# GWT - Google Web Toolkit Reviews **Vendor:** Google **Category:** [Other Web Frameworks Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/other-web-frameworks) **Average Rating:** 3.4/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 15 ## About GWT - Google Web Toolkit GWT is a development toolkit for building and optimizing complex browser-based applications. Its goal is to enable productive development of high-performance web applications without the developer having to be an expert in browser quirks, XMLHttpRequest, and JavaScript. GWT is used by many products at Google, including AdWords, AdSense, Flights, Hotel Finder, Offers, Wallet, Blogger. It’s open source, completely free, and used by thousands of developers around the world. ## GWT - Google Web Toolkit Reviews ### 1. GWT is perfect for Java developers looking to create rich UIs **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Biotechnology | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 16, 2021 **What do you like best about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** It is very easy to create complex user interfaces using Java almost exclusively. **What do you dislike about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** It doesn't give you the same flexibility as you'd get if using JavaScript. **What problems is GWT - Google Web Toolkit solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our staff is backend heavy so GWT allows us to develop quickly while understaffed. ### 2. Open source, helpful to optimize complex web apps and increase performance rate of productivity. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mohit K. | Software Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 22, 2020 **What do you like best about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** It is really helpful to optimize web based applications smartly and higher the rate of productivity. As it is completely free so anyone can easily use them. Any developer don't need to be too expert in js, http-requests, as it provides all. **What do you dislike about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** Um nothing for now. Because i was trying this from a few days ago and helps me too. **Recommendations to others considering GWT - Google Web Toolkit:** It is really understandable technology, which helps to maintain all possible requirements of any web based application. It increases the performance and optimize your app. **What problems is GWT - Google Web Toolkit solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps to maintain my j-scripts in web-app. As it support java, it helps me to create high performance AJAX applications and write frontend in java. ### 3. A nice approach for a 2010 application, a bad toolkit for a modern website **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alexandre R. | Senior Software Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 20, 2020 **What do you like best about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** GWT did a very nice work on automating and making it easier to develop web-applications that did not reload much and seamlessly loaded data and updates in the background. It was the toolkit of choice to develop Google Gmail, Blogger, Inbox and many other apps. It was created on 2006 and Google maintained it until 2012. The toolkit was a very strong option by then. **What do you dislike about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** Unfortunately the project lost Google support on 2012, it went open-source, but still there are no new releases since 2017. That means that it is by 2020 3-years outdated and with accumulated bugs. Other than that fact, modern HTML 5, CCS 3 and HTTP/2 technologies are far superior to the benefits that GWT brings to a project. The toolkit makes the web-pages bloated with very hard to debug embedded Javascript, the compiling time is long and the toolkit is not easy to setup anymore. **Recommendations to others considering GWT - Google Web Toolkit:** I don't recommend using an outdated, not supported technology. Google stopped using and supporting it for a reason, there are better options nowadays. I recommend looking to Google supported technologies, by the year 2020, like Angular and Vue. **What problems is GWT - Google Web Toolkit solving and how is that benefiting you?** The GTW toolkit was used to create responsive and interactive websites without the need to reload the pages. It was easy to use by then (2008-2012) but the only other option was doing everything by hand or using jQuery or Microsoft Atlas Ajax technologies. So GWT was the most powerful and transparent Ajax solution by then. ### 4. Out Standing Experience **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Srinu N. | Sr. SEO Specialist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 04, 2020 **What do you like best about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** Very easy to write and maintain code in Google Web Toolkit. **What do you dislike about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** Everything is fine, nothing dislike about google web toolkit. **What problems is GWT - Google Web Toolkit solving and how is that benefiting you?** writing and maintain code in Google Web Toolkit is very much easy. ### 5. Very good experience with GWT to use it **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Naveen B. | Senior Software Engineering, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 25, 2020 **What do you like best about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** Very easy to use and integration with code. **What do you dislike about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** Very good feature for web application and technology support. **What problems is GWT - Google Web Toolkit solving and how is that benefiting you?** Yeah there are few manual things which need to be automatically like configuration of path in terms of java technology. ### 6. Have used GWT in a lot of projects either directly or within a framework. