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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Concurrency Frameworks
  5. Ktor vs Netty

Ktor vs Netty

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Netty
Netty
Stacks264
Followers408
Votes17
GitHub Stars34.6K
Forks16.2K
Ktor
Ktor
Stacks173
Followers339
Votes27
GitHub Stars14.1K
Forks1.2K

Ktor vs Netty: What are the differences?

Ktor is a modern and lightweight framework for building asynchronous servers and clients in connected systems using the Kotlin programming language. Netty, on the other hand, is a high-performance network application framework that provides an event-driven programming model.
  1. Built-in Features: Ktor has built-in features such as routing, serialization, and HTTP handling, which make it easier for developers to build web applications. Netty, on the other hand, provides a lower-level network application framework and does not come with built-in features like routing and serialization.

  2. Concurrency: Ktor uses Kotlin's coroutines to provide a powerful and efficient way of writing asynchronous code. This makes it easier for developers to handle concurrency and write scalable applications. Netty also supports asynchronous programming, but it uses a different approach with its own concurrency model.

  3. Modularity: Ktor is designed to be highly modular, allowing developers to easily add or remove modules based on their requirements. This makes it flexible and allows for better code organization. Netty, on the other hand, provides a more monolithic framework with fewer options for customization and modularity.

  4. Ease of Use: Ktor provides a simple and intuitive API that is easy to learn and use. It leverages Kotlin's language features and provides a DSL-like syntax for defining routes and handling requests. Netty, on the other hand, has a more complex API and requires more boilerplate code to achieve the same functionality.

  5. Performance: Ktor is built on top of Netty and leverages its high-performance networking capabilities. However, Netty is a more low-level framework and provides finer-grained control over the networking layer, which can result in higher performance in certain use cases.

  6. Community and Ecosystem: Ktor is a relatively new framework and has a smaller community and ecosystem compared to Netty, which has been around for a longer time and has a larger and more mature community. This means that there are more resources, libraries, and tools available for Netty.

In summary, Ktor and Netty are both frameworks for building asynchronous servers and clients, but they have key differences in terms of built-in features, concurrency model, modularity, ease of use, performance, and community/ecosystem.

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Detailed Comparison

Netty
Netty
Ktor
Ktor

Netty is a NIO client server framework which enables quick and easy development of network applications such as protocol servers and clients. It greatly simplifies and streamlines network programming such as TCP and UDP socket server.

It is a framework for building asynchronous servers and clients in connected systems using the Kotlin programming language.

-
Unopinionated;Asynchronous;Testable
Statistics
GitHub Stars
34.6K
GitHub Stars
14.1K
GitHub Forks
16.2K
GitHub Forks
1.2K
Stacks
264
Stacks
173
Followers
408
Followers
339
Votes
17
Votes
27
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 9
    High Performance
  • 4
    Easy to use
  • 3
    Just like it
  • 1
    Easy to learn
Cons
  • 2
    Limited resources to learn from
Pros
  • 9
    Simple & Small
  • 8
    Kotlin native
  • 7
    Light weight
  • 3
    High performance
Cons
  • 2
    Not self-explanatory: relies on Kotlin "magic"
  • 2
    Relatively fresh technology - not a lot of expertise
Integrations
No integrations available
Linux
Linux
Windows
Windows
IntelliJ IDEA
IntelliJ IDEA
Kotlin
Kotlin
macOS
macOS

What are some alternatives to Netty, Ktor?

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.

Django REST framework

Django REST framework

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

Sails.js

Sails.js

Sails is designed to mimic the MVC pattern of frameworks like Ruby on Rails, but with support for the requirements of modern apps: data-driven APIs with scalable, service-oriented architecture.

Sinatra

Sinatra

Sinatra is a DSL for quickly creating web applications in Ruby with minimal effort.

Lumen

Lumen

Laravel Lumen is a stunningly fast PHP micro-framework for building web applications with expressive, elegant syntax. We believe development must be an enjoyable, creative experience to be truly fulfilling. Lumen attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as routing, database abstraction, queueing, and caching.

Slim

Slim

Slim is easy to use for both beginners and professionals. Slim favors cleanliness over terseness and common cases over edge cases. Its interface is simple, intuitive, and extensively documented — both online and in the code itself.

Fastify

Fastify

Fastify is a web framework highly focused on speed and low overhead. It is inspired from Hapi and Express and as far as we know, it is one of the fastest web frameworks in town. Use Fastify can increase your throughput up to 100%.

Falcon

Falcon

Falcon is a minimalist WSGI library for building speedy web APIs and app backends. We like to think of Falcon as the Dieter Rams of web frameworks.

Akka

Akka

Akka is a toolkit and runtime for building highly concurrent, distributed, and resilient message-driven applications on the JVM.

hapi

hapi

hapi is a simple to use configuration-centric framework with built-in support for input validation, caching, authentication, and other essential facilities for building web applications and services.

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