The Main Differences Between Laravel and Django Frameworks

The creation of web development tools evolves rapidly. Nowadays, few people build applications and websites without utilizing specialized tools, particularly frameworks. In addition to selecting the primary programming language, there’s often a need for various supplementary tools and, of course, a framework.

This article focuses on the differences between the Laravel and Django web development frameworks. If you’re in search of custom web app development services to bring your project to life, this information will help you make an informed decision.

What is Django?

Django is a high-level, free Python-based web framework that was first released to the public back in 2005. According to its creators, it provides increased productivity for teams, as it helps them handle most of the backend development in-house, thanks to pre-built components.

Due to this, programmers can focus on creating business logic and unique parts of the backend. Also, code created with Django is considered quite safe and helps to avoid many common mistakes.

What Projects Can You Use Django For? 

The most outstanding feature of this framework is its scalability, which has been confirmed in practice by a number of popular projects (based on Django). They are able to withstand enormous loads from users.

This is why Django is often used to create large-scale enterprise solutions, social networks, financial platforms, and e-commerce solutions.

Main Features of The Framework

The key features of this framework include the following:

• Compatible with all popular operating systems
• Accelerated development of complex solutions based on MVT architecture
• Built-in encryption packages to ensure secure data transfer
• A variety of libraries and tools that greatly facilitate the work of developers
• Large developer community
• SEO friendly and decorators available
• Scalability
• Detailed documentation
• Convenient interaction with databases (in particular, to establish connections with databases, developers do not need to know SQL)
• No need to import third party libraries
• Ability to quickly develop multilingual websites (without having to create each new version separately)

Django formed the basis of such world-famous projects as:

• Instagram
• NASA
• Spotify
• YouTube
• DropBox
• Pinterest

What is Laravel?

The world first learned about Laravel in 2011 as a PHP framework with a simple and elegant syntax that minimizes the need to program trivial parts of the project and thereby speeds up its launch date.

Laravel allows you to use both PHP for full stack development (this is possible through sharing with Livewire) and JavaScript (for creating the user part you can choose React or Vue, connecting to Laravel Inertia). Finally, you can use Laravel to build APIs for applications written in Next.js.

Overall, it is an advanced framework for backend development that has a low barrier to entry and helps scale applications and websites thanks to a huge library of packages, as well as proprietary Laravel Octane and Laravel Vapor technologies.

What Projects Can You Use Laravel For?

Laravel is an excellent choice for developing large-scale enterprise-level solutions. This is achieved primarily through full compatibility with AWS Lambda, as well as the availability of a sufficient number of internal packages and tools that allow you to dynamically improve the performance of applications and websites.

Main Features of The Framework

Let’s look at the main features of this framework:

• Innovative template system (Blade template engine) that speeds up the development process
• MVC architecture support via built-in functions
• No need to know SQL to establish database connections
• Support for many object-oriented libraries and modular functions
• Built-in Artisan tool to automate common programming tasks
• Simplified unit testing
• Simplified implementation of authorization systems
• Automatic protection against SQL injections, as well as cross-site request forgery and scripts
• Load balancing
• Low entry threshold and detailed documentation

Key Differences Between Laravel and Django

Now let’s look at how Laravel and Django compare based on the most important business criteria. Knowing the features of these frameworks will help you make the right choice when looking for a company to develop a web application.

1. Performance.

Despite Laravel’s concise syntax, this framework can hardly compete with Django in terms of performance.

Here, its top performance is achieved primarily due to the speed of the Python programming language. Thus, in the context of comparing Django and Laravel for performance, the first framework certainly wins.

2. Architecture.

Django is based on MVT (Model-View-Template) architecture, which provides increased development speed and ease of modification to the program code. As for Laravel, it is based on MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture, which is excellent for large-scale software solutions due to its structure.

3. Scalability.

Both frameworks are considered to be well suited for solutions that require incremental scaling, but for those with particularly complex business logic, Django is a better choice due to the large number of requests that can be processed in one second, as well as its support for microservice architecture.

4. Supported libraries.

Django has a very rich set of various proprietary libraries, as well as decorators, SEO tools, and support for integration with many third-party solutions (in particular, you can integrate a Django project with separate modules written in JavaScript).

As for Laravel, it has many object-oriented libraries and modular features that speed up the development process. Ultimately, when evaluating this parameter, you should focus on the requirements of your specific solution and check the availability of appropriate tools in a specific framework.

5. Safety.

Whether for Laravel or Django, security is a priority feature. In both frameworks, this is provided through built-in protection against SQL injection and clickjacking, as well as cross-site request forgery and scripting (i.e., XSS and CSRF attacks).

6. Testing.

To simplify the testing procedure, Django has a built-in ability to run autotests. As for Laravel, it supports unit testing, allowing you to run multiple tests at once.

7. Development speed.

If we are talking about startups and other projects that require a speedy launch, you should pay attention to Laravel.

This framework provides the cleanest possible code and, thanks to the presence of a large number of built-in functions and automation tools, can reduce the work of developers to a minimum.

At the same time, Django also offers developers a lot of ready-made components and a complete ecosystem, so development using this framework is also quite fast.

Wrapping It Up

The choice between Laravel or Django should be based on your individual software solution requirements, usage limitations, integration capabilities, ability to scale, and the level of security that a particular framework can provide.

We recommend contacting Digiteum, a company that provides services for the development of web applications, mobile applications, MVP, etc.