DEV Community

Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

Posted on

Hono Has a Free Web Framework That Runs on Every JavaScript Runtime

#hono #javascript #cloudflare #typescript

Express is tied to Node.js. Fastify is tied to Node.js. Hono runs on Cloudflare Workers, Deno, Bun, Node.js, AWS Lambda, and Vercel Edge — all with the same code. It's ultrafast, type-safe, and built for the edge.

What Hono Gives You for Free

  • Multi-runtime — same code runs on Cloudflare Workers, Deno, Bun, Node.js, Lambda
  • Ultra-lightweight — 14KB core, tree-shakeable to ~3KB
  • Type-safe routing — path params and query strings are typed
  • Built-in middleware — CORS, JWT, rate limiting, compression, caching
  • Zod validation — validate request bodies with @hono/zod-validator
  • RPC client — type-safe API client generated from your routes
  • JSX — server-side rendering without React

Quick Start 

npm create hono@latest my-app
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Basic API 

import { Hono } from 'hono';

const app = new Hono();

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

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

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

export default app;
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Zod Validation 

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

const createUserSchema = z.object({
  name: z.string().min(2),
  email: z.string().email(),
  role: z.enum(['admin', 'user']),
});

app.post(
  '/api/users',
  zValidator('json', createUserSchema),
  async (c) => {
    const data = c.req.valid('json'); // Fully typed!
    const user = await db.users.create({ data });
    return c.json(user, 201);
  }
);
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

RPC Client (tRPC-Like Type Safety) 

// server.ts
const routes = app
  .get('/api/users', async (c) => {
    const users = await db.users.findMany();
    return c.json(users);
  })
  .post('/api/users', zValidator('json', createUserSchema), async (c) => {
    const data = c.req.valid('json');
    return c.json(await db.users.create({ data }));
  });

export type AppType = typeof routes;

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

const client = hc<AppType>('http://localhost:3000');

// Fully typed! Auto-complete works.
const users = await client.api.users.$get();
const newUser = await client.api.users.$post({ json: { name: 'Bob', email: 'bob@test.com', role: 'user' } });
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Middleware 

import { cors } from 'hono/cors';
import { jwt } from 'hono/jwt';
import { rateLimiter } from 'hono/rate-limiter';
import { compress } from 'hono/compress';

app.use('*', cors());
app.use('*', compress());
app.use('/api/*', jwt({ secret: process.env.JWT_SECRET }));
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Deploy Anywhere (Same Code) 

// Cloudflare Workers
export default app;

// Node.js
import { serve } from '@hono/node-server';
serve(app);

// Bun
export default app; // Bun.serve compatible

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

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

Hono vs Express vs Fastify

Feature Hono Express Fastify
Size 14KB 200KB 300KB
Runtime All Node only Node only
TypeScript Native @types needed Good
Validation Zod plugin Manual Ajv
RPC client Built-in None None
Edge support Native None None
Req/sec (Bun) 130K 45K 70K

The Verdict

Hono is the Express replacement for 2026. Faster, smaller, type-safe, and it runs everywhere. If you're building APIs — especially for edge runtimes — Hono is the modern choice.

Need help building production web scrapers or data pipelines? I build custom solutions. Reach out: spinov001@gmail.com

Check out my awesome-web-scraping collection — 400+ tools for extracting web data.

Top comments (0)