Introduction
As software organizations grow, they often find themselves managing multiple applications, services, libraries, and shared components. Maintaining these projects in separate repositories can create duplication, inconsistent tooling, dependency management challenges, and slower development workflows.
To solve these problems, many engineering teams adopt a monorepo approach, where multiple projects are stored within a single repository. While monorepos offer significant advantages, they also introduce new challenges related to build performance, dependency management, testing, and deployment.
This is where Turborepo becomes valuable. Turborepo is a high-performance build system designed specifically for JavaScript and TypeScript monorepos. It helps teams scale development workflows by optimizing builds, caching tasks, and improving collaboration across multiple applications and packages.
In this tutorial, you'll learn what Turborepo is, how it works, how to set up a monorepo, and best practices for scaling modern development teams.
What Is Turborepo?
Turborepo is an open-source build system created to improve the developer experience of working with monorepositories.
Its primary goals include:
Instead of rebuilding every project after each change, Turborepo intelligently executes only the tasks that are actually affected.
This can dramatically reduce build times in large repositories.
Understanding Monorepos
A monorepo stores multiple projects in a single repository.
Example:
repository
│
├── apps
│ ├── web
│ ├── admin
│ └── mobile
│
└── packages
├── ui
├── utils
└── shared-config
Benefits include:
However, as repositories grow, build performance often becomes a challenge.
Why Traditional Monorepos Become Slow
Imagine a repository containing:
20 Applications
50 Shared Packages
Hundreds of Developers
A small change to one package might trigger:
Multiple builds
Extensive testing
Redundant CI jobs
Traditional workflows often waste resources rebuilding unaffected projects.
Example:
Small Change
↓
Entire Repository Rebuild
This is exactly the problem Turborepo aims to solve.
How Turborepo Works
Turborepo analyzes dependencies between projects.
Example:
UI Package
↓
Web Application
↓
Deployment
If a change occurs only in a documentation package:
Docs Package Updated
Turborepo skips rebuilding unrelated applications.
This intelligent execution significantly improves performance.
Key Features
Task Caching
One of Turborepo's most powerful features is caching.
Example workflow:
Build Project
↓
Store Results
↓
Reuse Results Later
If no code changes occur, Turborepo retrieves cached outputs instead of rebuilding.
Benefits:
Dependency Graph Analysis
Turborepo automatically understands project relationships.
Example:
Shared UI Library
↓
Web App
↓
Admin App
When the UI library changes, dependent applications are rebuilt automatically.
Unrelated projects remain untouched.
Remote Caching
Teams can share build caches across environments.
Example:
Developer Machine
↓
Remote Cache
↓
CI Server
Benefits include:
Faster CI pipelines
Reduced duplicate work
Consistent builds
Remote caching becomes increasingly valuable in large teams.
Creating a Turborepo Project
Create a new repository:
npx create-turbo@latest
After creation:
apps/
packages/
turbo.json
package.json
This structure provides a foundation for monorepo development.
Understanding turbo.json
The configuration file defines task behavior.
Example:
{
"$schema":
"https://turbo.build/schema.json",
"tasks": {
"build": {
"dependsOn": ["^build"],
"outputs": ["dist/**"]
},
"test": {
"dependsOn": ["build"]
}
}
}
This tells Turborepo how tasks depend on one another.
Running Tasks
Execute a build:
turbo run build
Run tests:
turbo run test
Run linting:
turbo run lint
Turborepo automatically determines execution order.
Practical Example
Imagine a company maintaining:
Customer Portal
Admin Dashboard
Mobile Backend
Shared UI Components
Shared Utilities
Repository structure:
apps
├── portal
├── admin
└── api
packages
├── ui
├── auth
└── utils
A change in the UI package affects:
UI Package
↓
Portal
Admin
But not:
API Service
Turborepo rebuilds only affected projects.
This can save significant development and CI time.
Turborepo and Next.js
Turborepo is commonly used with:
Next.js
Example structure:
apps
├── website
├── dashboard
packages
├── ui
├── config
Benefits:
Many organizations use this approach to maintain consistency across multiple applications.
Turborepo vs Traditional Build Tools
| Feature | Turborepo | Traditional Scripts |
|---|
| Incremental Builds | Yes | Limited |
| Dependency Awareness | Yes | Manual |
| Remote Caching | Yes | No |
| CI Optimization | Excellent | Moderate |
| Monorepo Support | Native | Limited |
| Build Performance | High | Variable |
The productivity gains become increasingly apparent as repositories grow.
Common Use Cases
Turborepo works particularly well for:
SaaS Platforms
Managing multiple customer-facing applications.
Design Systems
Sharing reusable UI components.
Enterprise Applications
Coordinating large development teams.
Multi-Frontend Architectures
Managing dashboards, portals, and admin applications.
Full-Stack Platforms
Sharing code across frontend and backend projects.
CI/CD Optimization
One of Turborepo's biggest advantages is CI performance.
Traditional pipeline:
Commit
↓
Build Everything
↓
Test Everything
Turborepo pipeline:
Commit
↓
Build Only Changed Projects
↓
Reuse Cached Results
Benefits:
Large organizations often save significant CI resources using this approach.
Best Practices
Organize Projects Logically
Separate applications and shared packages clearly.
Example:
apps/
packages/
A clean structure improves maintainability.
Share Common Configurations
Centralize:
ESLint
TypeScript
Prettier
Build configurations
This reduces duplication.
Enable Remote Caching
Remote caching provides substantial performance improvements for distributed teams.
Keep Packages Focused
Avoid creating overly large shared packages.
Smaller modules are easier to maintain.
Monitor Build Performance
Track:
Build duration
Cache hit rates
CI execution times
Dependency complexity
Continuous monitoring helps maintain efficiency.
Avoid Unnecessary Dependencies
Excessive dependencies can increase build complexity and slow development workflows.
Conclusion
Turborepo has become one of the most popular solutions for managing modern JavaScript and TypeScript monorepos. By combining intelligent dependency analysis, task caching, remote cache sharing, and optimized execution pipelines, it enables teams to scale repositories without sacrificing development speed.
As applications grow and organizations manage increasing numbers of services, frontends, libraries, and shared components, traditional build approaches often become inefficient. Turborepo addresses these challenges by ensuring that only the necessary tasks are executed while reusing previous results whenever possible.
For teams building large-scale web applications, SaaS platforms, design systems, or multi-project architectures, Turborepo offers a practical and powerful approach to improving productivity, reducing CI/CD costs, and maintaining a scalable development workflow.