--- title: Backbone.js Reviews meta\_title: 'Backbone.js Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta\_description: Filter 37 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Backbone.js works for a business like yours. aggregate\_rating: rating\_value: 4.0 review\_count: 37 scale: '5' date\_modified: '2026-08-09' parent\_category: name: Web Frameworks url: https://www.g2.com/categories/web-frameworks --- # Backbone.js Reviews & Product Details Backbone.js gives structure to web applications by providing models with key-value binding and custom events, collections with a rich API of enumerable functions, views with declarative event handling, and connects it all to your existing API over a RESTful JSON interface. * * * Seller [DocumentCloud](https://www.g2.com/sellers/documentcloud) Discussions [Backbone.js Community](https://www.g2.com/products/backbone-js/discuss) Solution Type Best-of-Breed Show More ## Value at a Glance Averages based on real user reviews. ### Perceived Cost $$$$$ [ View More Pricing Information ](https://www.g2.com/products/backbone-js/pricing) ## Top-Rated Alternatives [ ![Express.js](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Express.js") Express.js 4.5/5(132) ](https://www.g2.com/products/express-js/reviews) [ ![Essential Studio](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Essential Studio") Essential Studio 4.5/5(797) ](https://www.g2.com/products/essential-studio/reviews) [ ![Progress Kendo UI](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Progress Kendo UI") Progress Kendo UI 4.4/5(257) ](https://www.g2.com/products/progress-kendo-ui/reviews) [ View All Alternatives ](https://www.g2.com/products/backbone-js/competitors/alternatives) ## User Insights Average based on 37 real user reviews. Perceived Cost $$$$$ [Log in to unlock pricing and user insights](/login) ![Yatish H.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Yatish H.") YH Yatish H. Software Engineer Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 9/22/2023 "An excellent MVC framework for frontend development" 3.5/5 What do you like best about Backbone.js? - Modularity - Backbone.js has a modular approach to code and makes it easy to manage different parts of the application independently, leading to cleaner and more maintainable code. - Backbone.js does not impose rigid structure on your code and this is valuable at times - Seamless integration with rest APIs Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Backbone.js? - Initial learning curve is high especially for beginners - Sometimes I felt that the flexibility it provides also to ends up in creating inconsistent code/architercture Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Backbone.js solving and how is that benefiting you? It helps us build frontend application with MVC arhcitecture. It also helps us maintain code since frontend code can get quite messy if improper conventions are followed. We prmarily use backbone to render dashboards to customers in my team Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Verified User in Education Management](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Education Management") UE Verified User in Education Management Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 7/6/2023 "Nice small javascript library for building great JS applications" 4/5 What do you like best about Backbone.js? Small filesize Flexible and can be customized easily Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Backbone.js? Forces the application in a specific way of design Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Backbone.js solving and how is that benefiting you? Simple small and customizable framework for JS development Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Luiz Gonzaga d.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Luiz Gonzaga d.") LD Luiz Gonzaga d. Senior Software Developer Internet Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) 5/15/2016 "Simple, flexible and fast" 3.5/5 What do you like best about Backbone.js? It's easy to get up and running and to be productive with it. You can actually read it's entire codebase in less than one day. It's very flexible and unopinionated but of course that means you end up writing more code than frameworks like Angular, Ember, etc. It's a very mature, battle tested, project with plenty of support over the internet. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Backbone.js? The counterpart of being too flexible is that you have to write many boilerplate code in order to accomplish day-to-day tasks. Also, I don't like it's dependency on jQuery and Underscore. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering Backbone.js: You might consider using the plugin called Marionette. It adds to Backbone where the latter leaves too open. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Backbone.js solving and how is that benefiting you? I'm a software developer and have worked in big products from small and big companies and they both used Backbone and proved to be very successful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Khaliq G.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Khaliq G.") KG Khaliq G. Lead Developer Internet Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 3/20/2016 "Backbone user and abuser" 3.5/5 What do you like best about Backbone.js? Backbone allows for quite a bit of flexibility but still gives you enough structure so that you won't hang yourself. It isn't too opinionated so you can still implement things how you want but it allows you to get some convenience methods and helpers to quickly bootstrap a project. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Backbone.js? Sometimes I want it to do more. Because it does allow for so much freedom, it often feels like there actually isn't much there to the framework. Especially when comparing to other frameworks and tools out there that do quite a bit. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering Backbone.js: Backbone is easy and pleasant to work with. The documentation is straight forward and clear. There are quite a few Stack Overflow posts about it so the support and ability to get questions answered is there. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Backbone.js solving and how is that benefiting you? Making single page apps, dealign with REST APIs, and building out various website features. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Anna K.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Anna K.") AK Anna K. Web Developer Engineer Computer Software Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) 2/28/2016 Business partner of the seller or seller's competitor, not included in G2 scores. "Great for fast prototyping" 4/5 What do you like best about Backbone.js? It's simple & lightweight compared to the other leading JavaScript libraries/frameworks such as AngularJs, EmberJs or even ReactJs. Easy to understand and start writing the app in the same day. I use it for prototyping while test tasks at the interviews or pet projects. Backbone plays well with the other JS libraries and tools out there. Definitely, love their implementation of models/collections. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Backbone.js? I prefer declarative programming style over imperative that BackboneJS provides. Sometimes, one-way data-binding isn't enough so this will require a little bit more setup on dev side. It's relatively old(by JS-world criteria) and I've not heard about any major releases recently. Since it's a library and not a fully functional framework, I can see potential problems with scaling for larger apps. I heard it leads to memory leaks. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Backbone.js solving and how is that benefiting you? I was working on SPA for online publishing service. Benefits: - easy routing - reliable/fast data-binding - unit testing with qUnit and Jasmine was developer friendly Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Raju M.