Spring Boot vs Quarkus: JVM Framework Compared
Spring Boot is the dominant JVM framework with a vast ecosystem; Quarkus is a cloud-native framework optimized for fast startup, low memory, and GraalVM native images.
Spring Boot offers an enormous ecosystem, conventions, and integrations, making it the default for most Java services. Quarkus is built for containers and serverless - fast boot, low memory, and first-class GraalVM native compilation - while keeping a familiar developer experience. The trade is ecosystem breadth versus cloud-native startup and footprint.
| Spring Boot | Quarkus | |
|---|---|---|
| Ecosystem | Vast | Growing, focused |
| Startup time | Slower (JVM) | Fast (esp. native) |
| Memory footprint | Higher | Low |
| Native image | Via Spring Native | First-class (GraalVM) |
| Best for | Broad enterprise apps | Containers / serverless |
In CI
Both build with Maven or Gradle and test with JUnit. Quarkus native-image builds are much slower in CI but yield fast, small runtime artifacts - cache the build and consider building native only on release. Cache the Maven/Gradle dependency cache for both. Choose by whether cold-start and footprint matter.
Speed it up
Cache the Maven/Gradle dependency cache and build cache between runs. Both build on CI runners; faster managed runners help a lot with the slow Quarkus native-image step.
The verdict
Want the broadest ecosystem and conventions for enterprise apps: Spring Boot. Want fast startup, low memory, and native images for containers/serverless: Quarkus. Spring Boot for breadth, Quarkus for cloud-native footprint.