Spring Boot 3.5 left free open source support on June 30, 2026, yet most Spring Boot books on sale still teach a 3.x release or older. That matters more than the cover date suggests, because a book’s code only helps when it builds against the Spring Boot you run. A Boot 2 book still imports servlet, persistence and validation APIs from javax.*, which Boot 3 and 4 won’t compile. This year brought the first Spring Boot 4 books from Packt and Apress, so you no longer have to translate old listings.
Below are nine Spring Boot and Spring Framework books, from a first Boot 4 book through Spring Cloud, Spring Security, full stack Angular and Spring AI. For each one we read the publisher page and opened the companion code repository to see which Spring Boot version the examples build on. We checked them in October 2026, when Spring Boot 4.1 and Spring Framework 7 were current.
Buy these Spring books first
Start from the Spring Boot version your team runs, then from the job in front of you. Most readers need one of the first three books below and one specialist title, not all nine:
- Best first book on Spring Boot 4: Learning Spring Boot 4
- Best Spring Boot 4 reference: Pro Spring Boot 4
- Best Spring Framework book: Pro Spring 6
- Best for Spring Cloud: Microservices with Spring Boot and Spring Cloud, 4th Edition
- Best for security: Spring Security in Action, 2nd Edition
- Best for Spring AI: Building Intelligent Applications with Spring AI
Spring in Action is still one of the best-known Spring titles, and it sits fourth on this list on purpose. Its code targets Spring Boot 2.4, two major versions behind, so you’ll read it for how Spring thinks and copy your code from somewhere newer.
Compare the Spring Boot and Spring Framework books
We took the “Code builds on” column from each book’s companion repository or publisher page, not from its marketing copy. It is the column that decides how much of a book you can type in and run today:
| Book | Publisher, date | Code builds on | Pages | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Learning Spring Boot 4, 4th Ed | Packt, July 2026 | Spring Boot 4.1, Java 25 | 538 | First Spring Boot book |
| Pro Spring Boot 4, 4th Ed | Apress, July 2026 | Spring Boot 4.0.6, Java 21 | 566 | Boot internals, native images |
| Pro Spring 6, 6th Ed | Apress, July 2023 | Spring Framework 6, Boot 3.1.1, Java 19 | 964 | Spring Framework, Spring MVC, data |
| Spring in Action, 6th Ed | Manning, 2022 | Spring 5.3, Boot 2.4 | 520 | Core concepts |
| Microservices with Spring Boot and Spring Cloud, 4th Ed | Packt, August 2025 | Spring Boot 3.5, Java 24 | 810 | Spring Cloud on Kubernetes |
| Spring Security in Action, 2nd Ed | Manning, 2024 | Spring Boot 3 | 440 | OAuth2, OIDC, authorization |
| Spring Boot and Angular, 2nd Ed | Packt, October 2026 | Spring Boot 4.1, Java 26, Angular 22 | 742 | Full stack apps |
| Spring Boot 3.0 Cookbook | Packt, July 2024 | Spring Boot 3.2.2, Java 21 | 426 | Recipes for one problem at a time |
| Building Intelligent Applications with Spring AI | Packt, May 2026 | Spring AI 1.0 on Boot 3.5; 2.0 branch on Boot 4.1 | 310 | LLM features in Spring apps |
Three of the nine build on Spring Boot 4, five on a 3.x release and one on 2.4. That spread is normal for a framework that ships a new minor every six months, and it’s why the version check below matters more than star ratings.
Check the code version, not the cover date
A 2023 book can be more current than a 2025 one, so we judged every candidate by the Spring Boot line its examples use and how long that line keeps getting fixes. The support windows below come from the Spring Boot support table on spring.io:
| Spring Boot line | Free OSS support | Commercial support | Books on this line |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.4.x | Ended Nov 30, 2021 | Ended Feb 28, 2023 | Spring in Action, 6th Ed |
| 3.1.x | Ended Jun 30, 2024 | Ended Jun 30, 2025 | Pro Spring 6 |
| 3.2.x | Ended Dec 31, 2024 | Ended Dec 31, 2025 | Spring Boot 3.0 Cookbook |
| 3.5.x | Ended Jun 30, 2026 | Until Jun 30, 2032 | Larsson 4th Ed, Spring AI book (main branch) |
| 4.0.x | Until Dec 31, 2026 | Until Dec 31, 2027 | Pro Spring Boot 4 |
| 4.1.x | Until Jul 31, 2027 | Until Jul 31, 2028 | Learning Spring Boot 4 |
The break that ruins old books is Boot 2 to Boot 3, because the Jakarta EE packages (javax.servlet, javax.persistence, javax.validation and the rest) were renamed to jakarta.*. Books on any 3.x release already use jakarta.*, so their code is close to current. Even so, Spring Boot 4.0 removes every API deprecated in 3.x, renames configuration properties and drops Undertow, as its migration guide spells out.
