Fastify vs. Express (2024)

Fastify vs. Express (1)Educative Answers Team

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With plenty of web frameworks out there, it gets hard for web developers to choose the right one for their project.
It is essential to choose the right web framework as it saves developers time and effort when developing web applications like web services, web resources, and web APIs.

Fastify and Express are two web frameworks for Node.js. In this shot, we will compare both these frameworks and highlight some key differences.

Express, or Express.js, is a web application framework that has been around for quite a long time and has become the standard server framework for Node.js.


About Fastify

Fastify vs. Express (3)

Fastify is inspired by Hapi and Express and provides a faster alternative to Express with less overhead. It is built as a general-purpose web framework, but it shines when it comes to its fast HTTP APIs.

Fastify vs. Express

Both frameworks are open-source and actively developed.

Fastify claims to be the fastest web framework around. Benchmarks back up their claim with Fastify performing nearly twice as fast as Express in a simple ‘hello world’ overhead benchmark. The only case where Fastify falls behind Express is in handling empty requests.

Fastify vs. Express (4)

Fastify provides full encapsulation for plug-ins, automatically parses JSON with relatively faster rendering, and provides quick routing. Among other benefits, Fastify also has a cleaner syntax for writing async code in controllers.

Express, however, has a stronger user base with plenty of documentation available. Express is so popular that it is ubiquitously associated with Node.js and part of the MEAN and MERN stack.

In summary, Fastify promises faster performance with low overhead, but Express is a familiar framework that many developers may be more comfortable working with.

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Fastify vs. Express (2024)

FAQs

Is fastify better than Express? ›

While Fastify's plugin system is powerful, its ecosystem is smaller than Express's. As a result, you might need to create custom plugins for specific use cases. There's a set of core plugins which is maintained by Fastify team, and there's also a set of community plugins that's backed by fastify team.

How much faster is fastify than Express? ›

As we can see fastify is consistently faster than express by 2 - 3 seconds. By average, we can calculate that fastify needs 6.27 seconds while express need 8.6 seconds. Fastify is the winner with 27.3% faster.

What are the advantages of fastify? ›

One of Fastify's biggest pros in serverless applications is the ease of development. In your local environment, you will always run the Fastify application directly, without the need for any additional tools, while the same code will be executed in your serverless platform of choice with an additional snippet of code.

Is fastify compatible with Express? ›

The fastify-express plugin adds full Express compatibility to Fastify. It provides a use() method which we can use to add Express middleware and routes to our Fastify server. This gives us the option of gradually migrating parts of an existing Express application over to Fastify.

Who are competitors of fastify? ›

Alternatives to Fastify
  • LoopBack. LoopBack. See Software Compare Both. TypeScript and Node. ...
  • AdonisJS. AdonisJS. See Software Compare Both. ...
  • hapi. hapi. Free. ...
  • NestJS. NestJS. See Software Compare Both. ...
  • Aurelia. Aurelia. Free. ...
  • restify. restify. Free. ...
  • Axon Framework. AxonIQ. $73.05 per month. ...
  • Foundation. Foundation Framework. Free.

Which logger is best for fastify? ›

As Fastify is focused on performance, it uses pino as its logger, with the default log level, when enabled, set to 'info' .

Do people still use ExpressJS? ›

According to Stack Overflow's 2022 survey, ExpressJS is still among the most widely used web frameworks, and it is considered a very rational choice to build large-scale applications with. Express is a JavaScript framework, so both the frontend and the backend can be built using the same (extremely popular) language.

Is there something better than ExpressJS? ›

Fastify is aimed at helping developers quickly build high-performance APIs and web apps in NodeJS and TypeScript. It processes requests 20% faster than ExpressJS, making it a good ExpressJS alternative.

Should I learn NestJS or Express? ›

As you already know, NestJS is written in and supports TypeScript. As TypeScript follows status typing and includes a “type” feature, Nest is more reliable and suitable to develop large-scale applications. Express doesn't support TypeScript because of which your application may not run on multiple browsers.

Is fastify slower than Express? ›

fastify is a competitive library of express , which uses faster speed as a weapon. And one of the reason why fastify is faster than express is, fast-json-stringify. fast-json-stringify is another library what fastify team had developed, which boosts up JSON conversion speed by analyzing JSON schema definition.

What is fastify Express alternative? ›

Bareserver is an extremely simple and fast web server for Node. It's a new way to build RESTful services. It's a minimal alternative to Express, Fastify, and the like.

