Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

ember.js VS Backbone.js

Compare ember.js VS Backbone.js and see what are their differences

ember.js logo ember.js

A JavaScript framework for creating ambitious web apps

Backbone.js logo Backbone.js

Give your JS App some Backbone with Models, Views, Collections, and Events
  • ember.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-15
  • Backbone.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30

ember.js features and specs

  • Convention Over Configuration
    Ember.js emphasizes conventions, which can help streamline the development process and reduce decision fatigue by providing out-of-the-box solutions and standardizing code structure.
  • Robust CLI
    Ember CLI is a powerful command-line tool that helps automate numerous development tasks, such as scaffolding, building, testing, and deploying applications, making the developer's workflow more efficient.
  • EMBER Data
    Ember Data is a robust library for handling data models and relationships. It simplifies the process of interacting with APIs and managing data, offering built-in support for RESTful APIs.
  • Strong Community and Ecosystem
    Ember.js has a strong and active community, which results in extensive documentation, numerous addons, and regular updates, enhancing the framework's reliability and feature set.
  • Two-Way Data Binding
    Ember.js supports two-way data binding, which helps keep the model and the view in sync automatically. This feature simplifies the management of user input and model updates.
  • Built-in Testing
    Ember.js has built-in testing support, making it easier to write and run tests for applications. This facilitates the development of robust, maintainable, and bug-free code.
  • Focused on Large Applications
    Ember.js is particularly well-suited for ambitious, large-scale applications due to its structure and built-in best practices, which promote maintainability and scalability.

Possible disadvantages of ember.js

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Ember.js has a significant learning curve, particularly for developers who are new to its conventions and deep abstractions. This can be a barrier to entry for some.
  • Performance Overhead
    The comprehensive nature of Ember.js can lead to performance overhead, especially for smaller applications. The framework's rich feature set may be more than what is needed for simpler projects.
  • Less Flexibility
    The convention-over-configuration approach can reduce flexibility and make it harder to deviate from the prescribed way of doing things, which can be restrictive for developers who need more control.
  • Heavy Dependencies
    Ember.js applications can come with numerous dependencies, which can increase the bundle size and, subsequently, the load time of the application.
  • Slow to Adapt New Trends
    Being a mature framework, Ember.js can be slower to adopt the latest web development trends compared to newer frameworks, leading to potential lag in leveraging cutting-edge features.
  • Complexity in Customization
    While conventions can be beneficial, scenarios that require custom configurations can become complex and cumbersome, potentially complicating the development process.
  • Smaller Talent Pool
    Compared to more mainstream frameworks like React or Angular, there is a smaller pool of developers who are proficient in Ember.js, which can make hiring and collaboration more challenging.

Backbone.js features and specs

  • Lightweight
    Backbone.js is minimal and lightweight, which means it has a small footprint and adds very little overhead to your project.
  • Flexibility
    Backbone.js provides a flexible structure to developers by allowing them to build their own MVC or MVP architectures using models, views, collections, and routers.
  • Ease of Integration
    Backbone.js can be easily integrated with other libraries and frameworks, such as jQuery or underscore.js, enhancing its capabilities without much difficulty.
  • Large Community
    Backbone.js has been around for a long time, resulting in a large community and a plethora of plugins and extensions that can be leveraged.
  • Detailed Documentation
    The official site offers comprehensive documentation which includes tutorials, examples, and a detailed API reference, aiding developers to understand and utilize the library efficiently.

Possible disadvantages of Backbone.js

  • Steeper Learning Curve
    New developers might find Backbone.js difficult to learn due to its non-opinionated nature and lack of enforced structure.
  • Sparse In-Built Features
    Backbone.js provides only the basic building blocks, requiring developers to write more boilerplate code or rely on external libraries for additional functionalities.
  • Outdated
    As newer frameworks and libraries (like React, Vue, and Angular) have emerged with more robust features and better performance, Backbone.js has somewhat fallen out of favor in modern development practices.
  • Event Binding Complexity
    Managing event bindings in Backbone.js can become complex and sometimes messy in large applications, which can lead to difficult maintenance and debugging.
  • Limited Two-Way Data Binding
    Backbone.js does not provide two-way data binding out-of-the-box, unlike other frameworks such as Angular, necessitating additional code to sync views and models.

