StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Microframeworks
  4. Microframeworks
  5. ExpressJS vs Sinatra

ExpressJS vs Sinatra

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Sinatra
Sinatra
Stacks1.1K
Followers502
Votes212
GitHub Stars12.4K
Forks2.1K
ExpressJS
ExpressJS
Stacks35.1K
Followers24.0K
Votes1.6K

ExpressJS vs Sinatra: What are the differences?

Introduction

ExpressJS and Sinatra are both lightweight web application frameworks commonly used for building web applications. However, they have key differences that differentiate them in terms of their design and functionality.

  1. Language Compatibility: ExpressJS is primarily used with Node.js, whereas Sinatra is specific to Ruby. This means that developers proficient in JavaScript would favor ExpressJS, while those well-versed in Ruby would prefer Sinatra.

  2. Community Support and Ecosystem: ExpressJS has a larger and more active community compared to Sinatra, offering a wide range of plugins, middleware, and resources. Sinatra, on the other hand, has a smaller but dedicated community focused on maintaining simplicity and minimalism.

  3. Routing System: ExpressJS uses a more flexible and powerful routing system, allowing for complex routing scenarios such as middleware handling, parameter handling, and route chaining. Sinatra, while efficient for simple routes, may not be as versatile for more intricate routing needs.

  4. Middleware Support: ExpressJS has robust middleware support, making it easier to plug in additional functionality such as authentication, logging, and error handling. Sinatra, while having middleware support, may not provide as extensive options as ExpressJS.

  5. Template Engine Integration: ExpressJS offers built-in support for various template engines such as EJS, Pug, and Handlebars, allowing for easy integration and rendering of dynamic content. Sinatra, on the other hand, may require additional setup and configuration for template engine integration.

  6. RESTful API Development: ExpressJS is well-suited for building RESTful APIs with features like routing, middleware, and HTTP request handling built-in. Sinatra, while capable of creating APIs, may require more manual setup and configuration for handling API-specific requirements.

In Summary, ExpressJS and Sinatra differ in language compatibility, community support, routing system, middleware support, template engine integration, and RESTful API development capabilities.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Advice on Sinatra, ExpressJS

Tony
Tony

Oct 21, 2020

Review

I personally like using a wholly JS stack, with TypeORM + MySql/Postgres over MongoDb + Mongoose because TypeOrm's Typescript support is much stronger. After developing large projects with Typescript, there is no going back to regular javascript (typings help catch a LOT of errors / maintains data structure !)

Sticking with a javascript stack will allow you to share certain aspects of your application between front and backend. For example: one particularly common feature is to validate API call data and form entry data. Both of these are the same data shape typically (aside from pagination, metadata, etc), and can benefit from a single schema for validation. I use Yup to define this schema, then in the front and back end I can utilize this definition instead of rewriting the same logic in two different languages.

Same goes for certain utility functions such as data structure typings, decryption, encryption, sanitizing inputs, formatting of data, and other utilities. No point of writing these in two languages when both frontend and backend will use them. It will also help reduce developer work load, due to less tests / code to work with.

The only thing you must ensure in your import chain the frontend never imports any secret variables or sensitive logic used by the backend, as that will get bundled into your application. All shared imports should be individual modules

If you want to go one step further, next.js is basically create react app with server side rendering (SSR). This would allow you to skip the annoying step of configuring separate backend and frontend build tools. Might be worth exploring depending on your skill level.

812 views812
Comments
septblast
septblast

Oct 14, 2021

Review

You must have gone through multiple thoughts on how to handle the requirement, but the biggest problem that I am able to see here is a dependency on a certain platform for executing Powershell scripts. Next is being a developer will never suggest having Powershell or bash as a backend of your system until it is related to some IoT Stuff. In place of it, I would rather suggest you use Infrastructure as a Code that comes with terraform or Ansible or as your application is based on Azure so u can use Azure Resource Manager too.

Adding to it for making config or attaching a trigger to these infrastructure controllers, you can use lightweight stateful APIs with the help of flask or express or go-mux, to keep track on the progress of deployments.

