Feature comparison

The following comparisons are not an exhaustive list of features, and may be inaccurate or out of date, but represent a good starting point for investigation. If something is not correct, please create an issue or submit a patch.

Before diving into our comparisons below, we highly suggest reading monorepo.tools for a deeper insight into monorepos and available tooling. Although moon is not included, it's a great resource for learning about the current state of things and the ecosystem.

info

Looking to migrate from Nx or Turborepo to moon? Use our moon ext migrate-nx or moon ext migrate-turborepo commands for a (somewhat) seamless migration!

Unique features

Although moon is still in its infancy, we provide an array of powerful features that other frontend centric task runners do not, such as...

• Integrated toolchain - moon manages its own version of programming languages and dependency managers behind the scenes, so that every task is executed with the exact same version, across all machines.
• Task inheritance - Instead of defining the same tasks (lint, test, etc) over and over again for every project in the monorepo, moon supports a task inheritance model where it only needs to be defined once at the top-level. Projects can then merge with, exclude, or override if need be.
• Continuous integration - By default, all moon tasks will run in CI, as we want to encourage every facet of a project or repository to be continually tested and verified. This can be turned off on a per-task basis.

Curious to learn more? Check out the "Why use moon?" or "Features" sections for more information, or these wonderful articles provided by the community:

• A review of moon + Packemon by azu
• Improve repo management with moon by James Sinkala

Comparison

Turborepo

At a high-level, Turborepo and moon seem very similar as they both claim to be task runners. They both support incremental builds, content/smart hashing, local and remote caching¹, parallel execution, and everything else you'd expect from a task runner. But that's where the similarities stop, because in the end, Turborepo is nothing more than a package.json scripts orchestrator with a caching layer. While moon also supports this, it aims to be far more with a heavy focus on the developer experience.

In the next section, we'll be talking about a few key areas that we deem important to consumers. If you'd prefer a more granular comparison, jump down to the comparison tables.

Configuration

Turborepo only supports the Node.js ecosystem, so implicitly uses a conventions based approach. It provides very little to no configuration for customizing Turborepo to your needs.

moon is language agnostic, with initial support for Node.js and its ecosystem. Because of this, moon provides a ton of configuration for customizing moon to your needs. It prefers a configuration over conventions approach, as every repository is different.

Projects

Turborepo infers projects from `package.json` workspaces, and does not support non-JavaScript based projects.

moon requires projects to be defined in `.moon/workspace.yml`, and supports any programming language².

Tasks

Turborepo requires `package.json` scripts to be defined for every project. This results in the same scripts being repeated constantly.

moon avoids this overhead by using [task inheritance](#unique-features). No more repitition.

CI

Each pipeline in `turbo.json` must be individually ran as a step in CI. Scripts not configured as pipeline tasks are never ran.

moon runs every task automatically using `moon ci`, which also supports parallelism/sharding.

Long-term

Turborepo is in the process of being rewritten in Rust, with its codebase being shared and coupled with the new Turbopack library, a Rust based bundler. Outside of this, there are no publicly available plans for Turborepo's future.

moon plans to be so much more than a task runner, with one such facet being a repository management tool. This includes code ownership, dependency management and auditing, repository linting, in-repo secrets, and anything else we deem viable. We also plan to support additional languages as first-class citizens within our toolchain.

1. Turborepo remote caching is powered by Vercel. moon provides its own paid service.

2. moon projects may run commands for any language, but not all languages are supported in the toolchain.

Lerna

Lerna was a fantastic tool that helped the JavaScript ecosystem grow and excelled at package versioning and publishing (and still does), but it offered a very rudimentary task runner. While Lerna was able to run scripts in parallel, it wasn't the most efficient, as it did not support caching, hashing, or performant scheduling.

However, the reason Lerna is not compared in-depth, is that Lerna was unowned and unmaintained for quite some time, and has recently fallen under the Nx umbrella. Lerna is basically Nx lite now.

