According to the documentation it is possible to use the Spring Reactive WebClient with a different server as Netty:
WebClient provides a higher level
Right now, in Spring Framework, WebClient
has only one available ClientHttpConnector
implementation, which is powered by Reactor Netty. This explains the current situation - using WebClient
means you need Reactor Netty as a dependency.
Note that there's an existing issue about supporting Jetty Client as an alternative, see SPR-15092.