Monorepo Tools: Nx vs Turborepo vs Moon in 2025

Why Monorepos?

A monorepo houses multiple projects (apps, libraries, services) in a single repository. Benefits include:

• Shared code: Common utilities, types, and components across projects
• Atomic changes: Update a library and all consumers in one commit
• Unified CI/CD: One pipeline for everything
• Consistent tooling: Same linters, formatters, and configs everywhere

The challenge is build performance. When you have 50 packages, running all tests takes forever. Monorepo tools solve this with intelligent caching and task orchestration.

Turborepo

Turborepo (by Vercel) focuses on task caching and parallelization. It is the simplest monorepo tool with the gentlest learning curve.

Setup

npx create-turbo@latest my-monorepo

# Or add to existing repo
npm install -D turbo

Configuration

// turbo.json
{
  "pipeline": {
    "build": {
      "dependsOn": ["^build"],
      "outputs": ["dist/**", ".next/**"]
    },
    "test": {
      "dependsOn": ["build"]
    },
    "lint": {},
    "dev": {
      "cache": false,
      "persistent": true
    }
  }
}

Project Structure

my-monorepo/
  apps/
    web/          # Next.js app
    api/          # Hono API
    admin/        # Admin dashboard
  packages/
    ui/           # Shared component library
    types/        # Shared TypeScript types
    config/       # Shared configs (ESLint, TS)
    utils/        # Shared utilities
  turbo.json
  package.json

Usage

# Build everything (with caching)
turbo build

# Build only the web app and its dependencies
turbo build --filter=web...

# Run tests for packages that changed since main
turbo test --filter="[main...]"

# Remote caching (team-wide)
turbo login
turbo link

Key Features

• Local and remote caching: Skip builds that have not changed
• Parallel execution: Run independent tasks simultaneously
• Simple config: turbo.json is straightforward
• Vercel integration: Native remote caching on Vercel

Nx

Nx is the most feature-rich monorepo tool. It includes code generation, dependency graph visualization, and deep framework integration.

Setup

npx create-nx-workspace my-workspace

# Or add to existing repo
npx nx@latest init

Configuration

// nx.json
{
  "targetDefaults": {
    "build": {
      "dependsOn": ["^build"],
      "cache": true
    },
    "test": {
      "cache": true
    },
    "lint": {
      "cache": true
    }
  },
  "namedInputs": {
    "default": ["{projectRoot}/**/*"],
    "production": [
      "default",
      "!{projectRoot}/**/*.test.*",
      "!{projectRoot}/test/**/*"
    ]
  }
}

Usage

# Build everything affected by changes
nx affected --target=build

# Visualize dependency graph
nx graph

# Generate a new library
nx generate @nx/react:library shared-ui

# Run with caching
nx run-many --target=build --all

# Remote caching with Nx Cloud
nx connect

Key Features

• Affected commands: Only run tasks for changed projects
• Dependency graph: Visual representation of project dependencies
• Code generators: Scaffold new projects, libraries, components
• Plugins: Deep integration with React, Angular, Node, and more
• Module federation: Micro-frontend support
• Nx Cloud: Remote caching and distributed task execution

Moon

Moon is a Rust-based monorepo tool focused on performance. It supports multiple languages (JavaScript, TypeScript, Rust, Go, Python) and uses a project graph for intelligent task scheduling.

Setup

# Install Moon
curl -fsSL https://moonrepo.dev/install/moon.sh | bash

# Initialize in a repo
moon init

Configuration

# .moon/workspace.yml
projects:
  - "apps/*"
  - "packages/*"

node:
  version: "22.0.0"
  packageManager: "pnpm"

vcs:
  manager: "git"
  defaultBranch: "main"

# apps/web/moon.yml
language: "typescript"
type: "application"

tasks:
  build:
    command: "next build"
    inputs:
      - "src/**/*"
      - "public/**/*"
    outputs:
      - ".next"
    deps:
      - "~:codegen"
      - "packages/ui:build"

  dev:
    command: "next dev"
    local: true

  test:
    command: "vitest run"
    inputs:
      - "src/**/*.test.*"

Usage

# Run a task
moon run web:build

# Run affected tasks
moon ci

# Run all tasks of a type
moon run :build

# Check project graph
moon project-graph

Key Features

• Rust-powered: Extremely fast task hashing and execution
• Multi-language: Not limited to JavaScript
• Toolchain management: Installs and manages Node, Bun, Deno, etc.
• Smart hashing: Uses file inputs/outputs for precise cache invalidation
• Docker integration: Layer-optimized Dockerfile generation

Comparison

Build Performance (100-package monorepo)

Moon is the fastest, especially for task hashing. Turborepo and Nx are comparable for most workloads.

Our Recommendation

• Turborepo: Best for teams new to monorepos. Minimal config, easy to adopt incrementally. Perfect for 5-20 package monorepos.
• Nx: Best for large teams and complex workspaces. Code generators, plugin ecosystem, and advanced CI features justify the complexity.
• Moon: Best for polyglot monorepos (JS + Rust + Go) and teams that prioritize raw build speed. Still maturing but promising.

At TechSaaS, we recommend Turborepo for most client projects because it adds monorepo benefits with minimal overhead. For large enterprise codebases, Nx's code generation and affected commands are worth the learning investment.

Need help structuring your monorepo? Contact [email protected].