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overviewFeatures

Last Updated: 3/9/2026

Features and Capabilities

Hono is a small, simple, and ultrafast web framework that brings powerful features to edge computing and beyond.

Core Features

🚀 Ultrafast Performance

Hono is the fastest web framework for edge runtimes. The RegExpRouter achieves exceptional performance by converting all routes into a single large regular expression, enabling one-time matching instead of linear loops.

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

Why it matters: Faster response times mean better user experience and lower infrastructure costs, especially important in serverless environments where execution time directly impacts billing.

See also: Performance Benchmarks for detailed comparisons.

🪶 Lightweight Bundle Size

With the hono/tiny preset, Hono is under 14KB when minified. Zero dependencies. Only Web Standards.

$ npx wrangler dev --minify ./src/index.ts
Total Upload: 11.47 KiB / gzip: 4.34 KiB

For comparison, Express is 572KB.

Why it matters: Smaller bundles mean faster cold starts in serverless environments and reduced bandwidth costs.

🌍 Multi-Runtime Support

The same code runs on any JavaScript runtime:

  • Edge Runtimes: Cloudflare Workers, Fastly Compute, Vercel Edge, Netlify Edge
  • Serverless: AWS Lambda, Lambda@Edge, Google Cloud Functions, Azure Functions
  • Traditional: Node.js, Bun, Deno
  • Client-Side: Service Workers, Browser

Why it matters: Write once, deploy anywhere. No vendor lock-in. Easy migration between platforms.

// This exact code works on ALL platforms
import { Hono } from 'hono'
 
const app = new Hono()
app.get('/', (c) => c.text('Hello!'))
 
export default app

See also: Web Standards explains how this works.

🔋 Batteries Included

Hono provides everything you need out of the box:

Authentication & Security:

  • Basic Authentication
  • Bearer Token Authentication
  • JWT (JSON Web Tokens)
  • CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing)
  • CSRF Protection
  • Secure Headers
  • IP Restriction

Performance & Optimization:

  • Compression (gzip, deflate, brotli)
  • ETag generation
  • Cache control
  • Streaming responses
  • Static Site Generation (SSG)

Developer Tools:

  • Request logging
  • Pretty JSON formatting
  • Request ID tracking
  • Performance timing headers
  • Context storage

Content Handling:

  • Cookie parsing and setting
  • Body parsing (JSON, form, multipart)
  • File uploads
  • HTML templating with JSX
  • GraphQL server support

See also: Middleware Overview for the complete list.

😃 Delightful Developer Experience

Hono is built with TypeScript and provides first-class type safety:

Type-safe path parameters:

app.get('/posts/:id', (c) => {
  const id = c.req.param('id') // TypeScript knows this is a string
  //    ^? const id: string
})

Type-safe validation:

app.post('/posts',
  zValidator('json', z.object({
    title: z.string(),
    published: z.boolean()
  })),
  (c) => {
    const data = c.req.valid('json')
    //    ^? { title: string; published: boolean }
  }
)

Type-safe RPC client:

// Server
const app = new Hono().get('/api/posts/:id', (c) => 
  c.json({ id: c.req.param('id'), title: 'Hello' })
)
 
// Client - fully typed!
const client = hc<typeof app>('http://localhost')
const res = await client.api.posts[':id'].$get({ param: { id: '123' } })
const data = await res.json()
//    ^? { id: string; title: string }

See also: RPC Client Guide for type-safe API development.

Use Cases

Hono excels in these scenarios:

Building Web APIs

Create RESTful APIs with routing, validation, and middleware:

const api = new Hono()
  .get('/users', (c) => c.json({ users: [...] }))
  .post('/users', zValidator('json', userSchema), (c) => {
    const user = c.req.valid('json')
    // Create user...
    return c.json({ user }, 201)
  })

Backend Proxy

Proxy requests to backend services with authentication and caching:

app.use('/api/*', async (c, next) => {
  const token = c.req.header('Authorization')
  // Verify token...
  await next()
})
 
app.all('/api/*', async (c) => {
  const url = new URL(c.req.url)
  url.hostname = 'backend.example.com'
  return fetch(url, c.req.raw)
})

CDN Edge Applications

Deploy at the edge for minimal latency:

app.get('/content/:id', cache({ cacheName: 'content' }), async (c) => {
  const content = await fetchFromOrigin(c.req.param('id'))
  return c.json(content)
})

Full-Stack Applications

Combine API routes with JSX templating:

app.get('/', (c) => {
  return c.html(
    <Layout>
      <h1>Welcome</h1>
    </Layout>
  )
})
 
app.get('/api/data', (c) => c.json({ data: [...] }))

Library Base Server

Provide a lightweight server for your library:

import { Hono } from 'hono'
import { myLibrary } from './lib'
 
export function createServer(options) {
  const app = new Hono()
  app.post('/process', async (c) => {
    const result = await myLibrary.process(await c.req.json())
    return c.json(result)
  })
  return app
}

What Makes Hono Different?

vs Express

  • Faster: 2-3x faster routing performance
  • Smaller: 14KB vs 572KB
  • Modern: Built for edge runtimes, not just Node.js
  • Type-safe: First-class TypeScript support
  • Web Standards: Uses Request/Response, not Node.js-specific APIs

vs Fastify

  • Multi-runtime: Works on edge, serverless, and traditional runtimes
  • Lighter: Smaller bundle size
  • Simpler: Less configuration, easier to learn
  • Edge-first: Optimized for edge computing

vs Next.js API Routes

  • Portable: Not tied to Vercel or Next.js
  • Faster: Better performance for API-only applications
  • Flexible: Works on any runtime
  • RPC: Built-in type-safe client

What’s Next?

PerformancePhilosophy