Run a 3.x book on Boot 4 and you will hit those changes early, so we kept 3.x books only where nothing newer covers the topic as well.
That rule cut several popular titles. Anything printed before Spring Boot 3.0 shipped in November 2022 cannot target it. That removes Spring Boot: Up and Running (O’Reilly, 2021), Spring Microservices in Action, 2nd Edition (Manning, 2021) and the first edition of Spring Start Here (Manning, 2021, Boot 2). Cloud Native Spring in Action reached print in December 2022, after Boot 3.0, but its code stays on Spring Boot 2.7, so it goes too.
Learning Spring Boot 3.0 is still listed on Amazon too, but its fourth edition replaced it in July 2026.
1. Learning Spring Boot 4
This is the book to buy if you are new to Spring Boot or coming back after the 2.x days. The fourth edition, published by Packt in July 2026, was written by Wanderson Xesquevixos, Ranga Rao Karanam, Magnus Larsson and Greg L. Turnquist, and Turnquist is a committer on Spring Boot and Spring Data. Its companion repository says the code was updated to Spring Boot 4.1 and uses Java 25 throughout. That makes it the newest beginner-level Spring code you can buy in print.
Chapters two to seven build one web app and take it through data, security, testing, configuration and release, so you finish with something deployable rather than a pile of snippets. The later chapters are where the edition earns its number: GraalVM native images, reactive controllers, virtual threads, messaging, observability and a chapter on Spring AI, with a closing chapter on what changed in Spring Boot 4.
If Java 25 is not on your machine yet, our guide to installing OpenJDK on Ubuntu covers it before chapter one.
At 538 pages it covers a lot of ground quickly, so an experienced Spring developer will find the opening chapters slow and is better served by Pro Spring Boot 4. It sold for $45 to $50 when we checked, below its $59.99 list price. See the current price on Amazon.
2. Pro Spring Boot 4
Felipe Gutierrez wrote the deep Spring Boot reference for the last two generations, and for this one he is joined by DaShaun Carter of the Spring team at Broadcom. Apress published it at the end of July 2026. The publisher lists auto-configuration, Actuator and Micrometer observability, GraalVM native images with AOT compilation, and wiring Spring AI into Boot applications, with enhanced support for Java 17 and 21.
Apress’s companion repository pins Spring Boot 4.0.6 and Java 21 in the build files. The sample projects are split between Maven and Gradle builds, so you see both. That 4.0 line keeps free fixes until the end of 2026, after which you would move the examples to a newer 4.x release yourself.
Read it after a first Spring book, because it assumes you already write Spring applications and spends its pages on why Boot behaves the way it does.
Expect to pay $45 to $50, close to the $49.99 list price. The print ISBN starts with 979, so Amazon lists it under a B0 ASIN even though it’s a paperback. Check the current price on Amazon.
3. Pro Spring 6
Most “Spring books” searches are really about the Spring Framework rather than Spring Boot, and Pro Spring 6 is the book for that. Iuliana Cosmina, Rob Harrop, Chris Schaefer and Clarence Ho spend 964 pages on the parts Boot hides from you. That means dependency injection, AOP, JDBC and JPA with Hibernate, jOOQ, transactions, Spring MVC and reactive programming, plus Testcontainers, Kafka and Spring Batch integrations.
Apress pitches it at Spring Framework 6 on Java 17, but the companion repository builds at Java 19, and its README says JDK 17 needs configuration edits. Both the Maven and Gradle builds use Spring Boot 3.1.1 for the Boot chapters. The framework concepts have not moved much since, which is why a 2023 book still earns a top three spot. Spring Framework 7 is out, though, and Apress has Pro Spring 7, Volume I (Framework 7 and Java 25) listed for preorder.
