Introducing
The Slant team built an AI & it’s awesome
Find the best product instantly
Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to Safari
Try it now
4.7 star rating
0
Development
Web
What are the best node.js web frameworks?
16
Options
Considered
389
User
Recs.
Jul 26, 2022
Last
Updated
Related Questions
Activity
Have feedback or ideas?
Join our community
on Discord
Ad
16
Options
Considered
Best node.js web frameworks
Price
Repository
Platforms
71
Express.js
-
https://github.com/expressjs/express
Cross-platform
58
Adonisjs
-
-
-
45
Meteor
-
-
-
44
Sails.js
-
https://github.com/balderdashy/sails
-
--
Koa
-
-
-
See Full List
71
Express.js
My Rec
ommendation
for
Express.js
My Recommendation for
Express.js
All
14
Pros
12
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Setting up is very easy
Setting up a new Express project is very easy. It consists of installing a handful of libraries through NPM run a single npm install and everything is ready to go.
See More
Top
Con
•••
No single recommended way of doing something
Express considers itself to be a "minimalistic unopinionated framework", it basically lets the developer determine how their project will be organized. On one hand, this gives anyone terrific power and flexibility to use any library they want for a certain task and to organize their project structure however they want. But on the other hand, there's no single recommended way of organizing things, which can be a trap for beginners and experienced developers alike and result in unmaintainable projects.
See More
Specs
Repository:
https://github.com/expressjs/express
Platforms:
Cross-platform
License:
MIT
Written in:
JavaScript
See All Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Great routing API
Express' extremely powerful routing API allows developers to do tasks ranging from building a REST API to building the routes for a simple web app and then take it to the next level by using route parameters and query strings.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Great for beginner Node.js programmers
With a little learning curve, it is a good choice for new NodeJS developers to get started quickly. Express boasts great, thorough documentation.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Express.js is in the Node.js Foundation Incubator Program
Node.js Foundation Announcement here The Node.js Foundation is a Collaborative Project at The Linux Foundation. Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects are independently funded software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Relatively mature
Being a somewhat old Node.js web app framework and being one of the most widely used frameworks, Express.js has matured quite a lot during all that time. It's more stable than its competitors and a huge community backing it.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Support for a lot of plugins
Express takes advantage of Node's NPM to distribute and install countless plugins made by third parties which solve almost anything a developer would want to do with Express.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Has the largest userbase
It's by far the most popular framework for node.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Great supportive community
Express has a big community with a lot of guides and tutorials written about it by developers that have been using it for quite some time.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Good Oauth/Facebook integration with connect module
You can easily add oAuth integration/social logins to your next web app without much hassle, using this authentication middleware for connect.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Has detailed information
Very simple and fast.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Lightweight
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Massive ecosystem of middleware
If you have not already checked out the Express.js ecosystem of middleware, you should.
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
81
19
58
Adonisjs
My Rec
ommendation
for
Adonisjs
My Recommendation for
Adonisjs
All
13
Experiences
4
Pros
7
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Based on Laravel PHP Framework
If you are already programming in PHP with Laravel, you will have no trouble starting development with Node using Adonis.
See More
Top
Con
•••
No NOSQL integration
Only used ORM, not ODM.
See More
Tim Dodge's Experience
Super simple to use. Very familiar for anyone that's experienced with Laravel. Beautiful API.
See More
Specs
Language:
JavaScript
Top
Pro
•••
Similar to Rails
See More
EncouragingJowangsin's Experience
Node and PHP
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Built-in modules for everything
There are built-in modules for everything: Auth, Social Auth, mailing ect
See More
TirelessPhilotes's Experience
Considered ExpressJS but eventually went for AdonisJS. I needed both websockets and HTTP requests support and adonisjs has this out of the box. I'm also very familier with Laravel and just reusing the knowledge from Laravel on this was amazing.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Has websocket support out of the box
See More
ChattyCelaeno's Experience
Create a REST API with AdonisJs in few steps and well organized
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Very good documentation
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Easy to learn, especially if you're already familiar with Laravel
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Option for full-stack or api standalone implementation
You can choose to use the full-stack version or if you wish to build a RESTful API you can choose to use the api standalone version.
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
50
1
45
Meteor
My Rec
ommendation
for
Meteor
My Recommendation for
Meteor
All
26
Experiences
2
Pros
20
Cons
4
Top
Pro
•••
Full-stack reactivity
Changes in the database will be propagated to all subscribed clients in real time, without you having to write any code.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Difficult to integrate into existing projects
Because Meteor is full-stack (as opposed to just View), it seems like it would be difficult to integrate into existing projects, even if those projects used Mongo and Node.
See More
Nigel James's Experience
Totally unreliable on Windows
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Auto reload/refresh (hot code push)
Save a change in the source file and watch how all connected clients refresh automatically - browser tabs, mobile apps running in the simulator or on the physical device. Or, deploy a Meteor app (meteor deploy myapp) and all clients, plus all mobile apps with the server set to myapp.meteor.com will automatically reload to use the code changes. This drastically reduces the development cycle for apps in the App Store, where a regular update can wait for one to two weeks before being approved.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Requires reliable network connection
It's common for the front-end and back-end to lose sync if an internet connection is flaky. Even though the connection should be in real-time, if the connection is weak, you may lose that real-time sync. For example, in chat applications you may have to refresh the page to get the latest updated data from the server.
