StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Frameworks
  5. Django REST framework vs Spring

Django REST framework vs Spring

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Spring
Spring
Stacks3.9K
Followers4.8K
Votes1.1K
GitHub Stars59.1K
Forks38.8K
Django REST framework
Django REST framework
Stacks1.9K
Followers2.1K
Votes312

Django REST framework vs Spring: What are the differences?

Developers describe Django REST framework as "Web APIs for Django". Django REST framework is a powerful and flexible toolkit that makes it easy to build Web APIs. On the other hand, Spring is detailed as "Provides a comprehensive programming and configuration model for modern Java-based enterprise applications". A key element of Spring is infrastructural support at the application level: Spring focuses on the "plumbing" of enterprise applications so that teams can focus on application-level business logic, without unnecessary ties to specific deployment environments.

Django REST framework can be classified as a tool in the "Microframeworks (Backend)" category, while Spring is grouped under "Frameworks (Full Stack)".

"Browsable api" is the top reason why over 54 developers like Django REST framework, while over 192 developers mention "Java" as the leading cause for choosing Spring.

Django REST framework and Spring are both open source tools. It seems that Spring with 30.6K GitHub stars and 19.6K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Django REST framework with 14.7K GitHub stars and 4.33K GitHub forks.

MIT, Zillow, and Intuit are some of the popular companies that use Spring, whereas Django REST framework is used by The3ballsoft, Uploadcare, and Crowdkeep. Spring has a broader approval, being mentioned in 319 company stacks & 184 developers stacks; compared to Django REST framework, which is listed in 159 company stacks and 79 developer stacks.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Detailed Comparison

Spring
Spring
Django REST framework
Django REST framework

A key element of Spring is infrastructural support at the application level: Spring focuses on the "plumbing" of enterprise applications so that teams can focus on application-level business logic, without unnecessary ties to specific deployment environments.

It is a powerful and flexible toolkit that makes it easy to build Web APIs.

-
The Web browsable API is a huge usability win for your developers.;Authentication policies including OAuth1a and OAuth2 out of the box.;Serialization that supports both ORM and non-ORM data sources.;Customizable all the way down - just use regular function-based views if you don't need the more powerful features.;Extensive documentation, and great community support.;Used and trusted by large companies such as Mozilla and Eventbrite.
Statistics
GitHub Stars
59.1K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
38.8K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
3.9K
Stacks
1.9K
Followers
4.8K
Followers
2.1K
Votes
1.1K
Votes
312
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 230
    Java
  • 157
    Open source
  • 136
    Great community
  • 123
    Very powerful
  • 114
    Enterprise
Cons
  • 15
    Draws you into its own ecosystem and bloat
  • 4
    Poor documentation
  • 3
    Java
  • 3
    Verbose configuration
  • 2
    Java is more verbose language in compare to python
Pros
  • 67
    Easy to use
  • 65
    Browsable api
  • 53
    Great documentation
  • 51
    Customizable
  • 42
    Fast development
Cons
  • 2
    Reimplements Django functionality
  • 2
    Bad documentation
  • 1
    No support for URL Namespaces
  • 0
    Bad CSRF handling
Integrations
Java
Java
Rollbar
Rollbar
Sentry
Sentry
Django
Django
Stream
Stream
Kloudless
Kloudless

What are some alternatives to Spring, Django REST framework?

Node.js

Node.js

Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

Rails

Rails

Rails is a web-application framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.

Django

Django

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.

Laravel

Laravel

It is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. It attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, and caching.

.NET

.NET

.NET is a general purpose development platform. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build native applications for web, mobile, desktop, gaming, and IoT for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and more.

ASP.NET Core

ASP.NET Core

A free and open-source web framework, and higher performance than ASP.NET, developed by Microsoft and the community. It is a modular framework that runs on both the full .NET Framework, on Windows, and the cross-platform .NET Core.

ExpressJS

ExpressJS

Express is a minimal and flexible node.js web application framework, providing a robust set of features for building single and multi-page, and hybrid web applications.

Symfony

Symfony

It is written with speed and flexibility in mind. It allows developers to build better and easy to maintain websites with PHP..

Spring Boot

Spring Boot

Spring Boot makes it easy to create stand-alone, production-grade Spring based Applications that you can "just run". We take an opinionated view of the Spring platform and third-party libraries so you can get started with minimum fuss. Most Spring Boot applications need very little Spring configuration.

Android SDK

Android SDK

Android provides a rich application framework that allows you to build innovative apps and games for mobile devices in a Java language environment.

Related Comparisons

Bootstrap
Materialize

Bootstrap vs Materialize

Laravel
Django

Django vs Laravel vs Node.js

Bootstrap
Foundation

Bootstrap vs Foundation vs Material UI

Node.js
Spring Boot

Node.js vs Spring-Boot

Liquibase
Flyway

Flyway vs Liquibase