Express

Express is the Honda Civic of Node.js frameworks — it's everywhere, it works, and nobody's excited about it anymore. At 68k stars and 14 years old, it's the most deployed Node.js framework in existence. Every tutorial, every boilerplate, every Stack Overflow answer assumes Express.

Fastify is 2-3x faster with built-in schema validation and JSON serialization. Hono is the new generation — TypeScript-first, runs on every edge runtime (Cloudflare Workers, Deno, Bun, Lambda), and its same-code-everywhere promise is genuinely compelling. Both are better technical choices for new projects.

Use Express if your team knows it, your codebase already uses it, or you need maximum library compatibility. The middleware ecosystem is unmatched.

The catch: Express is synchronous by design and shows its age. No built-in TypeScript support, no schema validation, no structured error handling. Express 5 has been "coming soon" for years. For new projects in 2026, starting with Fastify or Hono is the forward-looking choice — Express is for maintaining what already exists.