Monorepos in 2025

The monorepo—once the territory of only the biggest tech giants—is now becoming the standard for startups, agencies, and open-source projects alike. In 2025, the conversation has moved beyond should we use a monorepo? to how do we manage monorepos effectively at scale?

This shift reflects deeper changes in how modern teams handle code orchestration, testing, and deployment. Whether you're building a multi-package SaaS product or maintaining a design system shared across web and mobile, understanding the monorepo architecture today is critical to maintaining velocity tomorrow.

Why Monorepos Matter More Than Ever

Monorepos centralize multiple projects—packages, apps, libraries—into a single repository. This approach brings several key benefits:

• Unified versioning and code sharing across services and packages
• Atomic commits that ensure consistent updates across the stack
• Simplified dependency management using tools like pnpm workspaces
• Easier cross-team collaboration, especially for shared UI kits or SDKs

In a world where cross-platform consistency and developer productivity are competitive advantages, monorepos reduce integration friction and lower the overhead of managing disparate codebases.

Tooling: TurboRepo, Nx, and Bazel

The tooling landscape in 2025 has matured significantly. Today, most monorepo setups fall into one of three categories:

1. TurboRepo (by Vercel)

TurboRepo (docs) has become a go-to for frontend-heavy stacks. Built for blazing-fast builds and incremental caching, it's tailored to JavaScript/TypeScript monorepos. Turbo's remote caching via Turbopack and built-in support for pnpm and Next.js makes it ideal for modern web apps.

2. Nx (by Nrwl)

Nx (docs) continues to dominate the enterprise monorepo space. With advanced capabilities like affected graph detection, project boundaries enforcement, and code generators, Nx excels in large-scale projects that need maintainable, enforceable structure across multiple teams.

3. Bazel (by Google)

While Bazel (docs) is still favored for massive polyglot ecosystems (think C++, Go, Java, and JS), it remains complex to configure. That said, teams working in performance-critical or multi-language environments still turn to Bazel for its deterministic builds and fine-grained caching.

Each tool has its trade-offs. TurboRepo shines in speed and simplicity, Nx in architectural rigor, and Bazel in sheer scale and cross-language flexibility.

Challenges of Monorepos

Monorepos aren’t without complexity. Among the top monorepo challenges in 2025:

• CI/CD orchestration can become complicated without task runners or affected graph strategies.
• Code ownership and boundaries must be clearly defined to prevent internal coupling.
• Tooling lock-in can create migration friction—choose your tools wisely.
• Permissions and access control can be tricky in larger orgs using GitHub or GitLab.

Fortunately, most of these issues have been softened by improvements in CI pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions matrix builds), smarter dependency graphs, and monorepo-specific CLIs.

Best Practices for Managing Monorepos

If you're considering or already operating a monorepo in 2025, here’s what works:

• Use pnpm for workspace management and blazing-fast installs.
• Leverage affected-only pipelines to avoid rebuilding the entire repo.
• Modularize with internal packages and avoid leaky abstractions.
• Document boundaries—shared libraries, domains, teams—explicitly.
• Automate everything: linting, testing, changelogs, versioning.

Additionally, use code owners, lint rules, and commit hooks to prevent unwanted changes across unrelated packages.

Is a Monorepo Right for You?

A monorepo is not a silver bullet. If your projects are loosely related, have vastly different tech stacks, or require distinct release cycles, a polyrepo might still be a better fit. But if you're working in a unified product suite or design system, the benefits are hard to ignore.

Ask yourself:

• Do your projects share code or components?
• Do your teams collaborate on multiple apps?
• Would atomic commits improve reliability?

If the answer is yes to two or more, it’s worth considering a modern monorepo setup.

Conclusion: The Monorepo is Now Mainstream

In 2025, monorepos have evolved from a niche enterprise strategy into a default mode of development for high-performing teams. With powerful tools like TurboRepo, Nx, and Bazel, it's never been easier to adopt this pattern effectively.

The key is not just in choosing a monorepo, but in operationalizing it well—with clear structure, smart automation, and the right boundaries. Do it right, and your team will ship faster, collaborate better,