prefer Nest over it.

Strapi

Strapi is a different beast. It's not a framework, it's a CMS. Why is it listed in an article comparing frameworks? Well, I wanted to share my thoughts on it.

When I want to start a project, it's important to me that I know the approximate scope and scale of the project. It's not exactly about the size of the project and what features I want in it, it's about how fine of a control do I want over the project.

For example sometimes I don't care how the user logs in, I may just allow them to use their social accounts. Sometimes it's more important that only certain people can access the application. For cases that I don't care at all about the backend and just want to be able to share data with the frontend, I use Strapi. It allows me to define my models visually which is amazing if I want to share the project with a client, and on top of that it provides visual editors to enter data for those models. Think Wordpress but not limited to blogs.

With Strapi you can define access control, have access to a great bunch of plugins, manage media nicely, and have a great API to work with. It provides a bunch of more common features out of the box that were a pain to implement in other frameworks. If I want a project that's not much more complex than a data I/O type of thing and I don't want to overcomplicate things, I definitely go with Strapi and recommend you do the same.

1npx create-strapi@latest my-strapi-project

Final thoughts

In the end, it's all about what you want to do. If your product is going to be complex and you want to have full control over it, go with Nest, or maybe Adonis. But there's no need to overcomplicate things most of the time and you can use the amazing Strapi to get the job done. It's all about what you want to do and how you want to do it.

And it's important to consider what your team is comfortable with. Forget "JavaScript is not a real language" memes and consider your teams' strengths. You might have a Python team in which case Django might be a better choice. The point is to choose the right tool for the job and for the team and not choose the trendiest framework out there. Because the most important thing is to get the job done.