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

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Survey: Which Kotlin Frameworks Are Used in Production

The Kotlin ecosystem continues to actively develop, and every year more teams choose this language for backend development. But which framework actually makes it to production, rather than remaining at the pet-project level? We analyzed a recent survey among professional Kotlin developers (over 2000 respondents from Russia, Europe, and Asia) and compiled key statistics.

Rating Leaders: Spring Boot and Ktor

The permanent leader remains Spring Boot — 58% of respondents use it in commercial projects. Familiar DI, a huge community, and the framework's maturity make it the choice for the enterprise segment. However, in second place with a significant lead is Ktor — 31% of respondents noted it as their primary framework in production. Ktor is actively gaining popularity due to its lightness, coroutines, and native approach to Kotlin.

Third place went to Vert.x (8%), which is preferred by teams working with high-load systems and reactive stacks. Other frameworks (Javalin, Micronaut, http4k) collectively accounted for about 3%.

Why Choose Spring Boot over Ktor?

Despite Ktor's growth, Spring Boot remains the "workhorse" for several reasons:

Java Legacy: many projects migrate from Java to Kotlin gradually, retaining the Spring stack.
Ready-made Solutions: Spring Security, Spring Data, cloud integrations — all of this works "out of the box."
Staffing Issue: finding a developer with Spring Boot experience is still easier than finding a Ktor specialist.

However, Ktor is confidently catching up to the leader, especially in startups and microservice architectures. Developers note that Ktor gives more control over the application and less "magic" in configurations.

Trends and Unexpected Conclusions

The survey also revealed several interesting patterns:

Ktor + Exposed: the combination of Ktor with the Exposed ORM (by JetBrains) is becoming the standard for new projects — 22% of respondents use this exact combination.
Vert.x for IoT and real-time: the framework is unexpectedly popular in the Internet of Things segment and systems requiring non-blocking I/O.
Abandoning Spring Boot in Microservices: every fifth developer who switched from Spring to Ktor did so during a monolith refactoring.

What Should a Beginner Choose?

If you are just starting to learn Kotlin for backend, experts advise:

For employment in large companies — learn Spring Boot (90% of job postings require it).
For personal projects and startups — try Ktor (less code, higher development speed).
If you are interested in reactive systems — take a look at Vert.x or Spring WebFlux.

Conclusion: the choice of framework increasingly depends not on fashion, but on specific tasks. Kotlin feels great in any environment, and the market confirms this.