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Government Administration | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 29, 2020 **What do you like best about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** Using Java to generate JavaScript running on the browser. Ease of mixing JavaScript and Java code. The JavaScript generated is performant ready for production use. Ease in communication with the server. **What do you dislike about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** The time to compile code as project grows. **What problems is GWT - Google Web Toolkit solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is possible to generate front end JavaScript code only by using Java. It is possible to run performant JavaScript user interfaces locally at the client. ### 7. It was interesting at the beggining, now we have new frameworks. **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Guillermo S. | Web Developer, Computer Software, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 02, 2019 **What do you like best about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** If you use Java then you are good to go Code can be reusable + all the facilities come along with java When the application becomes larger the code will be easy to maintain Handle the browser compatibility Java is strongly typed and hence most coding problems get caught during compile time itself. Powerful IDEs like Eclipse are popular for Java and allow very quick coding, shortcuts, refactoring, and code analysis. Optimized JavaScript. The compiler inlines the methods, removes dead code, and minifies it. Further, the code is split into separate JavaScript files, and hence the application can load gradually as you visit new screens. Management of static resources. Referring static resources such as CSS and images in code requires explicit declaration in the Java code. It allows for a clean separation and also allows to easily locate the resource usage. Eclipse users, think using Ctrl+Shift+G to determine where all is an image referred in code! Has an inbuilt structure for server side component as well. That too comes with a super-optimized serialization for object transmission. Coders do not need to work on JSON – server and client talk classes and objects. And it still allows putting in your own serialization strategy, your own server-side components. **What do you dislike about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** You will loose control on your javascript Need lots of memory to run it in dev mode High compile time Every server call will be ajax Browser plugin required for development. The browser plugin was not being maintained to work with newer browser versions. This discouraged its adoption. Every change in the client side code required a recompilation. Coders were used to the speedy change-refresh-check method. Compilation slowed things down. UI look and feel. Though the initial version was great for its time, the look and feel did not move with time. Evolution of the toolkit itself slowed down. **Recommendations to others considering GWT - Google Web Toolkit:** Some people believe that GTW is dead, they should have a louder impact on the dev community. It is a shame that this framework is not more recognized . **What problems is GWT - Google Web Toolkit solving and how is that benefiting you?** Has an inbuilt structure for server side component as well. That too comes with a super-optimized serialization for object transmission. Coders do not need to work on JSON – server and client talk classes and objects. And it still allows putting in your own serialization strategy, your own server-side components. ### 8. Helps in designing better look and feel (UI) product **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Anand K. | Senior Software Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 09, 2020 **What do you like best about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** Very easy to design the UI. Validation was really easy. Easy to create reusable components. Cross browser components MVC based **What do you dislike about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** Slowness - Due to compilation of java code to javascript **Recommendations to others considering GWT - Google Web Toolkit:** Yes I would be recommending **What problems is GWT - Google Web Toolkit solving and how is that benefiting you?** Instead of building components from scratch, GWT can be used to design complex components ex table grid with sorting, index, filter It's easy for java developer since team member are much more confident on java Asynchronous APIs ### 9. GWT best for building web application **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Santosh R. | DEVELOPER, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 20, 2019 **What do you like best about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** GWT Web Toolkit is an open-source set of tools that allows web developers to create and maintain complex JavaScript front-end applications in Java.GWT is used by many products at Google, including Google AdWords.GWT is an open source, completely free. You can create highly responsive web applications with heavy lifting on the client-side and reduced chattiness with the server-side. **What do you dislike about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** GWT is not fun to work with. After all, it is Java and Java is not a fun language to work with. If you add the fact that entire layouts and custom controls should be created in java, you can easily make a grown programmer cry. It is hard to add some useful native Javascript features. **Recommendations to others considering GWT - Google Web Toolkit:** GWT is an open source toolkit. Use it for a web application.GWT is building and optimizing complex browser-based applications. **What problems is GWT - Google Web Toolkit solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used this framework to build a web application. I'm a Java programmer and I learned to use GWT in a few days. ### 10. Awesome Web Dev framework **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Airlines/Aviation | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 12, 2019 **What do you like best about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** Optimized and obfuscated JS. Java style client code **What do you dislike about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** Lack of mobile support and bootstrap compatibility **Recommendations to others considering GWT - Google Web Toolkit:** If you need a rich interactive website for use on Desktops, I highly recommend GWT. If it's used on Mobile Phones, think of other frameworks **What problems is GWT - Google Web Toolkit solving and how is that benefiting you?