Hono Has a Free API: The Ultrafast Web Framework That Runs Everywhere

Hono is an ultrafast web framework for Cloudflare Workers, Deno, Bun, Node.js, and AWS Lambda. It's 3x faster than Express, has zero dependencies, and uses Web Standard APIs.

Why Hono?

• Universal — same code on Workers, Deno, Bun, Node, Lambda
• Fast — 3x Express, near-raw performance on Bun
• Tiny — 14KB min, zero dependencies
• Type-safe — full TypeScript with route-level types
• Web Standards — uses fetch, Request, Response APIs

Quick Start

# Create project
npm create hono@latest my-app
cd my-app
npm install
npm run dev

Basic API

import { Hono } from 'hono';

const app = new Hono();

app.get('/', (c) => c.text('Hello Hono!'));

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

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

app.post('/api/users', async (c) => {
  const body = await c.req.json();
  return c.json({ id: 3, ...body }, 201);
});

export default app;

Middleware

import { Hono } from 'hono';
import { cors } from 'hono/cors';
import { logger } from 'hono/logger';
import { bearerAuth } from 'hono/bearer-auth';
import { compress } from 'hono/compress';
import { etag } from 'hono/etag';
import { cache } from 'hono/cache';

const app = new Hono();

// Global middleware
app.use('*', logger());
app.use('*', cors());
app.use('*', compress());
app.use('*', etag());

// Protected routes
app.use('/api/*', bearerAuth({ token: 'secret-token' }));

// Cache static routes
app.get('/static/*', cache({ cacheName: 'static', cacheControl: 'max-age=3600' }));

Route Groups & Typing

import { Hono } from 'hono';
import { zValidator } from '@hono/zod-validator';
import { z } from 'zod';

const app = new Hono();

// Zod validation
const createUserSchema = z.object({
  name: z.string().min(1),
  email: z.string().email(),
});

app.post('/api/users',
  zValidator('json', createUserSchema),
  async (c) => {
    const user = c.req.valid('json'); // Fully typed!
    return c.json({ id: 1, ...user }, 201);
  }
);

// Route groups
const api = new Hono();
api.get('/users', (c) => c.json([]));
api.get('/posts', (c) => c.json([]));

app.route('/api/v1', api);

Deploy Anywhere

// Cloudflare Workers
export default app;

// Deno
Deno.serve(app.fetch);

// Bun
export default { port: 3000, fetch: app.fetch };

// Node.js
import { serve } from '@hono/node-server';
serve(app, (info) => console.log(`Listening on :${info.port}`));

// AWS Lambda
import { handle } from 'hono/aws-lambda';
export const handler = handle(app);

RPC Mode (End-to-End Type Safety)

// server.ts
const routes = app
  .get('/api/users', (c) => c.json([{ id: 1, name: 'Alice' }]))
  .post('/api/users', async (c) => {
    const body = await c.req.json();
    return c.json({ id: 2, ...body }, 201);
  });

export type AppType = typeof routes;

// client.ts (browser)
import { hc } from 'hono/client';
import type { AppType } from './server';

const client = hc<AppType>('http://localhost:3000');
const res = await client.api.users.$get(); // Fully typed!
const users = await res.json(); // { id: number, name: string }[]

Performance

Framework	Requests/sec (Bun)
Hono	130K
Elysia	140K
Express	45K
Fastify	65K

Resources

• Hono Docs
• Middleware
• Examples

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Building APIs or web apps? Check my Apify actors or email [e-mail].