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Raju M.") RM Raju M. Freelance Web Developer Information Technology and Services Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 2/25/2016 "Good framework especially if you like working with jQuery" 3.5/5 What do you like best about Backbone.js? The concept of models and collections are fun to use. Initially they were a little difficult to comprehend but very powerful once mastered. Also, backbone was one of the first frameworks to introduce data binding and it's really wonderful when mixed with MongoDb for a RESTFUL application. Though there are many MV frameworks out there, Backbone is one that doesn't complicate things. I like Backbone because of the ease of use when working with jQuery plugins. Other frameworks don't recommend using jQuery with them but jQuery is one of the dependencies of Backbone. Backbone also has Marrionette which is another framework on top of Backbone, it provides more complex features like Region management and Memory management for large scale applications. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Backbone.js? Somewhat steep learning curve ( in my case as it was the first MVV framework I was learning). Also, backbone has too many dependencies which brings up the size of your Javascript file which will in turn affect the performance of your application. If you don't have a RESTFUL backend, you will have to spend more time configuring things. Also, looking at the activity on it's Github page, it looks like Backbone will slowly stop being relevant with the growing popularity of React and Angular. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering Backbone.js: I likw uaing backbone because its more compatible with jquery and its plugins and jquery isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Backbone.js solving and how is that benefiting you? The ability to maintain seperate layers of code makes the code more manageable. Also in terms of performance, backbone seems to do it better than angular. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More 2/26/2016 Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Yi W.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Yi W.") YW Yi W. Software Engineer Internet Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) 2/24/2016 "Best part is the model - collection" 3.5/5 What do you like best about Backbone.js? Comparing to React.js and Angular.js, the best part of backbone is how they combine model and collection to the views. Data changes in model will be automatically updated in the view, which saves lots of time for developer to regenerate the view. The AJAX call methods of model and collection also saves time. You don't need to write AJAX calls to get data, instead, just call save(), fetch()...etc. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Backbone.js? Backbone provide too much freedom for developers. There could be hundreds of develop patterns in backbone. People may use backbone in completely different ways. Some framework, eg. Marionette, helps to solve this problem. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering Backbone.js: If you are implementing complex applications, you can try React, it provides better state controls than backbone Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Backbone.js solving and how is that benefiting you? I am providing the dashboard of a CDN service. Despite backbone, I also use React.js to develop some other types of website. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Thiago O.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Thiago O.") TO Thiago O. Frontend Developer Design Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 2/25/2016 Business partner of the seller or seller's competitor, not included in G2 scores. "I worked with Backbone in a large scale e-commerce website" 4/5 What do you like best about Backbone.js? The fact that it's not very opinionated. It gives a lot of freedom to the programmer to decide what's the best architecture he wants to use. Also, the fact that the framework size is very small in terms of bytes, especially for mobile phones, that's a big plus, it loads very fast. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Backbone.js? Rendering is a very manual process. I know it could be my fault, but I feel sometimes the app re-renders to much. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering Backbone.js: Read the docs! They are very good! And much better than some blogposts out there. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Backbone.js solving and how is that benefiting you? The website where I was working on (bloomingdales.com) was going trough a big refactoring, where we dropped JSP, and started a new implementation in Backbone. There were about five teams making this transition, and the fact that Backbone is a very small and non opinionated framework, made it easier to work in parallel, because we could ship this 'partial' modules independent of the other teams. I guess if we used Ember for instance, it wouldn't be possible to do it this way. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Verified User in Computer Software](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Computer Software") UC Verified User in Computer Software Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 2/25/2016 "Production Level Framework" 4/5 What do you like best about Backbone.js? The minimalist approach that Backbone takes. It is lightweight but still allows for modularity of code. It is also fairly easy to learn and get a decent grasp on but still allows for complex applications. The documentation is also excellent and is very in depth for how small the footprint is. One of my favorite parts is how easy it is to get off the ground running with an application. You can have one built and working within an hour. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Backbone.js? My biggest gripe is also one of its biggest assets. Because it is a lightweight framework it provides lots of extend-ability, but it does not restrict anything. So for someone who is learning how to use Backbone there is no real right or wrong way. That sometimes allow for bad habits to be formed. There are quite a few guides and tutorials online from independent developers, but I would like to see a more in depth one from/ on Backbone itself. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering Backbone.js: It is a great framework to start learning on and allow you to be creative. Unlike Angular it does not force you to write code in as much of a particular way which is good and bad. It is also very to get an app off the ground. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Backbone.js solving and how is that benefiting you? Building tools for a web application. Because it allows for flexibility I am able to extend Backbone and create my own tailor made framework that is able to handle a specific problem the way I need it to. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Daniel T.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Daniel T.") DT Daniel T. Front End Developer Design Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 2/24/2016 "Easy to get started very extendable." 4/5 What do you like best about Backbone.js? Backbone gets out of your way and lets you write your application how you want to. Great for when you're working on a project solo or a small team. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Backbone.js? The best thing is also sometimes the worst. Depending on the project you may need more structure and some more robust guidelines on how to structure the project, this is usually the case when working with teams. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering Backbone.js: Do some test projects first. Do lots of planning. Define your models and have some data ready for when you start pulling it into your templates. Again planning is really key here. Defining your models collections and templates before you get started is very important. Read the source code. It's not very long and gives you a good understanding of how the framework/ library works. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Backbone.js solving and how is that benefiting you? Mostly Backbone to me is useful for routeing and the ability to swap out templates with data on the fly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ## Questions about Backbone.js? 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