Analysis of ember.js

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Ember.js is considered a good choice for developing ambitious web applications, particularly when the project benefits from a strong structure and standardized patterns.

Why this product is good

  • Ember.js is a robust JavaScript framework known for its convention over configuration philosophy, which speeds up development by providing built-in best practices and tools. It features a powerful command-line interface, two-way data binding, and an integrated router, making it particularly adept at creating scalable single-page applications. Additionally, Ember.js supports a vibrant community and a comprehensive ecosystem of plugins and add-ons, reducing the need to reinvent the wheel for common tasks.

Recommended for

  • Developers and teams building large-scale or complex web applications
  • Projects that require long-term maintenance and stability
  • Teams that benefit from a strong convention-driven approach
  • Applications that need real-time data updates and dynamic interfaces

ember.js videos

What is Ember.js?

More videos:

  • Review - A preview of Ember.js Octane

Backbone.js videos

Introduction to Backbone.js

More videos:

  • Review - Introduction to Backbone.js
  • Review - Backbone.js Code Review w Backbone.js Mentor Jonathon

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to ember.js and Backbone.js)
Javascript UI Libraries
53 53%
47% 47
JavaScript Framework
51 51%
49% 49
JS Library
57 57%
43% 43
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare ember.js and Backbone.js

ember.js Reviews

Top JavaScript Frameworks in 2025
Ember.JS is an open-source, JavaScript client-side framework that is useful for developing web applications. It provides a complete solution containing data management and application flow to develop an application, making it one of the reasons developers prefer to use it. Ember.JS also uses an MVVM architecture pattern along with a command-line interface tool that helps in...
Source: solguruz.com
20 Next.js Alternatives Worth Considering
Ember.js is old school cool, a framework that’s been whispering sweet nothings to devs for years, helping build ambitious web applications. It wraps its arms around conventions and provides everything you need to build rich, complex web UIs.
The 20 Best Laravel Alternatives for Web Development
Ember.js — the ambitious framework that promises a developer heaven, paving your road to productivity with a convention-over-configuration dogma and a solidly structured path.
9 Best JavaScript Frameworks to Use in 2023
Ember.js: Ember.js provides a lot of built-in features and conventions, making it easy to get started and build complex applications. It has a strong focus on developer productivity.
Source: ninetailed.io
JavaScript: What Are The Most Used Frameworks For This Language?
In addition, it offers a powerful command-line interface (CLI) that can generate boilerplate code and automate common tasks, making it easier to get started and build applications quickly. With a strong focus on performance, Ember.JS provides features like fast initial page loads, incremental rendering and advanced caching mechanisms.
Source: www.bocasay.com

Backbone.js Reviews

20 Next.js Alternatives Worth Considering
A veteran on the scene, Backbone.js is all about giving structure to your JavaScript-heavy applications. It’s standing the test of time, enabling you to keep your data logic and display logic neatly side by side, all while being lightweight.
9 Best JavaScript Frameworks to Use in 2023
Backbone.js is based on the Model View Controller (MVC) design pattern. The library supports seven components: Models, Views, Collections, Routers, Events, Sync, and Options. Backbone.js also provides an asynchronous communication layer that allows the application to communicate with a backend service.
Source: ninetailed.io
JavaScript: What Are The Most Used Frameworks For This Language?
Backbone.JS is a lightweight JavaScript library that provides a framework for developing structured and scalable web applications. It offers a set of tools for building client-side applications that interact with RESTful APIs. Backbone.JS is well-suited for developing single-page applications (SPAs) where most of the user interface is rendered in the browser, rather than...
Source: www.bocasay.com
20 Best JavaScript Frameworks For 2023
Backbone.js is a JavaScript-based framework that connects to an API via a RESTful JSON interface. Backbone.js is known for being small and light because it only requires jQuery and one JavaScript library, Underscore.js, to use the entire library.
Top JavaScript Frameworks For Mobile App Development
Backbone JS is a JavaScript framework based on the MVP app design. As the name suggests, it acts as a strong backbone to your project. It is lightweight in nature and hence, is considered ideal for developing single-page applications. It offers a simplistic frontend and makes the best use of JavaScript functions.
Source: medium.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, ember.js should be more popular than Backbone.js. It has been mentiond 33 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