If you’re buying for the long term and can wait, that volume replaces the core and data access chapters of this one.
You’ll want it if you maintain Spring apps that predate Boot or need to know what a starter configures for you; a beginner will drown in it. It was in the $35 to $60 range when we checked, depending on the seller and remaining stock. Check the current price on Amazon.
4. Spring in Action, 6th Edition
Craig Walls has written Spring in Action since its first edition, and it remains one of the most widely recommended ways into Spring. The sixth edition walks through dependency injection, Spring MVC, Spring Data, Spring Security, reactive programming with WebFlux, and messaging, building each idea on the last one instead of dumping everything at once. Walls makes Spring’s abstractions feel logical rather than magical, and that is why it survives here.
Manning’s own page says the edition covers Spring 5.3 and Spring Boot 2.4, so every listing predates the jakarta rename, and Manning lists no seventh edition. Expect to rewrite imports and some configuration as you follow along, and keep the reference docs open for exact code.
If you want the language side around it, our list of Java programming books covers modern Java.
Skip it if you want listings to paste into a Boot 4 project; Learning Spring Boot 4 does that job. It sold for $50 to $60 when we checked. Check the current price on Amazon.
5. Microservices with Spring Boot and Spring Cloud, 4th Edition
Magnus Larsson’s book is the pick for readers whose Spring services end up on Kubernetes, and the fourth edition from August 2025 replaced the Spring Boot 3 edition this list used to carry. Across 810 pages it builds a full microservice landscape with Spring Cloud Gateway, Eureka, resilience patterns and OpenAPI. Then it runs that landscape the way platform teams do, on Docker Compose locally and on Kubernetes with Helm and Istio, watched by Prometheus, Grafana, the EFK stack and distributed tracing.
The book was written for Java 24, Spring Boot 3.5 and Spring Cloud 2025. Larsson keeps the repository alive: its errata note says the code moved from Spring Boot 3.5.0 to 3.5.16 because the Testcontainers version managed by 3.5.0 stopped working with newer Docker Desktop releases. That is exactly the upkeep you want from a book this large. Spring Boot 3.5 left free support in June 2026, though, so porting the services to Boot 4 is your homework, not the book’s.
If the cluster side is the weak spot, our Kubernetes book picks pair well with it. The system design books cover the trade-offs behind splitting a service at all. Skip it if you build monoliths, since every chapter assumes a distributed system. Expect $40 to $50; it was below its $49.99 list when we checked. Check the current price on Amazon.
6. Spring Security in Action, 2nd Edition
Security is where Spring hurts the most people, and Laurentiu Spilca’s second edition untangles it. Rewritten for Spring Boot 3, it covers the filter chain, authentication providers, method security, and the OAuth2 and OpenID Connect flows that every production API needs sooner or later, including running your own authorization server.
Spilca’s first edition taught the old WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter style, which no longer exists; the second edition uses the component-based configuration throughout, so its configuration style matches the way Spring Security is set up today. None of the general books on this list give security more than a chapter, which is why this one earns a slot. For the pipeline side of the same problem, see our DevSecOps book picks.
Read a foundation book first if you haven’t built a Spring app yet. It was in the $50 to $70 range when we checked. Check the current price on Amazon.
7. Spring Boot and Angular, 2nd Edition
Ahmad Gohar and Dimitrios Kyriakakis wrote the only full stack Spring book here that is already on Boot 4. The second edition, out from Packt in October 2026, pairs Spring Boot 4 microservices with Angular 22. The code lives in separate backend and frontend repositories, and the backend repository now targets Spring Boot 4.1 on Java 26, a non-LTS release, so the printed text may lag the repo. Its 742 pages cover both halves: Spring Data for SQL and NoSQL, an API gateway with Spring Cloud, JWT security and WebFlux on the back end, then Angular signals, server-side rendering and Docker Compose deployment.
Two chapters use GitHub Copilot in VS Code as a coding assistant, which some readers will want and others will skip. Roughly half the book is Angular, so if you only write APIs, a Spring-only book gives you more for the money. React teams have Full Stack Development with Spring Boot 3 and React, 4th Edition from Packt, but that 2023 edition is on Spring Boot 3, which is why it isn’t a numbered pick here. This one sold for $45 to $55 when we checked. Check the current price on Amazon.
