Hono Has the Fastest Web Framework — Here's Why It's Replacing Express Everywhere

Express is 14 years old. Hono is ultrafast, runs everywhere (Cloudflare Workers, Deno, Bun, Node, AWS Lambda), and has zero dependencies.

Why Hono?

• Ultrafast: Based on RegExpRouter, faster than Express/Fastify
• Multi-runtime: Same code runs on Cloudflare Workers, Deno, Bun, Node.js, AWS Lambda
• Zero dependencies: Tiny bundle size
• Type-safe: Full TypeScript with RPC-like client

Quick Start

bun create hono my-app
cd my-app && bun install && bun run dev

import { Hono } from "hono";

const app = new Hono();

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

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

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

export default app;

Middleware

import { Hono } from "hono";
import { cors } from "hono/cors";
import { logger } from "hono/logger";
import { jwt } from "hono/jwt";
import { compress } from "hono/compress";
import { cache } from "hono/cache";

const app = new Hono();

app.use("*", logger());
app.use("*", cors());
app.use("*", compress());

// Protected routes
app.use("/api/*", jwt({ secret: "my-secret" }));

// Cache static responses
app.use("/static/*", cache({ cacheName: "static", cacheControl: "max-age=3600" }));

Zod Validation

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

const createUserSchema = z.object({
  name: z.string().min(1),
  email: z.string().email(),
  age: z.number().min(18),
});

app.post("/users", zValidator("json", createUserSchema), (c) => {
  const user = c.req.valid("json"); // Fully typed!
  return c.json({ created: true, user });
});

RPC Client (Type-Safe API Calls)

// Server
const routes = app
  .get("/users", (c) => c.json([{ id: 1, name: "Alice" }]))
  .post("/users", zValidator("json", createUserSchema), (c) => {
    return c.json({ id: 2, ...c.req.valid("json") });
  });

type AppType = typeof routes;

// Client (auto-generated types!)
import { hc } from "hono/client";

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

Deploy Anywhere

// Cloudflare Workers
export default app;

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

// Bun
export default app; // Bun auto-detects

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

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

Hono vs Express vs Fastify

Feature	Hono	Express	Fastify
Speed	Fastest	Slow	Fast
Runtime	Multi	Node only	Node only
TypeScript	Native	Types pkg	Good
Dependencies	Zero	~30	~10
Bundle Size	~14KB	~200KB	~100KB
Validation	Built-in	Manual	Ajv

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