Ruby on Rails and Laravel are very popular web development frameworks, used by a huge number of people all over the world. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. If you’re not sure which framework you should use for your web development projects, this post will help!
This blog post gives you a comparison between Ruby on Rails and Laravel so that it becomes easier for you to decide which one would be good for your work. It discusses, for each framework, several important factors such as performance, development time, market share, etc. I hope you will find the information in this article useful!
Framework overview
Ruby on Rails: Ruby on Rails (also known as Rails) is a web framework written in Ruby, which is used for developing web applications. It’s an MVC framework. It was released on December 13, 2005.
Official site: http://rubyonrails.org/
GitHub: https://github.com/rails/rails
Laravel: Laravel is also a web framework, used for developing web applications. It was released in June, 2011. It’s also based on the MVC paradigm. Laravel is written in PHP 7.
Official site: https://laravel.com/
GitHub: https://github.com/laravel/framework
Performance
Ruby on Rails: Ruby on Rails is a web framework while Ruby is a programming language. A web framework generally increases your productivity at the cost of performance. So Ruby on Rails is obviously slower than Ruby. According to many people, Ruby on Rails is slower than Laravel. You can take a look at this blog post that shows that Rails is comparatively slower.
Although the above chart shows that Ruby on Rails is comparatively slower, you can develop a high-performance web application by following the best coding practices and by using the right techniques. There are many popular web applications built with Ruby on Rails such as GitHub, Basecamp, Shopify, Zendesk, UserVoice, Airbnb, SoundCloud, and so on. All of these Rails applications are fast enough. All of them have great performance, which proves that we can develop fast web apps using Ruby on Rails.
Laravel: Just like Ruby on Rails, Laravel is also a web framework and it’s slower than PHP because Laravel is a framework while PHP is a programming language.
And just like Rails, you can also build fast web applications with Laravel using the right techniques. There are a good number of websites that have been built with this web framework.
Development time
Ruby on Rails: One of the main benefits of a web framework is that it increases your productivity. Ruby on Rails requires a small amount of development time and it’s easy to use. This framework is very, very developer-friendly.
Laravel: Similarly, Laravel also lets you produce more in less time. You can complete a website project within a small amount of time. It saves you a lot of time and it’s also easy to use.
Both of these frameworks are easy to learn. One can quickly learn how to code using these frameworks if they have the basic knowledge of Ruby and PHP.
Market share
Ruby on Rails: Rails has 39,536 stars on GitHub, as of writing this blog post. A huge number of web applications have been developed using Ruby on Rails. Popular web applications such as GitHub, Shopify, Basecamp, UserVoice, Zendesk, Airbnb, SoundCloud, Twitch, Hulu, Square, etc. have been built with Rails.
Laravel: Laravel has 12,070 stars, as of writing this post. A great number of websites have been built using Laravel, too. Websites such as Watchseries.cr, Laracasts.com, Alphacoders.com, Alison.com, Barchart.com, etc. have been built with Laravel.
Community assistance
Ruby on Rails: Community assistance for Ruby on Rails is good. There are a huge number of developers all over the world who can help you in different ways. There are a great number of blog posts and answers written about Ruby on Rails on the web. As of writing this post, there are 3,563 contributors for Ruby on Rails on GitHub, which indicates that the community is large enough.
Laravel: The community support for Laravel is also good. As of writing this post, there are 1,696 contributors for Laravel on GitHub, which indicates that the community is large enough.
You have to keep in mind that the Rails and Laravel community includes GitHub contributors and other developers who are helping through their blog posts and answers. All of them are helping us in different ways. Some of them are improving the frameworks by contributing code as both the frameworks are open source while others are helping through their blog posts and answers.
So which one is the winner?
So which framework is better? Honestly speaking, I don’t have a direct answer! You have to think which framework would be better for your business. Both the frameworks are powerful but they are different in many ways.
Some people like Ruby on Rails while others prefer Laravel. There are many factors that you should consider while choosing a framework. This post has discussed some important factors like performance, development time, market share, etc. But there are many other factors that you should take into consideration. For example, you also need to think about the learning curve.
If you have developers who do not know these frameworks then which framework would be easy to learn for them? If they know PHP, they can easily and quickly learn Laravel. On the other hand, if they know the basics of Ruby then Ruby on Rails will be easier for them to learn.
I hope you enjoyed this post. If you need to have a web application for your business, you can email us at hello@virtualspirit.me or call us at +60197570530. We have experts who can develop high-quality web apps for you!