ember.js mentions (33)

  • Thinking in Templates
    Django, for example, has a template engine that allows you to define a template in HTML and render it with a context -- data usually sourced from the database via the Django view. However, with its filters and helpers, it is almost too powerful -- undermining the core idea of templating. The same goes for Ember.js, as well. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Embroider & Vite & net::ERR_ABORTED 504 (Outdated Optimize Dep)
    While working on EmberJS projects, I've been using pre-alpha version of @embroider/app-blueprint quite a lot lately and I hit a baffling error:. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • ResponsiveImage & EmberJS & glob vite imports
    I had a need to dynamically load a folder images in my EmberJS app that is using embroider-build/app-blueprint and ResponsiveImage. Turns out I could use vite glob imports and resulting code looked something like:. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Installing EmberJS v2 addons from GitHub forks using PNPM
    If you're using PNPM as a package manager for your EmberJS project and you find yourself in a need to install a v2 addon from git(hub) fork (because you have a branch with patched version), then you might find that GitHub URLs in package.json tricks don't work for you. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Add custom layer to embe-leaflet
    Ember-leaflet is a very popular addon from EmberJS ecosystem that allows a lot of flexibility. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
View more

Backbone.js mentions (17)

  • JavaScript Views, the Hard Way – A Pattern for Writing UI
    Https://backbonejs.org/#View There is also a github repo that has examples of MVC patterns adapted to the web platform. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • JavaScript evolution: From Lodash and Underscore to vanilla
    Underscore was created by Jeremy Ashkenas (the creator of Backbone.js) in 2009 to provide a set of utility functions that JavaScript lacked at the time. It was also created to work with Backbone.js, but it slowly became a favorite among developers who needed utility functions that they could just call and get stuff done with without having to worry about the inner implementations and browser compatibility. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • React is 10 years old
    Got it thanks for the context. I've read the web app and it seems to me it is just https://backbonejs.org/ re-written in Typescript and allows JSX. I'm very certain Typescript and JSX will have improved the DX for Backbone like apps, but it doesn't address all of the other issues that teams had with Backbone. e.g. Cyclical event propagation, state stored in the DOM (i.e. Appendchild is error prone in large code... - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • Just Simply – Stop saying how simple things are in our docs
    Even further nowadays, docs are created using Docusaurus. I don't have problem with it but documentation should be good (eye) friendly than easy to write. Why not be creative while writing docs such as - Backbone.js - https://backbonejs.org Or https://backbonejs.org/docs/backbone.html as code annotation. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • The Emperor's New Library
    What we see, a decade ago, are that many of the "popular" libraries, frameworks, and methods, not surprisingly, have gone by the wayside, a lot that have remained in current code as difficult-to-removemodernize legacy cruft (Bower, Gulp, Grunt, Backbone, Angular 1, ...), and then we have the small minority that are still here. Some that remain have had their utility lessened/questioned by platform and language... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing ember.js and Backbone.js, you can also consider the following products

AngularJS - AngularJS lets you extend HTML vocabulary for your application. The resulting environment is extraordinarily expressive, readable, and quick to develop.

Vue.js - Reactive Components for Modern Web Interfaces

ExpressJS - Sinatra inspired web development framework for node.js -- insanely fast, flexible, and simple

React - A JavaScript library for building user interfaces

Svelte - Cybernetically enhanced web apps

Chart.js - Easy, object oriented client side graphs for designers and developers.