8. Spring Boot 3.0 Cookbook
Felip Miguel Puig’s cookbook solves one problem per recipe: securing APIs with OAuth2, documenting them with OpenAPI, testing with Testcontainers, wiring Spring Cloud Config and Eureka, adding distributed tracing, and trimming startup with native compilation. Once you know Spring basics, that format beats reading a 900-page reference to answer a single question.
Despite the “3.0” in the title, the recipes in its repository build on Spring Boot 3.2.2 with Java 21. That line is out of support now, so treat the recipes as patterns: the approach transfers to Boot 4, while dependency versions and some property names will need updating. If you want a structured course rather than answers to questions you already have, start with Learning Spring Boot 4 instead.
Amazon had it in the $35 to $42 range when we checked. Check the current price on Amazon.
9. Building Intelligent Applications with Spring AI
John Blum has contributed to Spring Data, Spring Boot and Spring AI, and his May 2026 Packt book is the newest Spring AI title from a major publisher. Its 310 pages cover chat clients, prompts and structured output, embeddings, audio and image models, observability, testing, and agent workflows, through small projects such as real-time message translation and a song identifier.
The repository is what sets it apart. The main branch matches the book on Spring AI 1.0.9 with Spring Boot 3.5.16. Separate branches carry the same examples on Spring AI 1.1.8, and on Spring AI 2.0.0 with Spring Boot 4.1.0, so you can follow along on the version you would actually deploy. Use that 2.0.x branch: Spring AI 1.0.x and 1.1.x both left free support on June 30, 2026, along with the Boot 3.5 line the main branch uses. Craig Walls’s Spring AI in Action (Manning, 2025) covers similar ground in 320 pages if you prefer his style. Our LLM engineering books cover the model side that neither Spring book teaches.
Skip it until your app has an AI requirement; Spring AI moves fast enough that a book bought early ages on the shelf. It was around $50 when we checked. Check the current price on Amazon.
Check these before you buy a Spring book
Every Spring book ages at the speed of the framework. Whichever one you pick, check these on the listing or the publisher page before you pay:
- the Spring Boot version the examples use, from the description or the companion repo’s build file
- the Java version: Spring Boot 4 needs Java 17 or later
- a companion GitHub repository with recent commits or errata
- the edition number, because Amazon keeps selling older editions beside new ones
The repository check is the one most people skip, and it tells you the most. Larsson’s errata and Blum’s version branches show authors who keep their code building; a repository untouched since launch means you’ll fix the dependency drift yourself.
Pair that with the support table above and you know how long the book’s code stays on a line that gets fixes.
Three Spring books are due soon, and each would change this list. Spring Start Here, Second Edition by Laurentiu Spilca is updated for Spring Framework 7 and Spring Boot 4, and Amazon lists it for December 29, 2026. Pro Spring 7, Volume I covers Spring Framework 7 on Java 25 and is on preorder. Testing Spring Boot Applications by Daniel Garnier-Moiroux, from Manning, is listed for March 30, 2027.
If you’re a complete beginner and can wait until January, Spring Start Here is likely to become the first book we’d recommend.
Avoid these Spring book mix-ups
Spring titles look alike, and Amazon search shows old and new editions side by side, so these are the mistakes that cost readers money:
- Spring Boot in Action (2016) is not Spring in Action; it covers Spring Boot 1.x
- Spring in Action has no seventh edition; the sixth from 2022 is the newest
- Learning Spring Boot 3.0 (2022, 270 pages) is the edition before Learning Spring Boot 4
- Microservices with Spring Boot 3 and Spring Cloud is the 2023 third edition; the fourth drops the “3”
- Pro Spring 6 covers the Spring Framework, while Pro Spring Boot 4 covers Spring Boot
Match the ASIN or ISBN on the listing to the edition you meant before you check out. A two-year-old edition at a lower price is rarely a bargain on a framework that moves this fast. If you only buy one book this year, make it Learning Spring Boot 4, then add the specialist title for whatever your team ships next. Our wider list of programming books covers the rest of the shelf.
