Hono ​

Hono - [炎] means flame🔥 in Japanese - is a small, simple, and ultrafast web framework for the Edges. It works on any JavaScript runtime: Cloudflare Workers, Fastly Compute@Edge, Deno, Bun, Vercel, Netlify, Lagon, AWS Lambda, Lambda@Edge, and Node.js.

Fast, but not only fast.

import { Hono } from 'hono'
const app = new Hono()

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

export default app

import { Hono } from 'hono'
const app = new Hono()

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

export default app

Quick Start ​

Just run this:

npm create hono@latest my-app

npm create hono@latest my-app

Features ​

• Ultrafast 🚀 - The router RegExpRouter is really fast. Not using linear loops. Fast.
• Lightweight 🪶 - The hono/tiny preset is under 12kB. Hono has zero dependencies and uses only the Web Standard API.
• Multi-runtime 🌍 - Works on Cloudflare Workers, Fastly Compute@Edge, Deno, Bun, Lagon, AWS Lambda, or Node.js. The same code runs on all platforms.
• Batteries Included 🔋 - Hono has built-in middleware, custom middleware, third-party middleware, and helpers. Batteries included.
• Delightful DX 🛠️ - Super clean APIs. First-class TypeScript support. Now, we've got "Types".

Use-cases ​

Hono is a simple web application framework similar to Express, without a frontend. But it runs on CDN Edges and allows you to construct larger applications when combined with middleware. Here are some examples of use-cases.

• Building Web APIs
• Proxy of backend servers
• Front of CDN
• Edge application
• Base server for a library
• Full-stack application

Who is using Hono? ​

And the following.

• Drivly - Cloudflare Workers
• repeat.dev - Cloudflare Workers

Hono in 1 minute ​

A demonstration to create an application for Cloudflare Workers with Hono.

Ultrafast ​

Hono is the fastest, compared to other routers for Cloudflare Workers.

Hono x 402,820 ops/sec ±4.78% (80 runs sampled)
itty-router x 212,598 ops/sec ±3.11% (87 runs sampled)
sunder x 297,036 ops/sec ±4.76% (77 runs sampled)
worktop x 197,345 ops/sec ±2.40% (88 runs sampled)
Fastest is Hono
✨  Done in 28.06s.

Hono x 402,820 ops/sec ±4.78% (80 runs sampled)
itty-router x 212,598 ops/sec ±3.11% (87 runs sampled)
sunder x 297,036 ops/sec ±4.76% (77 runs sampled)
worktop x 197,345 ops/sec ±2.40% (88 runs sampled)
Fastest is Hono
✨  Done in 28.06s.

See more benchmarks.

Lightweight ​

Hono is so small. With the hono/tiny preset, its size is under 12KB when minified. There are many middleware and adapters, but they are bundled only when used. For context, the size of Express is 572KB.

$ npx wrangler dev --minify ./src/index.ts
 ⛅️ wrangler 2.20.0
--------------------
⬣ Listening at http://0.0.0.0:8787
- http://127.0.0.1:8787
- http://192.168.128.165:8787
Total Upload: 11.47 KiB / gzip: 4.34 KiB

$ npx wrangler dev --minify ./src/index.ts
 ⛅️ wrangler 2.20.0
--------------------
⬣ Listening at http://0.0.0.0:8787
- http://127.0.0.1:8787
- http://192.168.128.165:8787
Total Upload: 11.47 KiB / gzip: 4.34 KiB

Multiple routers ​

Hono has multiple routers.

RegExpRouter is the fastest router in the JavaScript world. It matches the route using a single large Regex created before dispatch. With SmartRouter, it supports all route patterns.

LinearRouter registers the routes very quickly, so it's suitable for an environment that initializes applications every time. PatternRouter simply adds and matches the pattern, making it small.

See more information about routes.

Web Standard ​

Thanks to the use of the Web Standard API, Hono works on a lot of platforms.

• Cloudflare Workers
• Cloudflare Pages
• Fastly Compute@Edge
• Deno
• Bun
• Lagon
• Vercel
• AWS Lambda
• Lambda@Edge
• Others

And by using a Node.js adaptor, Hono works on Node.js.

See more information about Web Standard.

Middleware & Helpers ​

Hono has many middleware and helpers. These makes "Write Less, do more" a reality.

Out of the box, Hono provides middleware and helpers for:

• Basic Authentication
• Bearer Authentication
• Cache
• Compress
• Cookie
• CORS
• ETag
• html
• JSX
• JWT Authentication
• Logger
• Pretty JSON
• Secure Headers
• GraphQL Server
• Firebase Authentication
• Sentry
• Others!

For example, adding ETag and request logging only takes a few lines of code with Hono:

import { Hono } from 'hono'
import { etag } from 'hono/etag'
import { logger } from 'hono/logger'

const app = new Hono()
app.use('*', etag(), logger())

import { Hono } from 'hono'
import { etag } from 'hono/etag'
import { logger } from 'hono/logger'

const app = new Hono()
app.use('*', etag(), logger())

See more information about Middleware.

Developer Experience ​

Hono provides a delightful "Developer Experience".

Easy access to Request/Response thanks to the Context object. Moreover, Hono is written in TypeScript. Hono has "Types".

For example, the path parameters will be literal types.

And, the Validator and Hono Client hc enable the RPC mode. In RPC mode, you can use your favorite validator such as Zod and easily share server-side API specs with the client and build type-safe applications.

See Hono Stacks.