Survey: Which Java Frameworks Are Actually Used in Production in 2024

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Survey: Which Java Frameworks Are Used in Production in 2024

Choosing a Java framework for production is not just a matter of fashion, but a strategic decision that affects performance, support, and future project scalability. To understand the real picture, the PythonLib editorial team analyzed data from a recent survey among Java developers, conducted in August 2024. More than 1,200 specialists from Russia and CIS countries took part in the survey. Here are the key findings.

Production Leaders: Spring Boot is Unrivaled

As expected, the first place with a huge lead is held by Spring Boot. It is used in 73% of commercial projects. The main reasons are a mature ecosystem, a huge number of ready-made starters, and broad community support. Spring Boot is especially strong in microservice architecture and enterprise applications. However, the survey also revealed a worrying trend: 18% of respondents complain about excessive configuration complexity and cold start time.

Rising Stars: Quarkus and Micronaut

In second place with 12% of the votes, unexpectedly, is Quarkus. This framework, created by Red Hat, is gaining popularity thanks to native compilation (GraalVM) and minimal memory consumption. It is especially valued in Kubernetes and serverless environments. Developers note that Quarkus can reduce application startup time to fractions of a second — critical for cloud production environments.

Third place (8%) is occupied by Micronaut. Its main advantage is annotation compilation at build time, which eliminates reflection and speeds up performance. Micronaut is actively chosen for high-load systems and IoT solutions.

Classics and Niche Solutions

Interestingly, Jakarta EE (formerly Java EE) is still alive: 4% of respondents use it in legacy projects, especially in the banking sector. Another 2% of votes went to Play Framework (mainly in startups where reactivity is important).

The remaining 1% went to custom wrappers and frameworks like Vert.x and Dropwizard — chosen by enthusiasts for specific tasks.

Trends 2024: Kubernetes and the Cloud Dictate the Fashion

The survey showed a clear correlation: 68% of projects on Quarkus and Micronaut are deployed in Kubernetes, while for Spring Boot this figure is 45%. This indicates that modern production is increasingly oriented towards a cloud-native approach. Also, 22% of developers noted that in the coming year they plan to migrate from classic Spring Boot to Quarkus to save resources.

Conclusions for a Java Developer

For enterprise projects — definitely Spring Boot. It is stable, well-documented, and suitable for long-term support.
For microservices and the cloud — take a look at Quarkus or Micronaut. They start faster and consume less memory.
For legacy — Jakarta EE remains a working option, but its share is gradually declining.
For experiments — Vert.x or Helidon, if you need asynchrony and non-standard architecture.

The main conclusion of the survey: the Java world is not standing