Does NestJS use fastify? ›

A significant advantage of NestJS is that it is framework-independent. Instead of using Express, we can use an adapter using another library with a similar request/response pipeline. The most popular implementation besides Express is the Fastify adapter.

How many requests can Express handle per second? ›

A benchmark made by Fastify, shows that Express. js can handle approx 15,000 requests per second and the basic HTTP module, 70K requests per second.

Do any companies use ExpressJS? ›

Express. js is used by Fox Sports, PayPal, Uber and IBM.

Does fastify have middleware? ›

Fastify offers some alternatives to the most commonly used middleware, such as @fastify/helmet in case of helmet , @fastify/cors for cors , and @fastify/static for serve-static .

How old is fastify? ›

It has been a long journey beginning in the summer of 2016, when we started developing fast-json-stringify, a little library that doubled the throughput of `JSON. stringify`. In September 2016, Fastify was born.

Is fastify a framework? ›

Fastify is a web framework highly focused on providing the best developer experience with the least overhead and a powerful plugin architecture, inspired by Hapi and Express. As far as we know, it is one of the fastest web frameworks in town.

How fast is fastify? ›

Fastify is around 20% faster than Express in almost every request. The only exception is a request with an empty response (possible due to an issue with a code). The test is done without any schema optimizations, just out of the box.

Which is the best logging tool Python? ›

Logging Django

Django is the most popular web application framework for Python. It uses the standard Python logging module and provides a hierarchy of predefined loggers, including: django , the root logger. All other loggers derive from this.

Which logger is best for node apps? ›

Some of the best Node. js loggers are Pino, Winston, Bunyan, Signale, Tracer, Npmlog, etc. Each type of logger has its own features like profiling, filtering, streaming, and transportation. Some loggers support colored consoles, and some are suitable for handling sensitive information.

Which logger is best for spring boot? ›

Spring Boot uses Apache Commons logging for all internal logging. Spring Boot's default configurations provides a support for the use of Java Util Logging, Log4j2, and Logback. Using these, we can configure the console logging as well as file logging.

Should I use Express in 2023? ›

js in 2023. For years, express. js has been the standard choice for building REST APIs with JavaScript or TypeScript.

Is NodeJS still relevant 2023? ›

NodeJS is absolutely still relevant in 2023. In 2022 Node. js overtook Javascript code library React. js to become the most commonly used framework for web development worldwide.

Do I really need ExpressJS? ›

Express. js can reduce the coding time by half and still help us build efficient web applications. It not only reduces the time but it also reduces the effort required to build web apps with the help of its different features. Another reason to use Express.

What will replace ExpressJS? ›

5 Alternatives to Express. js
  • Nest. js. Nest. js is a progressive Node. ...
  • Fastify. Fastify is a web framework for Node. js designed to be fast. It's known for its high performance and ability to handle many requests with minimal overhead. ...
  • Sails. js. Sails. js is a web framework for Node. ...
  • Hapi. js. Hapi. ...
  • Koa. js. Koa.
Mar 18, 2023

What is the best middleware for NodeJS? ›

Recommended Express middleware libraries

Express is the most popular framework when building NodeJS web applications.

Is ExpressJS good for large applications? ›

ExpressJS is designed to be scalable and efficient, making it suitable for building large and complex web applications. ExpressJS has a large and active community of developers who contribute to its development and provide support to one another.

Why is NestJS so popular? ›

NestJS makes it possible to create outstanding, well-organized, and lightweight microservices. Due to the structure imposed by NestJs, developers must write the controller, service, and repository in specific locations and in a specific manner.

Why i don't use NestJS? ›

Do not use NestJS if: You are building micro-services. The level of abstraction is too generic with overly simple examples in the documentation and it does not allow for the level of granular control needed.

What is the average salary for NestJS? ›

In YouTeam, the average hourly rate of NestJS developers is $55.

What is the size limit of fastify? ›

For security reasons, @fastify/multipart sets the limit for parts and fileSize being 1000 and 1048576 respectively.

Should I use NestJS over Express? ›

NestJS has several advantages over Express: TypeScript support: NestJS is built on top of TypeScript, which provides strong typing and better code organization. This makes it easier to maintain and scale large applications.

Can I use Nextjs instead of Express? ›

Next. js doesn't replace Express and you can use them together. Next. js uses some Node.

