Hono Has a Free API Framework — The Ultrafast Web Framework

Hono is an ultrafast web framework for the edge. It runs on Cloudflare Workers, Deno, Bun, Vercel, AWS Lambda, and Node.js — same code everywhere.

What Is Hono?

Hono (Japanese for flame) is a small, fast web framework with zero dependencies. It is 3x faster than Express and works on every JavaScript runtime.

Key features:

• Multi-runtime (Cloudflare, Deno, Bun, Node.js)
• TypeScript-first
• Built-in middleware
• OpenAPI support
• RPC client
• 14KB minified

Quick Start

npm create hono@latest my-app
cd my-app
npm run dev

API Example

import { Hono } from "hono";
import { cors } from "hono/cors";
import { jwt } from "hono/jwt";

const app = new Hono();

app.use("/api/*", cors());

app.get("/", (c) => c.json({ message: "Hello Hono!" }));

app.get("/api/users", (c) => {
  return c.json([{ id: 1, name: "Alice" }, { id: 2, name: "Bob" }]);
});

app.post("/api/users", async (c) => {
  const body = await c.req.json();
  return c.json({ created: true, user: body }, 201);
});

app.get("/api/users/:id", (c) => {
  const id = c.req.param("id");
  return c.json({ id, name: "Alice" });
});

export default app;

Deploy Anywhere

# Cloudflare Workers
npx wrangler deploy

# Deno
deno serve app.ts

# Bun
bun run app.ts

# Node.js
node --import tsx app.ts

Use Cases

1. Edge APIs — Cloudflare Workers
2. Microservices — lightweight, fast
3. API gateways — routing + middleware
4. Serverless — Lambda, Vercel
5. Full-stack — with htmx or React

Hono vs Alternatives

Feature	Hono	Express	Fastify
Speed	Fastest	Slow	Fast
Size	14KB	200KB	100KB
TypeScript	Native	Partial	Good
Edge support	Yes	No	No
Multi-runtime	Yes	Node only	Node only

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