Spring Boot vs NestJS: Java vs TypeScript Backend Frameworks in 2026

Two frameworks. Same patterns. Completely different ecosystems. Spring Boot has been the enterprise Java standard for over a decade, powering backends at Netflix, Airbnb, and thousands of financial institutions. NestJS arrived in 2017 and brought those same patterns — modules, controllers, services, dependency injection — to the TypeScript world.

If you are choosing between them, the decision is rarely about which framework is better. It is about which language ecosystem, team skillset, and deployment model fits your project. This guide breaks down the real differences so you can make the right call.

Quick Comparison

Architecture

Spring Boot and NestJS share more architectural DNA than their language difference suggests. Both are built around the same three ideas: modules that group related functionality, controllers that handle routing, and services that hold business logic. Both rely on dependency injection containers to wire components together. The difference is how each framework expresses these ideas.

Spring Boot: Annotations and the IoC Container

Spring Boot uses Java annotations to declare how components behave and how they relate to each other. The Spring IoC container reads these annotations at startup, builds a dependency graph, and instantiates beans in the correct order.

// UserService.java
@Service
public class UserService {

    private final UserRepository userRepository;

    public UserService(UserRepository userRepository) {
        this.userRepository = userRepository;
    }

    public List<User> findAll() {
        return userRepository.findAll();
    }

    public User create(CreateUserRequest request) {
        User user = new User();
        user.setName(request.getName());
        user.setEmail(request.getEmail());
        return userRepository.save(user);
    }
}

// UserController.java
@RestController
@RequestMapping("/users")
public class UserController {

    private final UserService userService;

    public UserController(UserService userService) {
        this.userService = userService;
    }

    @GetMapping
    public List<User> findAll() {
        return userService.findAll();
    }

    @PostMapping
    @ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.CREATED)
    public User create(@RequestBody @Valid CreateUserRequest request) {
        return userService.create(request);
    }
}

Constructor injection is the preferred approach in modern Spring Boot. The framework detects the constructor and injects the UserRepository bean automatically. No factory methods, no manual wiring.

Spring Boot's @SpringBootApplication annotation triggers auto-configuration — the framework scans your classpath, detects what libraries are present, and configures sensible defaults. Add spring-boot-starter-data-jpa and a PostgreSQL driver, and a connection pool appears without a line of configuration code.

NestJS: Decorators and the DI Container

NestJS uses TypeScript decorators to express the same concepts. The module system is the organizing unit — every feature lives in a module that declares what it provides and what it imports.

// users/users.service.ts
import { Injectable, NotFoundException } from '@nestjs/common';
import { InjectRepository } from '@nestjs/typeorm';
import { Repository } from 'typeorm';
import { User } from './user.entity';
import { CreateUserDto } from './dto/create-user.dto';

@Injectable()
export class UsersService {
  constructor(
    @InjectRepository(User)
    private readonly userRepository: Repository<User>,
  ) {}

  findAll(): Promise<User[]> {
    return this.userRepository.find();
  }

  async create(createUserDto: CreateUserDto): Promise<User> {
    const user = this.userRepository.create(createUserDto);
    return this.userRepository.save(user);
  }
}

// users/users.controller.ts
import { Controller, Get, Post, Body } from '@nestjs/common';
import { UsersService } from './users.service';
import { CreateUserDto } from './dto/create-user.dto';

@Controller('users')
export class UsersController {
  constructor(private readonly usersService: UsersService) {}

  @Get()
  findAll() {
    return this.usersService.findAll();
  }

  @Post()
  create(@Body() createUserDto: CreateUserDto) {
    return this.usersService.create(createUserDto);
  }
}

The folder structure mirrors the module boundaries. Every feature module is self-contained, which makes large codebases navigable — you always know where to look for a given piece of logic.

src/
  users/
    dto/
      create-user.dto.ts
    user.entity.ts
    users.controller.ts
    users.service.ts
    users.module.ts
  app.module.ts
  main.ts

The structural similarity between Spring Boot and NestJS is not accidental. NestJS was explicitly designed to bring enterprise Java patterns to the TypeScript ecosystem. Developers moving between the two frameworks find the concepts familiar — only the syntax changes.

Performance

Performance comparisons between Spring Boot and NestJS are less straightforward than they appear, because the two frameworks have fundamentally different runtime models.

Spring Boot: JVM Throughput

Spring Boot runs on the JVM, which has two well-known characteristics: slow startup and excellent sustained throughput. A typical Spring Boot application takes 5-30 seconds to start, depending on the number of auto-configurations and beans. Once running, the JIT compiler optimizes hot code paths aggressively, and throughput under load is consistently strong.

For CPU-bound workloads and high-concurrency scenarios with thread-per-request models, Spring Boot on a tuned JVM performs exceptionally well. Spring WebFlux (the reactive alternative to the default Spring MVC) uses Project Reactor to provide a non-blocking, event-driven model similar to Node.js — but with JVM throughput characteristics.

