Best Java Web Frameworks

Spring Boot builds on Spring Framework to provide opinionated defaults, automatic configuration and embedded servers, so an application runs as a single executable rather than being deployed into a separate container. Spring Initializr generates a starting project, and the wider ecosystem covers Cloud, Data, Security, Integration, Batch and AI.

Automatic configuration is the change that mattered and it addressed a genuine reputational problem. Enterprise Java had become associated with lengthy XML configuration before any code ran, which drove a generation of developers toward other languages entirely. Inferring configuration from what is on the classpath removed most of that, and a working web application became a matter of minutes.

Embedding the server is the second structural decision. Producing a runnable artefact rather than something deployed into an application server matches how software is now shipped, in containers and on platforms that expect a process rather than a deployment target.

The trade off is worth naming honestly. Opinionated defaults are excellent until an application needs to disagree with one, and understanding why something is configured a particular way then requires knowing what the automatic configuration decided and why.

Apache Struts is a model-view-controller web framework for Java, maintained by the Apache Software Foundation, with a core API, tag library, plugin registry, Maven archetypes, an IntelliJ IDEA plugin and published documentation covering getting started, security and developer guides. It publishes version notes, security bulletins, end-of-life version listings and commercial support options.

The security bulletins are the first thing a prospective adopter should read, and that is a statement about diligence rather than a criticism. Struts has been the subject of serious remotely exploitable vulnerabilities, at least one of which contributed to a very large breach, and the project responds by publishing bulletins and end-of-life notices clearly. An organisation running it must have a process that acts on those quickly.

Publishing end-of-life versions explicitly is good practice that many projects neglect. A team can determine whether the version it runs is still receiving fixes, which is the question that actually matters and is frequently unanswerable elsewhere.

For a new application the honest position is that this framework's era has passed, and the reason to know it is that a great deal of existing enterprise code runs on it and needs maintaining.

Jakarta EE is the specification set for enterprise Java, governed at the Eclipse Foundation after Oracle transferred Java EE to it. It publishes a Platform specification, a Web Profile and a Core Profile, with individual specifications browsable separately, and releases through Jakarta EE 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 in progress.

Being a specification rather than an implementation is the property that distinguishes it from every other entry in this category. An application written against Jakarta EE can run on several vendors' application servers, and a company can change vendor without rewriting, which is precisely the guarantee that made enterprise Java attractive to organisations wary of dependence on one supplier.

The profiles exist because the full platform is large. The Web Profile covers what a web application actually needs and the Core Profile targets smaller runtimes and microservices, which is a reasonable response to the criticism that enterprise Java assumed a heavyweight server.

The rename is more than cosmetic and it still catches people. Oracle retained the Java trademark, so every package moved from javax to jakarta, which is a source-level change existing applications must make rather than a version upgrade they can defer.

Micronaut is a JVM framework governed by the Micronaut Foundation, with corporate and community sponsorship, a published roadmap, security announcements, commercial and community support options and a podcast. Its defining characteristic is performing dependency injection at compile time rather than at runtime.

Moving injection to compile time is a genuine architectural difference rather than an optimisation. Traditional JVM frameworks inspect classes through reflection when an application starts, which costs time and memory proportional to the size of the application. Resolving those relationships during compilation means startup is fast and memory use is low regardless of application size, and it also means errors that would have appeared at startup appear during the build.

That matters most where applications start frequently. Serverless functions are charged for cold start time, and a container that scales to zero pays startup cost on every scale-up, so a framework that starts in milliseconds changes what deployment models are viable.

Being run by a foundation with published sponsorship is worth noting when choosing. It means governance does not sit with one company, which is a consideration for a framework an organisation expects to depend on for years.