When to Use a Monorepo

Do you really need a monorepo? For many teams, the honest answer is: probably not at first—but it depends heavily on why you think you want one. Most teams arrive at the monorepo discussion because they're tired of duplicating code and types across services and frontends. The story is familiar: you start with a backend, add a frontend, then maybe a mobile app, and suddenly you're copy‑pasting types, request/response shapes, and utilities everywhere. You try to extract an npm package, discover that maintaining and versioning it is painful, and then start looking seriously at monorepo solutions like Turborepo or Nx. A monorepo is a single repository that contains multiple apps, services, and libraries. Companies like Google and Meta made them famous, and tools like Turborepo and Nx have brought that model to everyday teams. The typical motivations include: These are all real benefits—but they come with notable tradeoffs. The Hidden Costs of Monorepos Despite the appeal, monorepos are not