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Play Framework

Place
#1 of 31
Score
7.5
Play Framework's website

The facts below are what the maker publishes about Play Framework, checked and dated. Our editors have not written about it yet.

Plans and prices

From Play Framework's own pricing page, checked 15 Oct 2026.

All about pricing
PlanPriceWhat it gives you
Play Framework open-source softwareFreeCommunity-supported framework · self-hosted deployment · Free and open source under Apache 2.0

The facts

Each one read from Play Framework's own pages, with the date it was checked.

What it does

Architecture
Play uses a lightweight, stateless architecture built on Pekko Streams for reactive scaling and predictable resource use.checked 15 Oct 2026
Built-in web stack
Play includes an HTTP server, form handling, CSRF protection, routing and internationalization support.checked 15 Oct 2026
Cloud integrations
Official deployment documentation covers Heroku, Cloud Foundry, Clever Cloud, CloudCaptain and AWS.checked 15 Oct 2026
Community support
Support channels include the Discuss forum, Discord and Stack Overflow; the project page reports more than 17,000 Stack Overflow questions.checked 15 Oct 2026
Current stewardship
The GitHub repository identifies Play as community maintained and records Lightbend copyright for 2011–2021 contributions.checked 15 Oct 2026
Database integrations
Play is database-agnostic and documents out-of-the-box use of Anorm, Slick and JPA, while allowing other ORMs and NoSQL systems.checked 15 Oct 2026
Documentation depth
Official tutorials provide Java and Scala examples for REST APIs, uploads, forms, JPA, Slick, WebSockets, streaming, dependency injection, sessions and TLS.checked 15 Oct 2026
Extensibility
Play applications can add features through modules, and the project documents module creation for both Scala and Java.checked 15 Oct 2026
Java and Scala APIs
Separate Java and Scala APIs are provided, with Java packages under play and Scala packages under play.api.checked 15 Oct 2026
Licence
The Play Framework source code is released under the Apache 2 license.checked 15 Oct 2026
Limit: compatibility and plugins
A G2 reviewer reports poor backward compatibility, weaker plugin support than Grails and difficulty setting up integration tests.checked 15 Oct 2026
Limit: documentation and ecosystem
G2 reviewers complain that documentation can be insufficient or version-specific and that Play is less popular than Spring, reducing readily available answers.checked 15 Oct 2026
Limit: sbt performance
G2 reviewers report confusing sbt tooling, slow Scala or sbt builds and slow dependency resolution that can pull in many dependencies.checked 15 Oct 2026
MVC
The framework follows a Model-View-Controller approach with concise functional programming patterns.checked 15 Oct 2026
Praise: asynchronous and scalable systems
G2 reviewers praise asynchronous design, Akka integration, streaming and suitability for REST microservices and scalable applications.checked 15 Oct 2026
Praise: developer productivity
G2 reviewers repeatedly praise simple setup, hot reloading, fast development and easy debugging.checked 15 Oct 2026
Praise: Java and Scala support
G2 reviewers value having both Java and Scala DSLs and using Play as a modern JVM web framework.checked 15 Oct 2026
Project creation
New Java or Scala applications can be generated with sbt and the official play-java-seed.g8 or play-scala-seed.g8 templates.checked 15 Oct 2026
Rating on G2
4.1 out of 5 from 13 reviewschecked 15 Oct 2026
Rating on TrustRadius
0 out of 10 from 0 reviewschecked 15 Oct 2026
Release status
The releases page lists Play 3.0.11, dated May 21, 2026, as a current 3.0 release.checked 15 Oct 2026
REST client
Play WS supplies asynchronous HTTP calls through WSClient and can be used with HTTP caching implementations such as Ehcache or Caffeine.checked 15 Oct 2026
Runtime requirements
Play requires Java LTS 11, 17 or 21 and recommends the latest sbt launcher.checked 15 Oct 2026

The company

Company history
LinkedIn Engineering says Play was created at Zenexity in 2007 and opened to the community in 2009.checked 15 Oct 2026

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