Difference between Django, Laravel, and Ruby on Rails.

Hipster PTE LTD

8 min readJun 15, 2021

Django, Laravel, and Ruby on Rails are among the most loved frameworks for web development. However, business organizations looking for the best solutions for their ventures, often get confused. They find it difficult to decide which framework to use for their project. Read this article to know about the three different frameworks, their strengths and limitations, and figure out which of the three is the most applicable and usable for you and your business.

Django

Built with Python, Django is a full-stack framework, which was crafted to support rapid and easy web-development.
It was when Simon Willison and Adrian Holovaty were working at the Lawrence Journal-World, a daily newspaper, that they got tired of maintaining big PHP websites, and needed something to make their development faster and less troublesome.
Then, they got to know about Python, and fell in love with it. However, Python did not provide them with the tools that worked the way they wanted. Hence, they started working on Django, which would help them with website development.

Features of Django

Adheres to the “batteries included” approach, that is, it has a healthy collection of packages and everything we need to build a fully fledged app.
Versatile and scalable.
It employs the principles of rapid development, which means developers don’t have to repeat the same tasks from scratch and can use existing codes for new tasks.
Security is one of the top priorities for the Django framework. It’s security patches are efficiently quick and usually act as a precursor for other frameworks to employ.

Benefits of Using Django

Provides great functionality for building powerful and dynamic apps.
Can be used to develop anything we want, be it social networking platforms, content management systems, or scientific computing websites.
We can build our application just the way we want.
Can easily move from small to big projects, and does a great job at handling high-traffic websites.

Who Should Use Django?

To limit the use of Django to a certain industry type would be unfair. It is one of the most established and rapidly growing frameworks that can serve the simplest of website and app development tasks. However, since the primary focus of the framework is to simplify hefty tasks, it is recommended for businesses with huge databases and users. Big companies like Spotify, Dropbox, Pinterest, Mozilla, Reddit, and The Washington Post use Django. It is obvious that Django is adept at handling huge media files, text posts content, immense interactions, and growing user base.

Keeping in mind that Python is one of the most favored languages for coders to learn and work with, Django is also a favorable choice for beginners even with new web application development projects. It is established, fast, secure, and easy to learn. Ecommerce websites, healthcare and financial booking platforms, social media sites transport businesses with an online booking system, etc. use Django. To put it simply, Django is a good choice for businesses with big databases and higher amounts of traffic/interactions.

Laravel

It is the youngest of the three frameworks, which helps developers implement complex functionality with little effort.
It was when Taylor Otwell was using CodeIgniter that he realized he could not include all the functionality he wanted, without radically altering the code. He started seeking for something simpler, leaner, and more flexible, and hence, Laravel came into existence.
In the first release, Laravel featured built-in authentication, localization, routing, sessions, views, models, and other tools.
Laravel gained traction by being in the right place, at the right time. At that point, other PHP frameworks offered either poor documentation or complex features. Laravel, on the contrary, was easy to use, and provided great documentation, too.

Features of Laravel

Provides Artisan, a built-in command line, which offers useful commands for building an application, and improves performance for mundane tasks.
Features cloud storage, which facilitates file storage.
The Laravel philosophy aspires to make web app development a creative and fulfilling process. Its code is simple yet expressive.
Laravel mitigates the difficulty of everyday development tasks by easing processes such as caching, authentication, sessions, and routing.

Benefits of using Laravel

Great for small and large web projects.
Can operate five file systems at the same time using MVC (model-view-controller) architectural pattern
Hassle free and clean routing
ORM(object-relational-mapper) and database layering made more effective
Offers useful commands for building an application.
Improves performance for tedious tasks.

Who Should Use Laravel?

In order to decide whether one should use the Laravel framework, the businesses need to chalk out their needs and then check their compatibility with features that the framework offers. The code brevity that Laravel allows is certainly time-saving. But companies or businesses that are looking for well-structured and extensive web development projects should definitely explore the Laravel framework. In addition, the framework has a huge developer community which facilitates quick and effective problem solving.

The extensive features of Cached data accumulation that this framework offers are suitable for businesses that struggle with slow web page loading. Laravel is also very secure, but it also depends on the developers to fully optimize its security features. It’s MVC architectural pattern makes it easy to work on large web projects by helping organize unstructured code. Contrary to the belief that PHP and laravel are slowly becoming outdated, it is still very much alive and constantly evolving. Some top companies that use Laravel include BBC, Pfizer, and 9Gag

Ruby on Rails

In the words of David Heinemeier Hansson, Ruby on Rails is one of the most extraordinarily beautiful and luxurious languages. It makes app development easy and fun.
Hansson was working at 37signals when he found lots of similarities in the PHP apps he was building. For every new application he was redoing work he had done before. Hence, David started working on Ruby on Rails.
David’s first attempt was made in PHP, but the more he worked with PHP, the more he felt like he was fighting with it.
Meanwhile, Hansson began working on the Basecamp project, where he came to know about Ruby, the language he was looking for.
There was no mandated technology for the Basecamp project, and David could choose his own tools. He worked on the project and crafted the Rails framework at the same time. After releasing Basecamp, he spent six months polishing Rails, and introduced it finally in 2004.