** Meet rich GUI needs of Aviation Industry ### 11. GWT at Webalo sites **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sherif W. | Software Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2019 **What do you like best about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** You don't need to dig into javascript but you can easily write Java code which is translated to javascript directly. **What do you dislike about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** Some limitations happens when you need to modify in some javascript scope elements for example you can't do directly from java. Sometimes need native methods. **Recommendations to others considering GWT - Google Web Toolkit:** If you don't need advanced JS technologies and depending on Java developers GWT is very good. **What problems is GWT - Google Web Toolkit solving and how is that benefiting you?** Webalo have 2 websites the web user agent and the administrative website. We can write a common Java code while using GWT elements for the web elements easily with Java. ### 12. Once innovative **Rating:** 2.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 26, 2018 **What do you like best about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** When it was released back in the days it was innovative and pretty much the only approach for back-end developers write front-end code, but after single page application revolution the complexity and speed of this framework looks like a joke. **What do you dislike about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** It's slow, require browser extension for debugging. Big learning curve. Google shut down the project at 2017 so no more support from their side, only community updates. **Recommendations to others considering GWT - Google Web Toolkit:** Would not recommend to anyone who stars new project in 2018. Google closed the project at 2017 and only the power of community keeps it alive. Nevertheless if you have legacy code to support it's not that bad. It has everything needed to have a good single page app that still could compete with a whales like Angular or React. **What problems is GWT - Google Web Toolkit solving and how is that benefiting you?** Single page application architecture. Strict types. Java syntax and support of huge java ecosystem. Ability to write java script inside Java. ### 13. Google Web Toolkit **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Banking | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 19, 2019 **What do you like best about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** You can write your program in javascript in order to execute in any place. **What do you dislike about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** The code that you execute is not the one you write. It is transcompiled. **Recommendations to others considering GWT - Google Web Toolkit:** Just Javascript **What problems is GWT - Google Web Toolkit solving and how is that benefiting you?** Improves performance and development costs ### 14. Great framework for large applications and small teams **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 29, 2018 **What do you like best about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** Able to develop both server and client side code in one language. Easier for individual developers to program on all parts of the application . **What do you dislike about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** Solutions are more verbose than other frameworks. Implementing normal JavaScript in the application is harder to debug and implement. **What problems is GWT - Google Web Toolkit solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easier to port over older java applications into GWT. ### 15. Easy way to build web application **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 05, 2017 **What do you like best about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** Can easily introduces Java programmers to web application world. It allows you to build front-end and back-end with a single programming language. **What do you dislike about GWT - Google Web Toolkit?** It's hard to add some useful native Javascript features. On the front-end layer you are forced to not use reflection and generics Java features. **Recommendations to others considering GWT - Google Web Toolkit:** Use it for web application **What problems is GWT - Google Web Toolkit solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used this framework to build a web application. I'm a Java programmer and I learned to use GWT in few days. ## GWT - Google Web Toolkit Discussions - [What are the advantages of GWT?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-are-the-advantages-of-gwt) - [Which is not a key feature of GWT?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/which-is-not-a-key-feature-of-gwt) - [What is Google Web Toolkit used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-google-web-toolkit-used-for) - [Is GWT dead?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-gwt-dead) - [What is the best tool to optimize transactions possibilities related to any server side tool ?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/32758-what-is-the-best-tool-to-optimize-transactions-possibilities-related-to-any-server-side-tool) - 1 upvote - [View GWT - Google Web Toolkit pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/gwt-google-web-toolkit/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-30+01%3A04%3A52+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=b20ab325-f222-4e9a-8921-b226ab0c78d3&secure%5Btoken%5D=ea499731826b43d18deb5c939cd870e96ae6a46738be09a1768745f222490340&format=llm_user) ## Top GWT - Google Web Toolkit Alternatives - [Material Design for Bootstrap](https://www.g2.com/products/material-design-for-bootstrap/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (23 reviews) - [IHP](https://www.g2.com/products/ihp/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (175 reviews) - [Ruby on Rails](https://www.g2.com/products/ruby-on-rails/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (73 reviews)