Memory footprint is the tradeoff. A production Spring Boot application typically needs 256-512 MB of heap memory as a baseline, before serving any traffic. GraalVM native compilation is changing this — native Spring Boot images start in milliseconds and use a fraction of the heap — but native builds add build complexity and reduce some runtime flexibility.

NestJS: Node.js Event Loop

NestJS runs on Node.js, which uses a single-threaded event loop for I/O. Startup is fast — typically under two seconds — and memory usage is lower at rest. For I/O-bound workloads (database queries, HTTP calls to external APIs, file reads), Node.js handles high concurrency efficiently without the overhead of OS threads.

The single-threaded model is the constraint. CPU-intensive operations block the event loop and degrade response times for all concurrent requests. NestJS applications that need CPU-bound processing should offload that work to worker threads or separate services.

For typical REST API workloads — receive a request, query a database, return a response — NestJS and Spring Boot deliver comparable throughput per instance. The practical performance difference in most applications is negligible compared to database query time and network latency.

Enterprise Features

This is where Spring Boot's advantage over NestJS is most significant. The Spring ecosystem has twenty years of development behind it. Spring Security, Spring Cloud, Spring Data, and Spring Batch cover enterprise requirements that NestJS is still building toward.

Spring Boot: A Complete Enterprise Platform

Spring Security handles authentication, authorization, OAuth2, SAML, LDAP, and method-level security in a single integrated library. Securing an endpoint requires a single annotation:

@PreAuthorize("hasRole('ADMIN')")
@GetMapping("/admin/users")
public List<User> getAllUsers() {
    return userService.findAll();
}

Spring Cloud provides the building blocks for distributed systems: service discovery (Eureka), API gateway (Spring Cloud Gateway), circuit breakers (Resilience4j), distributed configuration (Spring Cloud Config), and distributed tracing (Micrometer with Zipkin or Jaeger). These components are designed to work together and are extensively documented.

Spring Data eliminates boilerplate for data access across relational databases, NoSQL stores, and search engines. A repository interface with zero implementation code generates SQL queries from method names:

public interface UserRepository extends JpaRepository<User, Long> {
    List<User> findByEmailAndActiveTrue(String email);
    Page<User> findByCreatedAtAfter(Instant date, Pageable pageable);
    @Query("SELECT u FROM User u WHERE u.department.name = :dept")
    List<User> findByDepartmentName(@Param("dept") String department);
}

Spring Data JPA generates the queries at startup. The method name convention covers most use cases; the @Query annotation handles complex ones. Migrations are handled separately via Flyway or Liquibase, which integrate cleanly with Spring Boot's auto-configuration.

NestJS: A Growing but Smaller Ecosystem

NestJS takes a different approach to enterprise features: it integrates with the existing Node.js ecosystem rather than building everything internally. Authentication uses Passport.js via @nestjs/passport. The platform provides modules for Swagger, GraphQL, WebSockets, microservices, and caching, but these are thinner wrappers around established libraries rather than ground-up implementations.

// Passport JWT authentication in NestJS
import { Injectable } from '@nestjs/common';
import { PassportStrategy } from '@nestjs/passport';
import { ExtractJwt, Strategy } from 'passport-jwt';

@Injectable()
export class JwtStrategy extends PassportStrategy(Strategy) {
  constructor() {
    super({
      jwtFromRequest: ExtractJwt.fromAuthHeaderAsBearerToken(),
      ignoreExpiration: false,
      secretOrKey: process.env.JWT_SECRET,
    });
  }

  async validate(payload: { sub: number; email: string }) {
    return { userId: payload.sub, email: payload.email };
  }
}

The integration pattern is clean and it works well. But compared to Spring Security's depth — method-level annotations, role hierarchies, ACL support, reactive security — Passport-based auth in NestJS requires more manual implementation for advanced scenarios.

For microservices, NestJS includes a transport layer that supports Redis, NATS, Kafka, RabbitMQ, and gRPC out of the box. The API is consistent across transports, which makes switching message brokers straightforward. This is one area where NestJS's built-in support is strong.

// NestJS microservice with Kafka transport
@Controller()
export class OrdersController {
  @MessagePattern('order.created')
  handleOrderCreated(@Payload() data: OrderCreatedEvent) {
    return this.ordersService.processOrder(data);
  }

  @EventPattern('payment.completed')
  handlePaymentCompleted(@Payload() data: PaymentEvent) {
    this.ordersService.fulfillOrder(data.orderId);
  }
}

Deployment on Out Plane

Both Spring Boot and NestJS deploy via Docker on Out Plane. The platform handles containerization, routing, SSL, and scaling — you connect a repository and click deploy.

