Comparisons

There are a multitude of ways to build web applications, each with its strengths and weaknesses.

In this page, we compare Mighty to other similar solutions, showcasing different tradeoffs depending on your use case.

This isn’t necessarily a “Mighty vs. X” situation; as you will see, some of these solutions can actually be paired with Mighty to improve developer experience!

Astro itself

Let’s first address the elephant in the room: why not just use Astro?

While Astro prerenders all pages by default, it can be configured to render pages on-demand on the server, making it a full-stack framework.

Astro’s developer experience is fantastic, and depending on your use case, you might just want to build your backend on top of it.

However, there are some limitations in Astro’s model:

Astro is limited to building JavaScript/TypeScript backends, as it is a JavaScript framework.
To use a backend built in another language, you’ll have to build an API to interface with your Astro application.
You’re also bound to Astro’s project structure, and all its decisions regarding file-based routing, middleware design, etc.

Of course, these limitations might not matter if your use case fits Astro’s model, in which case you might not need Mighty!

But if the above sounds like a dealbreaker, or if you want the freedom to use any backend without fussing around with APIs, Mighty is a great choice.

Inertia.js

Inertia.js allows you to build a modern Single-Page App (SPA) on top of your backend, without having to implement APIs or client-side routing.

In this sense, it’s very similar to what Mighty is trying to do, and Inertia.js is in fact a big inspiration for Mighty!

There are some important differences between the two projects:

Inertia.js is designed for SPAs (be they server- or client-rendered), while Mighty helps you build Multi-Page Apps (MPAs).
Inertia.js supports a wide range of backends, while Mighty currently has official support for Laravel and Hono (for now!).
Given its MPA nature, Mighty is more deeply integrated with the backend, letting you use backend context (e.g. user info) on the Astro side.

Depending on your requirements, you might opt for Inertia.js to build an interaction-rich SPA app!

You might want to consider Mighty if your app doesn’t require fine-grained interactions everywhere, or if you prefer to avoid having a UI framework take over your entire page.

Laravel-specific solutions

Blade

Blade is Laravel’s built-in, battle-tested, and feature-rich templating engine.

Blade is similar to Astro as it is mainly used to build MPAs, and it can perfectly meet your needs, especially when coupled with a lightweight JavaScript library like Alpine.js.

On the other hand, if you want both Astro’s unmatched developer experience on the frontend and Laravel’s batteries-included approach, Mighty helps bridge the gap between them.

Mighty can also be used alongside Blade, with the ability to render Astro components inside your Blade views.

Livewire

Livewire is a full-stack framework for Laravel for building dynamic interfaces in PHP, with no or little JavaScript required.

Livewire builds on top of Blade and Alpine.js to deliver a reactive, SPA-like experience, while Mighty is more geared for building MPAs.

If your use case requires you to build in PHP as much as possible, Livewire is an excellent choice!

Alternatively, if you prefer to leverage Astro’s great developer experience, you might want to consider Mighty.

Since Livewire uses Blade, you can use Mighty alongside Livewire, with the ability to render Astro components inside your Livewire components.

Mingle.js

Mingle.js is a library that allows you to use React/Vue components in Livewire.

This is similar to Mighty’s support for Livewire, though Mighty supports more UI frameworks out of the box, including Svelte, SolidJS, and Angular.

Mingle.js includes support for using Livewire directives inside React/Vue components, a feature not yet implemented in Mighty.

Hybridly

Hybridly is an alternative to Inertia.js, built using Laravel and Vue.

Compared to Inertia.js, Hybridly puts emphasis on end-to-end type safety, as well as providing common building blocks such as headless dialogs and tables, filtering and more.

As a developer experience focused library, Mighty aims to provide a similar level of type safety as Hybridly.

Fusion

Fusion was a project aiming to unite a Vue frontend and a Laravel backend in the same Single-File Component file.

<php>
  // Define a prop in PHP
  $name = prop(Auth::user()->name);
</php>

<template>
  <!-- Use it in Vue! -->
  Hello {{ name }}!
</template>

Fusion, while very appealing and ambitious, failed to gain traction and was put on hold for a variety of reasons:

Confusion regarding the execution model; some people thought Fusion executed PHP code inside of Vue, which was not the case
Lack of support for React and other frameworks
Lack of interest from the community; Fusion was built on top of Inertia.js, which meant it was not doing much more than what Inertia.js was doing

Mighty is in a unique position to solve most or all of these concerns, with potential support for far more frameworks than Fusion ever did.

This is our current stance on the matter:

We will be implementing file-based routing and some version of frontend-backend colocation in the future, with support for more frameworks than Fusion.
We might not implement same-file colocation support, as this might lead to confusion on where code actually executes