2.54k views2.54k
Comments
tornike
tornike

Feb 5, 2022

Review

Hi

I am new here . . . but for backend - I assume you implement it with NodeJS - maybe you could give try to FeathersJS Server? I have used it previously for my PHD project. It comes with support of dozens of databases. You do not need to worry about database scripts and connection routines, FeathersJS abstracts all of this for you. It implements connection with database using services. These services conform with CRUD philosophy which obviously you can customize based on your needs.

This server is well documented.

Also authors of this server claim that you will be able to deliver production grade app within days and from my experience I can say that this is true. This server should be good choice for beginner

Good luck!

76 views76
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Sinatra
Sinatra
ExpressJS
ExpressJS

Sinatra is a DSL for quickly creating web applications in Ruby with minimal effort.

Express is a minimal and flexible node.js web application framework, providing a robust set of features for building single and multi-page, and hybrid web applications.

-
Robust routing;HTTP helpers (redirection, caching, etc);View system supporting 14+ template engines;Content negotiation;Focus on high performance;Executable for generating applications quickly;High test coverage
Statistics
GitHub Stars
12.4K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
2.1K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
1.1K
Stacks
35.1K
Followers
502
Followers
24.0K
Votes
212
Votes
1.6K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 65
    Lightweight
  • 50
    Simple
  • 35
    Open source
  • 20
    Ruby
  • 13
    Great ecosystem of tools
Pros
  • 381
    Simple
  • 336
    Node.js
  • 244
    Javascript
  • 193
    High performance
  • 152
    Robust routing
Cons
  • 27
    Not python
  • 17
    Overrated
  • 14
    No multithreading
  • 9
    Javascript
  • 5
    Not fast
Integrations
Ruby
Ruby
Padrino
Padrino
Node.js
Node.js

What are some alternatives to Sinatra, ExpressJS?

Django REST framework

Django REST framework

It is a powerful and flexible toolkit that makes it easy to build Web APIs.

Sails.js

Sails.js

Sails is designed to mimic the MVC pattern of frameworks like Ruby on Rails, but with support for the requirements of modern apps: data-driven APIs with scalable, service-oriented architecture.

Lumen

Lumen

Laravel Lumen is a stunningly fast PHP micro-framework for building web applications with expressive, elegant syntax. We believe development must be an enjoyable, creative experience to be truly fulfilling. Lumen attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as routing, database abstraction, queueing, and caching.

Slim

Slim

Slim is easy to use for both beginners and professionals. Slim favors cleanliness over terseness and common cases over edge cases. Its interface is simple, intuitive, and extensively documented — both online and in the code itself.

Fastify

Fastify

Fastify is a web framework highly focused on speed and low overhead. It is inspired from Hapi and Express and as far as we know, it is one of the fastest web frameworks in town. Use Fastify can increase your throughput up to 100%.

Falcon

Falcon

Falcon is a minimalist WSGI library for building speedy web APIs and app backends. We like to think of Falcon as the Dieter Rams of web frameworks.

hapi

hapi

hapi is a simple to use configuration-centric framework with built-in support for input validation, caching, authentication, and other essential facilities for building web applications and services.

TypeORM

TypeORM

It supports both Active Record and Data Mapper patterns, unlike all other JavaScript ORMs currently in existence, which means you can write high quality, loosely coupled, scalable, maintainable applications the most productive way.

FeathersJS

FeathersJS

Feathers is a real-time, micro-service web framework for NodeJS that gives you control over your data via RESTful resources, sockets and flexible plug-ins.

Flask

Flask

Flask is intended for getting started very quickly and was developed with best intentions in mind.

Related Comparisons

Bootstrap
Materialize

Bootstrap vs Materialize

Laravel
Django

Django vs Laravel vs Node.js

Bootstrap
Foundation

Bootstrap vs Foundation vs Material UI

Node.js
Spring Boot

Node.js vs Spring-Boot

Liquibase
Flyway

Flyway vs Liquibase