Hono

Hono is the web framework built on Web Standards — your code runs on Cloudflare Workers, Deno, Bun, AWS Lambda, Vercel Edge, and Node.js without changing a line. A 7.6KB gzipped bundle with 2.8M weekly downloads (up 340% year-over-year) and growing fast.

The Fetch API foundation means no Node.js-specific abstractions to learn or unlearn. Middleware ecosystem is solid: JWT, CORS, rate limiting, OpenAPI docs. Compared to Express (legacy, 65% market share but showing age), Hono is modern and portable. Compared to Fastify (faster on Node.js specifically), Hono runs everywhere. Compared to Elysia (Bun-optimized, newer), Hono has more runtime support and community.

Use this when you're building APIs that might deploy to edge runtimes, serverless functions, or multiple platforms. Also great for Cloudflare Workers where bundle size matters. Skip this if you need Express's massive middleware ecosystem or Fastify's raw Node.js throughput.

The catch: "runs everywhere" means testing everywhere too. Edge runtime limitations (no filesystem, no native modules) constrain what you can do. And the Web Standards foundation means some Node.js libraries won't work directly. MIT license.