Comparison tables

🟩 Supported

🟨 Partially supported

🟦 Similarly supported

🟥 Not supported

Workspace

	moon (11)	nx (11)	turborepo (8)
Core/CLI written in	Rust	Node.js & Rust (for hot paths)	Rust / Go
Plugins written in	WASM (any compatible language)	TypeScript	🟥
Workspace configured with	.moon/workspace.yml	nx.json	turbo.json
Project list configured in	.moon/workspace.yml	workspace.json / package.json workspaces	package.json workspaces
Repo / folder structure	loose	loose	loose
Ignore file support	🟩  via hasher.ignorePatterns	🟩  .nxignore	🟩  via --ignore
Supports dependencies inherited by all tasks	🟩  via implicitDeps	🟩  via targetDefaults	🟥
Supports inputs inherited by all tasks	🟩  via implicitInputs	🟩  via implicitDependencies	🟩  via globalDependencies
Supports tasks inherited by all projects	🟩	🟩  via plugins	🟥
Integrates with a version control system	🟩  git	🟩  git	🟩  git
Supports scaffolding / generators	🟩	🟩	🟩

Toolchain

	moon (6)	nx (2)	turborepo (2)
Supported languages in task runner	All languages available on PATH	All languages via plugins. OOTB TS/JS, existing plugins for Rust, Go, Dotnet and more	JavaScriptTypeScript via package.json scripts
Supported dependency managers	npm, pnpm, yarn, bun	npm, pnpm, yarn	npm, pnpm, yarn
Supported toolchain languages (automatic dev envs)	Bun, Deno, Node.js, Rust	🟥	🟥
Has a built-in toolchain	🟩	🟥	🟥
Downloads and installs languages (when applicable)	🟩	🟥	🟥
Configures explicit language/dependency manager versions	🟩	🟥	🟥

Projects

	moon (8)	nx (5)	turborepo (2)
Dependencies on other projects	🟩  implicit from package.json or explicit in moon.yml	🟩  implicit from package.json or explicit in project.json and code imports/exports	🟩  implicit from package.json
Ownership metadata	🟩	🟥	🟥
Primary programming language	🟩	🟥	🟥
Project type (app, lib, etc)	🟩  app, lib, tool, automation, config, scaffold	🟩  app, lib	🟥
Project tech stack	🟩  frontend, backend, infra, systems	🟥	🟥
Project-level file groups	🟩	🟩  via namedInputs	🟥
Project-level tasks	🟩	🟩	🟩
Tags and scopes (boundaries)	🟩  native for all languages	🟩  boundaries via ESLint (TS and JS), tags for filtering for all languages	🟥

Tasks

	moon (24)	nx (24)	turborepo (17)
Known as	tasks	targets	tasks
Defines tasks in	moon.yml or package.json scripts	nx.json, project.json or package.json scripts	package.json scripts
Run a single task with	moon run project:task	nx target project or nx run project:target	turbo run task --filter=project
Run multiple tasks with	moon run :task or moon run a:task b:task or moon check	nx run-many -t task1 task2 task3	turbo run task or turbo run a b c
Run tasks based on a query/filter	moon run :task --query "..."	nx run-many -t task -p "tag:.." -p "dir/*" -p "name*" -p "!negation"	🟥
Can define tasks globally	🟩  with .moon/tasks.yml	🟨  with targetDefaults	🟥
Merges or overrides global tasks	🟩	🟩	🟥
Runs a command with args	🟩	🟩	🟨  within the script
Runs commands from	project or workspace root	current working directory, or wherever desired via config	project root
Supports pipes, redirects, etc, in configured tasks	🟨  encapsulated in a file	🟨  within the executor or script	🟨  within the script
Dependencies on other tasks	🟩  via deps	🟩  via dependsOn	🟩  via dependsOn
Can provide extra params for task dependencies	🟩	🟩	🟥
Can mark a task dependency as optional	🟩  via optional	🟥	🟥
Can depend on arbitrary or unrelated tasks	🟩	🟩	🟥  dependent projects only
Runs task dependencies in parallel	🟩	🟩	🟩
Can run task dependencies in serial	🟩	🟩  via parallel=1	🟩  via concurrency=1
File groups	🟩	🟩  via namedInputs	🟥
Environment variables	🟩  via env, envFile	🟩  automatically via .env files and/or inherited from shell	🟨  within the script
Inputs	🟩  files, globs, env vars	🟩  files, globs, env vars, runtime	🟩  files, globs
Outputs	🟩  files, globs	🟩  files, globs	🟩  files, globs
Output logging style	🟩  via outputStyle	🟩  via --output-style	🟩  via outputMode
Custom hash inputs	🟥	🟩  via runtime inputs	🟩  via globalDependencies
Token substitution	🟩  token functions and variable syntax	🟩  {workspaceRoot}, {projectRoot}, {projectName}, arbitrary patterns namedInputs	🟥
Configuration presets	🟩  via task extends	🟩  via configurations	🟥
Configurable options	🟩	🟩	🟩