What is the downside of NestJS? ›

While NestJS has many advantages, there are also some potential disadvantages to consider when using this backend framework. These include: Debugging: Debugging can be painful, mostly because of TypeORM. Learning curve: For developers who don't have experience with Angular, Nest.

Is NestJS good for Microservices? ›

In fact, NestJS provides a range of advanced features that can be used to build robust and scalable microservices. Let's explore these features in more detail. One helpful feature of NestJS is the ability to use pipes to transform incoming request data.

Who is NestJS competitor? ›

Top 10 NestJS Alternatives
  • Ext Js. Ext Js is the best alternative for NestJS. ...
  • Jhipster. Another best alternative for NestJS is Jhipster. ...
  • Angular. It is free and open-source web application framework written in typescript language. ...
  • Express. js. ...
  • D3. Js. ...
  • Moment. js. ...
  • Backbone. js. ...
  • CreateJS. Another alternative for Nest.

How to handle 1,000 requests per second? ›

To handle high traffic, you should setup Load Balancer with multiple node/instances. Better to go with Auto Scaling on Cloud server. It will increase the instances as per high load (number of request) and again decrease the instances when there will be low number of requests. Which is cost effective.

How many requests can fastify handle? ›

Let's cover a few of the features that makes Fastify so performant: Fast—able to serve up to 30,000 requests per second (depending on code complexity) Fully extensible via its hooks, plugins and decorators. Expressive and developer friendly.

How many is too many HTTP requests? ›

You should strive to keep the number of HTTP requests under 50. If you can get requests below 25, you're doing amazing. By their nature, HTTP requests are not bad. Your site needs them to function and look good.

Does Uber still use NodeJs? ›

js in 2023. Here are the companies using Node. js: Netflix, NASA, Trello, PayPal, LinkedIn, Walmart, Uber, Twitter, Yahoo, eBay, GoDaddy, and got much better results.

Does Netflix still use NodeJs? ›

It is supported on a variety of operating systems, including Mac OS, Unix, Linux, and Windows, and employs JavaScript for server-side code. Netflix does use NodeJs, thus the answer to your inquiry is indeed yes.

Why Netflix moved to NodeJs? ›

Netflix switched its APIs for the different platforms (Mobile, TV, Laptops etc.) from Groovy scripts, running as a single monolith, to Node. js + restify instances, running in separate Docker containers. That way they run faster and scale better, versioning is easier, and the development speed has vastly improved.

Is middleware still being used? ›

Data management, application services, messaging, authentication, and application programming interface (API) management are all commonly handled by middleware. Today middleware is the technological foundation for modern cloud-native architectures.

Is Fastify open source? ›

Fastify is an OPEN Open Source Project.

How to use Mongodb in fastify? ›

Connect to MongoDB

exports = async function application (app, opts) { // ... app. register(require('fastify-mongodb'), { url: 'mongodb://localhost:27017/todo-list' }) // our code.. } Running npm run mongo:start will start a mongodb container and npm run mongo:stop will stop it.

What is better than ExpressJS? ›

Koa. js was designed to be more lightweight and flexible than Express. It uses a simple middleware architecture that allows you to easily add or remove functionality as needed.

Why is NestJS better than ExpressJS? ›

Nest follows the MVC design pattern while Express doesn't. NestJS provides ready-to-use components like controllers, providers, and modules with which you can easily implement UI and control logic and data. As ExpressJS doesn't follow MVC, there is no proper structure.

Is NestJS better than Express? ›

If you're building a large-scale enterprise application with complex business logic, NestJS may be the better choice. If you're building a small to medium-sized web application or API, or you require a lot of customization and low-level control, Express may be the better choice.

What is the salary of NodeJS developer? ›

Node JS Developer salary in India ranges between ₹ 1.2 Lakhs to ₹ 11.9 Lakhs with an average annual salary of ₹ 4.2 Lakhs. Salary estimates are based on 1.9k latest salaries received from Node JS Developers.

Should I use ExpressJS or NextJS? ›

And the main difference between ExpressJS and NextJS is that, If you are building an API or a server-side application, then the ideal option would be to use ExpressJS as it is lightweight, flexible, fast, has a large developer community, and comes with certain plugins for app development.

Does NodeJS have a future? ›

The future of NodeJS looks promising as it continues to be the most widely used web framework by developers globally. With popular websites such as Netflix, PayPal, and LinkedIn using NodeJS, it's clear that it's the go-to choice for high-traffic websites and real-time applications.

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