Spring Boot on Out Plane

Spring Boot requires Java 17+ and produces a self-contained JAR with an embedded Tomcat server. A multi-stage Dockerfile keeps the final image lean:

# Build stage
FROM maven:3.9-eclipse-temurin-17 AS builder
WORKDIR /app
COPY pom.xml .
RUN mvn dependency:go-offline
COPY src ./src
RUN mvn package -DskipTests

# Runtime stage
FROM eclipse-temurin:17-jre-alpine
WORKDIR /app
COPY --from=builder /app/target/*.jar app.jar
EXPOSE 8080
ENTRYPOINT ["sh", "-c", "java $JAVA_OPTS -jar app.jar"]

Set the JAVA_OPTS environment variable to configure JVM heap size:

JAVA_OPTS=-Xms256m -Xmx512m -XX:+UseG1GC
SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=prod

NestJS on Out Plane

NestJS requires Node.js 20+ and compiles TypeScript to JavaScript at build time. A multi-stage Dockerfile separates the build from the runtime:

# Build stage
FROM node:20-alpine AS builder
WORKDIR /app
COPY package.json package-lock.json* ./
RUN npm ci
COPY . .
RUN npm run build

# Production stage
FROM node:20-alpine
WORKDIR /app
ENV NODE_ENV=production
COPY package.json package-lock.json* ./
RUN npm ci --omit=dev
COPY --from=builder /app/dist ./dist
EXPOSE 8080
CMD ["node", "dist/main.js"]

Both frameworks pick up environment variables from the Out Plane console. Managed PostgreSQL instances connect via DATABASE_URL with no additional configuration.

For detailed deployment walkthroughs:

• How to deploy a Spring Boot application on Out Plane
• How to deploy a NestJS application on Out Plane

When to Choose Spring Boot

Spring Boot is the right choice when:

• Your team knows Java. The steepest cost in adopting Spring Boot is not learning the framework — it is learning Java well. If your team already has Java expertise, Spring Boot is the most productive path to production-grade APIs.
• You are building for the enterprise. Spring Security, Spring Cloud, and the broader Spring ecosystem cover compliance-heavy, distributed, and large-scale application requirements that NestJS cannot match today.
• You need Spring Data. The repository pattern and query generation in Spring Data JPA reduce data access boilerplate significantly. For complex domain models with many entities and relationships, this saves substantial development time.
• Throughput under sustained load matters. JVM throughput under sustained concurrent load is excellent. CPU-intensive workloads benefit from true multi-threading.
• You are integrating with an existing Java codebase. If the organization already runs Java services, Spring Boot fits naturally. Shared libraries, internal tooling, and deployment pipelines are already Java-compatible.
• Long-term maintainability is a priority. Spring Boot's conventions and the size of its community mean that any Java developer can navigate a Spring Boot codebase without a steep orientation period.

When to Choose NestJS

NestJS is the right choice when:

• Your team is TypeScript-first. If your frontend is React, Vue, or Angular, your team already knows TypeScript. NestJS eliminates the context switch of moving between JavaScript and Java. Full-stack teams can share types, DTOs, and validation logic across the frontend and backend.
• You are building microservices with a JavaScript stack. NestJS's built-in transport layer for Kafka, RabbitMQ, Redis, and gRPC is production-ready and well-documented. For teams already using Node.js-based services, adding NestJS microservices is a natural extension.
• Faster development cycles matter more than deep ecosystem coverage. NestJS bootstraps quickly. The CLI generates modules, controllers, and services with a single command. For startups and teams iterating rapidly, the lower ceremony of NestJS versus Spring Boot can meaningfully accelerate delivery.
• You need GraphQL. @nestjs/graphql with code-first schema generation integrates tightly with the NestJS decorator system. Defining a GraphQL type is a matter of adding decorators to a class — the schema generates automatically.

// GraphQL type definition in NestJS (code-first)
import { ObjectType, Field, ID } from '@nestjs/graphql';

@ObjectType()
export class User {
  @Field(() => ID)
  id: number;

  @Field()
  name: string;

  @Field()
  email: string;

  @Field({ nullable: true })
  avatarUrl?: string;
}

• Startup time matters for your deployment model. Serverless functions and container-based autoscaling benefit from fast cold starts. NestJS starts in under two seconds. Spring Boot's 5-30 second startup is a real constraint in scale-to-zero deployments (though GraalVM native images address this).
• You want a familiar structure without Java. Developers who have worked with Angular will recognize NestJS immediately. The module system, decorators, and DI patterns are the same concepts applied to the backend. The learning curve is shorter than Spring Boot for anyone coming from the JavaScript ecosystem.

Summary

Spring Boot and NestJS solve the same problem with the same patterns but in different ecosystems. Choosing between them is primarily a decision about language, team, and the depth of enterprise tooling you need.

Spring Boot is the safer choice for large-scale enterprise applications, teams with Java expertise, and projects that need the full depth of the Spring ecosystem. The JVM's performance characteristics, Spring Security's breadth, and Spring Data's productivity advantages are genuine.

NestJS is the better choice for TypeScript teams, full-stack JavaScript organizations, and projects where development speed and ecosystem familiarity matter more than enterprise feature coverage. Its built-in microservice transport layer, GraphQL support, and familiar Angular-inspired architecture make it a strong option for modern API development.

Both are production-ready. Both have active communities. Both deploy cleanly on Out Plane with no infrastructure management.

Ready to deploy? Follow the step-by-step guide for your framework: Spring Boot deployment guide | NestJS deployment guide. Get started with Out Plane.