Java Community Chooses Best Libraries of 2024

Java Community Chooses Best Libraries of the Year: 2024 Voting Results

The annual voting among Java developers has concluded, and the community has determined the best libraries and frameworks of the past year. This year, over 5,000 Java programmers from around the world participated in the survey, evaluating tools based on criteria such as performance, ease of use, documentation, and community activity. We have compiled the key categories and winners to help you stay on trend.

The voting was conducted at major Java conferences and specialized forums, including JUG.ru. Experts noted that in 2024, interest in libraries for microservice architecture and reactive programming grew particularly strongly.

Winners in Key Categories

• Best Web Development Framework — Spring Boot 3.x. The winner received 78% of the votes thanks to improved support for GraalVM Native Image and the new Virtual Threads module. Developers noted that Spring Boot remains the most reliable choice for building REST APIs and microservices.
• Best ORM Library — Hibernate 6.3. With the release of the new version, Hibernate overtook EclipseLink and MyBatis. Key improvements: automatic optimization of JPQL queries and integration with Jakarta Persistence 3.1.
• Best Testing Library — JUnit 5.10. The community especially appreciated the support for parameterized tests and parallel execution. JUnit has held the lead for five consecutive years.
• Best Database Library — Liquibase 4.27. Won the "Migration Management" category thanks to its convenient YAML format and integration with CI/CD pipelines.
• Best Reactive Programming Library — Project Reactor 3.6. The winner delivers up to 40% performance improvement due to a new backpressure mechanism.

Special Mentions

The jury also noted several libraries that showed significant growth in popularity in 2024:

• Jackson 2.17 — best library for JSON serialization. The new version reduced parsing time by 15% thanks to the Stream API.
• Apache Kafka Clients 3.7 — recognized as the best tool for working with event streaming.
• MapStruct 1.6 — won the "Best Object Mapping Library" category due to code generation at compile time.

Trends and Predictions

Based on the community survey results, three main trends can be identified:

• Growing popularity of native compilation — over 60% of voters plan to adopt GraalVM in their projects in 2025.
• Increase in the share of reactive libraries — Project Reactor and RxJava received 30% more votes than last year.
• Shift towards Jakarta EE — libraries supporting Jakarta EE 10 received 85% of the votes in the "Enterprise Development" category.

If you are just starting to learn Java or want to update your stack, we recommend paying attention to the winners. The full list of all nominees and their descriptions are available on the official JUG.ru website. Follow the news on PythonLib — we will continue to publish reviews and comparisons of popular Java