Since the formation of new paradigms to address challenges of scalability, flexibility, fault tolerance, and deployment complexity have transformed the software architecture significantly in modern times. The paper provides an in-depth comparison of architectures, namely, monolithic, microservice, and modular monolithic or modulith architectures. This comparison intends to let software architects and developers choose between these options by assessing the technical qualities, performance trade-offs, and real-world use cases of the architectures. Relevant empirical studies, from decomposition strategies to migration techniques, have been presented to discuss practical applications and the challenges associated with them.