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IBM Open Liberty vs Spring Boot comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Open Liberty
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Application Server (8th)
Spring Boot
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
Java Frameworks (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

IBM Open Liberty and Spring Boot aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. IBM Open Liberty is designed for Application Server and holds a mindshare of 1.2%.
Spring Boot, on the other hand, focuses on Java Frameworks, holds 40.1% mindshare, down 42.7% since last year.
Application Server
Java Frameworks
 

Q&A Highlights

PA
Aug 20, 2023
 

Featured Reviews

FV
Scalable solution with efficient monitoring features
We use the solution to develop microservices for financial organizations The solution has the best monitoring features. The solution's feature for distributed transaction management could be better. Also, its login feature needs improvement as well. The solution is much more stable compared to…
RajuGottupalli - PeerSpot reviewer
Minimizes a lot of coding, improves the time to market, and is easily deployable and configurable
Spring Boot is a bounded framework. The services we develop are purely synchronous services, so there's a blocking and waiting state. This is a big problem in microservices. To avoid this problem, we have to make the service a reactive session. It has to be reactive to a particular load, particular condition, or based on the number of requests hitting the particular service. All these factors make the service a reactor. There's another module in which Spring Boot provides spring reflex. This module enables the reactiveness of the service, meaning that it eliminates the blocking and waiting state. For example, if you're sending a get operation or a post operation, there won't be any waiting for it to actually hit that particular network to get the data from another service. It continuously flows the request, and there is a zero waiting pack. Vert.x is another good framework where there are similar features or similar benefits with having a reactive session. Spring Boot is a license resource, so it's a framework where we can customize our solution or a particular requirement to build a good solution using Spring Boot. But it's an opinionated framework, meaning that it's completely bounded. You have only one direction to find a solution, whereas Vert.x is an unopinionated framework. Unopinionated is a kind of a toolkit where you can have more optimization and a more flexible solution, which is suitable to your requirements. In Spring Boot, the opportunities are limited. With Vert.x and other programming tools, we have multiple options to explore the solution in a different way and achieve a nonfunctional requirement of thousands transactions in a second. Spring Boot might not support this kind of non-functional requirement. Vert.X is a very good solution to solve critical NFRs for a particular application.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It is a stable solution compared to other vendors."
"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...The initial setup was not complex and was a simple process."
"This solution is really user friendly. In terms of prototyping, it's really fast to build the applications we want to test to complete a proof of concept."
"The simplicity is excellent."
"Features that help with monitoring and tracking network calls between several micro services."
"The configuration setup in Spring Boot is pretty simplified compared to Hibernate ORM."
"It gives you confidence in a readily available platform."
"This is a stable solution that is being used in the HR space."
"Spring Boot's configuration is easy, and it has an out-of-the-box deployment."
 

Cons

"Its support documentation could have detailed information on database integration."
"We'd like them to develop more supporting testing."
"The tool's documentation could be improved, especially by tying it back to frequently asked questions and issues users have. A feedback loop in which the documentation targets the most commonly asked user questions would make using the solution easier. Essentially, I want a more user-centered approach to documentation rather than a purely technical focus."
"This is a really good solution for me and I can't think of anything that can be improved."
"If you want to create large microservices applications, you need to connect several applications and services to each other. It is very complicated, and Spring Boot does not have an integrated solution for it."
"The cloud packaging is not very straightforward."
"We have specific algorithms for our Load Balancer or API gateway. So those things, if they could make it more precise, that would be beneficial. Sometimes when we are under pressure or any new person who looks into that stuff, we'll get confused or scared because of some difficulties in understanding Which algorithm needs to be used to implement a Load Balancer. When when we Yeah. Because when we say circuit breaker, we need to use it, and then the user gets a blank circuit breaker. This means we are saying the circuit breaker needs to be moved, and then that circuit breaker needs to be elaborated more. What type of algorithm should I do, and what exactly do I need to get done so that this circuit breaker can help me to resolve my issue? Because, you know, because if you go for the circuit breaker, it will ask to open the new tab, you know, since it will check. If the service is not responding, it will wait and go for another connection. So in similar words, if they can explain it a bit more, that will be helpful. Everyone could do their own Google stuff, and they will get it, but they need help understanding how this could help them to resolve the issue. It will be good if Spring Boot provides information about real-time use cases."
"Spring Boot could improve the interface, error handling, and integration performance."
"The product could be improved by supporting and integrating Hadoop."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is less costly than one of its competitors."
"It's open-source software, so it's free. It's a community license."
"The solution is free."
"Spring Boot is free; even the Spring Tools Suite for Eclipse is free."
"This is an open-source product."
"Spring Boot is an open source solution, it is free to use."
"Spring Boot is an open-source solution."
"This solution is free unless you apply for support."
"Spring Boot is open source. It's a free tool and free framework."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
52%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Insurance Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which solution do you prefer: Spring Boot or Open Liberty?
Sometimes, Open Liberty is preferred over Spring Boot because Open Liberty is lightweight, scalable, and secure. It is also a good choice for microservices because it supports a wide range of deplo...
What do you like most about Open Liberty?
It is a stable solution compared to other vendors.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Open Liberty?
The solution is expensive but worth the investment as it has integration capabilities to manage the overall components. However, it is less costly compared to Spring Boot.
What do you like most about Spring Boot?
1. Open Source2. Excellent Community Support -- Widely used across different projects -- so your search for answers would be easy and almost certain.3. Extendable Stack with a wide array of availab...
Which is better - Spring Boot or Eclipse MicroProfile?
Springboot is a Java-based solution that is very popular and easy to use. You can use it to build applications quickly and confidently. Springboot has a very large, helpful learning community, whic...
Which is better - Spring Boot or Jakarta EE?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Spring Boot or Jakarta EE application creation software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Spring Boot. Spring Boot offe...
 

Comparisons

 

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