The choice of a web framework like Django vs Laravel is one of the most crucial decisions in web development. It can make or break a project because a web framework works like a “skeleton” on which you’ll build your web application.

Django and Laravel are two of the most prominent web frameworks. Both have excellent features, functionalities, and capabilities to support and meet user demands in various industry verticals.

This article aims to settle this debate by comparing Django vs Laravel based on various parameters such as ease of learning, usability, performance, security, scalability, support for database and microservices, community support, and more. But before that, let’s solidify the basic concepts around web frameworks in general, and then Django and Laravel.

Ready? Let’s jump in!

What Are Web Frameworks?

A web framework is a software framework or an abstraction without complexities. They’re used to build web applications and deploy them on the World Wide Web.

Web frameworks are designed to ease software development, especially for new web developers who may not be ready to write code from scratch. Instead, they can employ a reusable piece of code to build the applications and add features to them. This code often contains a pre-template structure and standard code.

Thanks to web frameworks, you can jump straight to the application logic and skip the troubles of developing its low-level infrastructure. Hence, you will be able to create a neat, professional application with ease.

Types of Frameworks: Frontend and Backend

Essentially, there are two types of web frameworks: frontend and backend.

Frontend Frameworks

Also known as client-side frameworks, frontend frameworks deal with client-side problems in web development.

In simple words, frontend frameworks deal with what the user sees upon opening the application with no involvement of the app logic. These frameworks are primarily used to improve user interfaces for a better overall user experience. You can also create plenty of animated features and single-page apps using frontend frameworks.

Some other popular frontend frameworks include Angular, Vue.js, and Ember.js. They’re all based on JavaScript and CSS.

Backend Frameworks

Also known as server-side frameworks, backend frameworks are associated with what happens inside the server or database. These frameworks are employed to deal with all the internal “guts” of the application.

Backend frameworks handle the storage and management of data, responses, testing, and so on. They’re also involved in some core functionalities such as routing, templating, object-oriented mapping, and more.

These frameworks help you develop landing pages, simple web pages, and web forms, to name a few. You can use them to form output data and enhance security to mitigate web attacks.

Some of the popular backend frameworks are Django, Laravel, Ruby on Rails, and Express.js. They’re also based on HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

Why Use Web Frameworks?

You can use web frameworks many types of web apps. You can use them for developing blogs, websites, forms, content management systems (CMSs), and more. They provide you with the flexibility to create applications aligned perfectly with your business rules and user needs.

Using web frameworks saves you time which you can invest better in other vital areas. Without creating everything from scratch or wasting time on low value-added, repetitive tasks, you’ll free yourself up to focus on different, arguably more critical needs.

Here’s why using web frameworks is helpful:

• URL mapping: Web frameworks help in URL mapping by simplifying site indexing. For this, it enables you to create a clear, attractive, SEO-friendly site name. URL mapping also allows easy access to site URLs.
• Security: Using a popular framework comes with excellent security implications. Each has a vast developer community to strengthen the framework by identifying security loopholes and fixing them quickly, making it safe for your applications.
• Cost: Most web frameworks are open source and free, allowing you to cut down development costs. You can also quickly finish many tasks more rapidly to accelerate the time to market.
• Efficiency: The entire development process becomes effortless using a framework as you don’t need to write code for each component or feature. You can use pre-built functions to save effort and time.
• Support: With a broad community of developers and comprehensive documentation, you can understand frameworks with ease. And even if you encounter some difficulties, you can reach out to other fellow developers and experts to clear your doubts.

With the widely available tools, libraries, and frameworks today, it sometimes becomes challenging to choose the correct ones. This is why it’s crucial to closely examine each web framework and set of tools to determine which has the best chance of making your web development process easy, quick, and convenient.

Check the programming of the web framework that you’re comfortable working with and the scope of tools it supports. It must help you manage every task with ease.

Django and Laravel are two of the most popular web frameworks for web development. They give each other tough competition; hence, developers sometimes find it challenging to choose between them.

But don’t worry — we’ve come up with a Django vs Laravel comparison article to help you make a decision based on your specific requirements.

Django vs Laravel: What Are They?

Before we go on the comparison mode, let’s find what these two frameworks are all about for a deeper understanding of their core concepts, technicalities, and usage.

What Is Django?

Django is an open-source and free Python-based web framework. Released in 2005, it’s developed and maintained by the Django Software Foundation. Django has a 3-clause BSD license, and the latest version released is Django 3.2.

This high-level web framework makes it effortless to develop better web applications quickly with less code. Django encourages clean and pragmatic design for rapid web app development. Due to its readable syntax, it can save the time and effort of developers. It’s lightweight and flexible for use in both development and testing.

Django works on the Model-View-Template (MVT) architecture to make web app designing aesthetically pleasing and highly functional. It’s highly adaptable to different types of projects in multiple industries and involves several pre-made feature packages.

It’s excellent for creating complex applications. As it’s a Python-based framework, it helps develop products for data science, computation, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and other scientific uses.

Features of Django

• Free and open-source: As Django is free and open-source, you just need to download and install it, then use it however you want to build your application. It minimizes the development cost and increases convenience as well. You can even contribute to bug fixing and coding.
• Simplicity: Django aims to ease the development of complex and database-driven applications and sites. Its easy-to-read code with simple syntax is learner-friendly, especially for new developers — its learning curve is almost flat, so you won’t have much trouble understanding and using it in your web apps.
• Incredibly fast: This framework enables developers to take their applications from concept to completion in a shorter timeline. It’s designed for rapid web development so that you can build a large number of apps with quick turnaround times.
• Highly secure: Django is a secure framework built to withstand security loopholes, SQL injection, clickjacking, cross-site scripting and request forgery, and other harmful attacks. It has a safe user authentication system that provides security for managing user passwords and accounts.
• Scalable: Modern applications must offer high scalability to meet heavy traffic demands. Django can scale quickly to support the growth of your user base and withstand high traffic even during peak periods.
• Fully-featured: Django has dozens of extra capabilities to handle web development activities. It can take care of content administration, user authentication, RSS feeds, site maps, and other tasks out of the box.
• Easy management: The highly flexible architecture of Django provides easy management of development tasks from conceptualization to final deployment. You also get an optional administrative interface to create, update, read, and delete things. It uses Python throughout for files, settings, and data models.
• Flexibility and versatility: You can build all sorts of software products using Django, from one-page sites to complex applications, social networks, and scientific computing systems.
• Extensibility: Django has a configuration system that allows you to plug third-party code into a project if it aligns with reusable application conventions. There are 2,500+ packages available to extend this framework’s functionality and include additional solutions such as search, registration, CMS