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Fastify vs Hono
Trust Score comparison · March 2026
Signal Comparison
3M / wknpm downloads1.2M / wk
120 commitsCommits (90d)250 commits
33k ★GitHub stars22k ★
5k q'sStack Overflow500 q's
HighCommunityGrowing
FastifyHono
Key Differences
| Factor | Fastify | Hono |
|---|---|---|
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Language | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Hosted | Self-hosted | Self-hosted |
| Free tier | — | — |
| Open Source | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| TypeScript | ✓ | ✓ |
Pick Fastify if…
- Performance-critical Node.js APIs where Express is a bottleneck
- JSON-heavy APIs that benefit from schema-validated serialization
- Teams who want Express familiarity with far better performance
Pick Hono if…
- Cloudflare Workers or edge runtimes where bundle size matters
- Building fast REST APIs with a minimal, Express-style API in TypeScript
- Multi-runtime apps that need to run on Bun, Deno, and Node.js
Side-by-side Quick Start
Fastify
import Fastify from 'fastify';
const app = Fastify({ logger: true });
app.get('/', async (request, reply) => {
return { hello: 'world' };
});
await app.listen({ port: 3000 });Hono
import { Hono } from 'hono';
const app = new Hono();
app.get('/', (c) => c.text('Hello Hono!'));
app.get('/user/:id', (c) => c.json({ id: c.req.param('id') }));
export default app;Community Verdict
Based on upvoted notes🏆
Hono wins this comparison
Trust Score 84 vs 83 · 1-point difference
Hono leads on Trust Score with stronger signal data across downloads and community health. That said, the other tool is worth considering if your use case matches its specific strengths above.