Task runner

	moon (9)	nx (11)	turborepo (7)
Known as	action pipeline	task runner	pipeline
Generates a dependency graph	🟩	🟩	🟩
Runs in topological order	🟩	🟩	🟩
Automatically retries failed tasks	🟩	🟩  when flakiness detected on Nx Cloud	🟥
Caches task outputs via a unique hash	🟩	🟩	🟩
Can customize the underlying runner	🟥	🟩	🟥
Can profile running tasks	🟩  cpu, heap	🟩  cpu	🟩  cpu
Can generate run reports	🟩	🟩  free in Nx Cloud & GitHub App Comment	🟩
Continuous integration (CI) support	🟩	🟩	🟨
Continuous deployment (CD) support	🟥	🟨  via nx release	🟥
Remote / cloud caching and syncing	🟩  with moonrepo.app (free / paid)	🟩  with nx.app Nx Cloud (free / paid)	🟩  requires a Vercel account (free)

Generator

	moon (14)	nx (14)	turborepo (11)
Known as	generator	generator	generator
Templates are configured with a schema	🟩  via template.yml	🟩	🟥
Template file extensions (optional)	🟩  .tera, .twig	🟩  fully under user control, built in utility for .ejs templates	🟩  .hbs
Template files support frontmatter	🟩	🟩  fully under user control	🟥
Creates/copies files to destination	🟩	🟩	🟩
Updates/merges with existing files	🟩  JSON/YAML only	🟩  via TypeScript/JavaScript plugins	🟩
Renders with a template engine	🟩  via Tera	🟩  fully under user control, built in utility for .ejs templates	🟩  via Handlebars
Variable interpolation in file content	🟩	🟩	🟩
Variable interpolation in file paths	🟩	🟩	🟩
Can define variable values via interactive prompts	🟩	🟩  using JSON schema	🟩
Can define variable values via command line args	🟩	🟩  using JSON schema	🟩
Supports dry runs	🟩	🟩	🟥
Supports render helpers, filters, and built-ins	🟩	🟩	🟩
Generators can compose other generators	🟩  via extends	🟩  fully under user control, author in TypeScript/JavaScript	🟩  using JavaScript

Other systems

	moon (6)	nx (0)	turborepo (1)
Can send webhooks for critical pipeline events	🟩	🟥	🟥
Generates run reports with granular stats/metrics	🟩	🟥	🟩
Can define and manage code owners	🟩	🟥	🟥
Can generate a CODEOWNERS file	🟩	🟥	🟥
Can define and manage VCS (git) hooks	🟩	🟥	🟥
Supports git worktrees	🟩	🟥	🟥

JavaScript ecosystem

	moon (10)	nx (1)	turborepo (0)
Will automatically install node modules when lockfile changes	🟩	🟥	🟥
Can automatically dedupe when lockfile changes	🟩	🟥	🟥
Can alias package.json names for projects	🟩	🟩	🟥
Can add engines constraint to root package.json	🟩	🟥	🟥
Can sync version manager configs (.nvmrc, etc)	🟩	🟥	🟥
Can sync cross-project dependencies to package.json	🟩	🟥	🟥
Can sync project references to applicable tsconfig.json	🟩	🟥	🟥
Can auto-create missing tsconfig.json	🟩	🟥	🟥
Can sync dependencies as paths to tsconfig.json	🟩	🟥	🟥
Can route outDir to a shared cached in tsconfig.json	🟩	🟥	🟥

Docker integration

	moon (3)	nx (2)	turborepo (2)
Efficient scaffolding for Dockerfile layer caching	🟩	🟦  via custom generator	🟩
Automatic production-only dependency installation	🟩	🟨  generated automatically by first party plugin	🟥
Environment pruning to reduce image/container sizes	🟩	🟥	🟩