Features of Ruby on Rails

Follows the convention over configuration concept, which means that it is easier for software engineers to switch between different projects written in Ruby on Rails.
Provides automated testing tools.

Benefits of using Ruby on Rails

One can benefit from lots of tools for automated testing, saving time and money.
Great for database-backed web apps.
Coding by convention allows development of fast and cost-effective web applications.

Who Should Use Ruby on Rails (RoR)?

To put it simply, Ruby is a mature and dynamic general programming language. Ruby on Rails is a framework that is best suited for companies that have projects to finish in a cost-effective and time saving manner. If you are looking to build a Minimum Viable product for your business, Ruby on Rails is a good choice despite more popular and established frameworks such as Django (which is certainly not cost-effective for a MVP). Additionally, RoR is a great choice for social media applications. The fact that it is used by big companies such as AirBnb, Crunchbase, and Ask.fm is a testament to its ability of effectively handling immense traffic and transactions on a regular basis. Businesses with ecommerce platforms and complex databases can also use RoR.

Top Companies Using Django, Laravel, and RoR

DjangoInstagram, Pinterest, Facebook, NASA, Reddit, Dropbox, The Washington Post, Spotify, and more.LaravelWordPress, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Flickr, Tumblr.Ruby on RailsBasecamp, GitHub, Dribbble, Crunchbase, Groupon, Shopify, Airbnb.

Similarities Among the Three Frameworks

Features that are similar for all the three frameworks:

Dynamic Typing: Python, PHP and Rails are dynamically typed languages, in which variables must necessarily be defined before they are used.
Rapid Development: All the three frameworks provide tools that help build web applications and websites faster.
Open-source: The three frameworks follow the MVC model, which helps web developers to access the source codes, for reusability and accessibility, with great ease.
Multiple-platform Support: In the current digital-first world, we need to develop softwares for all types of devices. The three frameworks not only accelerate the time needed to develop applications, but also ensure that those applications can be used over multiple platforms.
Extensive Ecosystem: Each of the three frameworks have a large community of users, and are top picks for innumerable developers.

Comparing the Frameworks on Different Factors

Each framework has its own advantages and disadvantages. In order to understand which among the three frameworks is better, we shall compare them on the basis of availability and cost of developers, community, ecosystem, and security.

Availability and Cost of Developers

According to the 2018 Stack Overflow web frameworks rating, Django is the most loved frameworks among developers, and Python is the fastest- growing language.
As of March 2019, there were 209 Ruby on Rails, 993 PHP, and 1031 Python and Django companies, listed on Clutch.

Community

As of March 2019, the Django community comprised 11,685 people from 166 countries. It consists of mailing lists and blogs, a website for sharing snippets of codes, educational resources, and more.
According to the official website of Rails, over 4,500 people have already contributed code to Rails. It has its own mailing list, weekly newsletter, Slack community, online conferences, online community, and more.
The Laravel community comprises educational resources, a community portal and forum, an official blog, an employment website, and a directory of Laravel packages.

Ecosystem

The Django ecosystem comprises 4,000 packages, of which the most popular ones are The Django Rest Framework, for implementing REST APIs, The Debug Toolbar, for displaying debugging information, Django Allauth, for account authentication via Facebook, Twitter, and Google, and more.
The Laravel ecosystem comprises 15,700 packages, among which the popular ones are Cashier for Braintree and Stripe integrations, Homestead for Vagrant, Forge for development, and more.
Rails includes hundreds of gems with reusable codes, a set of library extensions and utility classes called Active support, frameworks including Active Job, Action Cable for integrating WebSockets, et cetera.

Security

The fact that NASA uses the Django framework, testifies that security is a priority for Django. It provides developers with tools that keep apps safe from security-related issues. Django is excellent at user authentication and administration, allowing us to manage users and identify user roles and permissions.
Laravel, like other PHP frameworks, is vulnerable, but provides functionality for authentication, authorization, encryption, and more.
Ruby on Rails provides out-of-the-box functionality to address security issues, like SQL injection, cross-site request forgery (CSRF), cross-site scripting (XSS), clickjacking, insecure direct object references, and script injection.

All the three frameworks are unique and special in their own ways. While Ruby on Rails is the leading framework in website adoption, Laravel has a large ecosystem, and Django is the securest framework. Business organizations must analyze which among the three frameworks fulfills their requirements with utmost ease, and take an informed decision. Click here to know about: Mobile App Development in Singapore