If you’re wondering which framework, Django or Laravel, to use for your project, this article is for you. Django is a Python framework, and Laravel is written in PHP. According to the Python Developer Survey 2019, Django is one of the most popular Python web frameworks. According to the PHP framework comparison, Laravel is the most popular web framework written in PHP.

To help you make an informed decision on whether to hire a PHP or python development company, we’ll outline the advantages, disadvantages, and similarities of both frameworks and consider success stories.

What are Django and Laravel?

Django is a free Python web framework that follows the model-template-view (MTV) architectural pattern. It was created in the fall of 2003. Django is influenced by several earlier frameworks like Zope and Plone. For its part, Django has inspired the development of lots of other frameworks such as Pyramid, CherryPy, Bottle, and Web2py. Django was built to simplify the website creation process. It focuses on reusable components, less code, and rapid development.

Laravel is a free PHP web framework, intended for the development of web applications following the model–view–controller (MVC) architectural pattern. Laravel is a web application framework with an expressive, elegant syntax. The creators of this framework believe that development must be an enjoyable and creative experience to be truly fulfilling. Laravel attempts to simplify common tasks used in the majority of web projects.

Django vs. Laravel: similarities and differences

What’s common?

Both frameworks are used for web application development and have wide-range communities. If you have trouble in writing code, somebody will help you. Also, both are full-stack frameworks that support the cross-platform approach and high scalability. Laravel and Django are accessible, yet powerful, providing the tools needed for large, robust applications. An expressive migration system and a properly integrated unit testing support give you the tools you need to build any application.

What’s different?

Here is the list of key differences between Django and Laravel:

• Laravel provides the ability of dependency injection, application architecture, and MVC model, whereas Django is suitable for fast development. It is easy to learn and has great packages and libraries.
• Laravel has the only HTTP middleware whereas, Django has a huge amount of middleware.
• Django has a lot of built-ins like decorators, SEO tools, and third-party packages. whereas Laravel has fewer features and contains dependency injection.
• Django has high scalability (the capability of the system to handle a growing amount of work), whereas Laravel has limited support for high scalability.
• Django has an easy-to-use admin panel that can be activated with several lines of code. The admin panel allows you to authenticate as a superuser and manipulate (basically perform CRUD operations) with registered models. Laravel, in this case, does not come with a built-in admin panel, but you can use third-parties or create own library from scratch.

Django vs. Laravel: advantages and disadvantages

Each framework has advantages and disadvantages. We’ll compare Django and Laravel based on the learning curve, performance, and security to find out which framework is the best option for your project.

Learning curve

If you know Python well, learning Django won’t be a big deal for you. Django is programmer-friendly, and it won’t take much time to learn it. Even though Laravel has a steeper learning curve, the docs are good, and it won’t be difficult to learn the framework or master the PHP language.

Performance

Laravel and Django were both tested in 2018 for JSON serialization. Since Python is a little bit faster than PHP, Django won with a huge advantage. Django performed 68,000 JSON responses per second, whereas Laravel’s result was 8,000 responses per second.

Security

The Internet has many pitfalls that we should pay attention to. Frameworks take care of users by preventing attacks such as cross-site scripting or SQL injection. Django takes security risks more seriously than Laravel. Django helps programmers avoid common security mistakes by implementing a built-in package. The package has the tools to protect the application from attacks and vulnerabilities.

API

Laravel offers developers built-in support for building API. Django doesn’t have this feature. However, developers can make use of a library and, eventually, implement the same feature.

Community

Communities of both frameworks are active, responsive, and with many GitHub contributors. This means that whenever developers get stuck, they can find a Django or Laravel community member to get them out.

Code

Have a look at Laravel’s code. It is often referred to as rather intuitive.

Source: hackr.io

Now check out Django’s code. It may look very complicated. This can be explained by the use of regular expressions in the routing system, which are not easy things to use when you are a beginner. However, expert developers know that in reality, this code is neat and well-organized.

Source: docs.djangoproject.com

Success stories of using Django and Laravel

There are many sites that use Django. Since this framework is easy to scale and provides the ability to process huge amounts of data in real-time, the major Django users are sites with high traffic demands. You can read about the most popular Django projects: Instagram, Spotify, The Washington Post, DropBox, Mozilla, and Pinterest.

There is also a list of the most popular sites built with Laravel. According to Codecondo, the best sites that use Laravel are Deltanet Travel, Neighborhood Lender, MyRank, World Walking, etc.

Which one to choose?

If you know Python, go with Django. Those with expertise in PHP should choose Laravel. However, there are pros and cons to using both frameworks. Django is faster than Laravel and has an easier learning curve. PHP has fewer built-ins and provides an ability to use dependency injection. Based on this, Django is recommended for high-load applications and projects that require the possibility of scaling. And Laravel is a perfect match for mid-sized projects with customization requirements.

Wrapping up

Well, we’ve shared our ideas on both frameworks and hope that you will choose the most suitable one for your project. If you have any questions, the Steelkiwi team will be happy to help you. Expertise in Django and Laravel will allow us to give you exhaustive answers to any questions.