See More
afrizal yusren's Experience
Super easy to start
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Shared client/server code
The same code can be run on both the server and the client, because Meteor is a full-stack JavaScript-everywhere platform. A common example of code that should run on both the client and the server is input validation - on the client for speed/UX, and on the server for security (the client can't be trusted).
See More
Top
Con
•••
Officially supports only MongoDB, which is well-known to have issues with data integrity
MongoDB advertises scalability but only if you don't care about data-integrity. There are other backend options but none of them are officially supported.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Latency Compensation
The client will mimic instant server-side response, and updates automatically if it was different once the information is available
See More
Top
Con
•••
No native SEO support (no server-side rendering)
Meteor does not have support for server-side rendering of views, which is extremely helpful when it comes to SEO. However, there's a third-party server-side rendering package available for download. The Meteor team has also said that server-side rendering is on the roadmap.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Easy to learn
Meteor was developed with simplicity in mind, even for beginners who have just started using JavaScript frameworks. One of the reasons that beginners should start with Meteor is that Meteor is a full-stack framework, this way they can get the complete learning experience when it comes to web development (back-end and front-end development), all by using a single platform and a single language. Furthermore, Meteor does not have complex and esoteric concepts that may be hard to grasp by a beginner, it has a clear documentation and well-established coding conventions. There's also a very useful resource for learning Meteor in the form of a book: Discover Meteor, by the authors of many Meteor packages.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Popular
Meteor is the 10th most starred project on GitHub and has surpassed Rails in the number of GitHub stars.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Isomorphic package system
A Meteor package can supply code for both the client and the server, and for mobile (Cordova) apps. For example, an autocomplete package supplies both server code to search a collection, and client code to display the results. The mdg:camera package supports the native camera if the app is built for mobile, or the HTML getUserMedia API to take pictures from the browser.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Full-stack framework
Meteor is built on top of Node.js and jQuery on the client. Express, Sails, Hapi and others are only server-side frameworks. Angular, React, Ember, Backbone are client-only libraries. Meteor is a full-stack framework, enabling the client and server to communicate data seamlessly, in real-time. You don't have to write any REST API or pub/sub code - Meteor takes care of it all automatically for you.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Mobile apps from the same code base
Meteor can generate mobile (iOS and Android) apps from the same codebase as the web app, using the Cordova (PhoneGap) library (which brings native device functionality to JavaScript applications). You no longer need to learn Java, Objective-C or Swift to build native apps. Meteor-generated mobile apps are JavaScript, HTML and CSS bundles that run in a UIWebView (on iOS) or WebView (on Android). Apps can be run locally in the iOS/Android emulator, or on physical devices. You can also publish them to Google Play Store or Apple's App Store. Moreover, these hybrid mobile apps benefit from hot code push, which dramatically accelerates the development cycle.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
MongoDB
Meteor uses MongoDB, eliminating the choice among NoSQL databases. MongoDB is highly scalable - used to store petabytes of data and perform billions of operations daily at eBay, FIFA, Adobe, Craigslist, McAffee, Foursquare and others. However, any write locks the entire database. And no joins as in SQL.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
In-app debugging
The community behind Meteor has created a useful application for debugging Meteor apps that will automatically delete collections and display client-side documents, allow you to control subscriptions and lets you modify the documents. Meteor also has great support for server-side debugging, and WebStorm has also released full support for Meteor, including debugging capabilities.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Gets rid of the callback hell from Node
The server side runs on top of Node.js but eliminates callback hell by using Fibers
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Built-in security
Meteor takes care of many concerns with it's out-of-the-box security measures.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Various front-end libraries like Angular.js, React.js...
Meteor uses both your existing front-end library and it's own library called Blaze, which is integrated beautifully in the framework and fulfills the purpose of a true MV* front-end framework.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Powerful performance monitoring tools
Meteor uses Kadira which is an excellent performance monitoring tool for Meteor apps. It profiles CPU and RAM consumption, subscription latency and throughput etc.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Real-time testing framework
Meteor also has an official testing framework called Velocity. Velocity enables real-time unit testing and integration with Jasmine or Mocha syntax. Tests are automatically run when code is saved and the testing result is indicated by a green or red dot in the upper right corner of the app.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Future platform
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Extensive ecosystem
Meteor's package repository called Atmosphere has more than 5000 packages available. What's more is that Meteor can also use into the packages available for the Node ecosystem.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Integrated front-end library
Meteor uses both your existing front-end library and it's own library called Blaze, which is integrated beautifully in the framework and fulfills the purpose of a true MV* front-end framework.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Support for MySQL, PostgreSQL and Redis
While Meteor only supports MongoDB and Redis natively, MySQL support is on the roadmap, and there are 3rd-party packages that integrate MySQL reactively with Meteor to some extent, such as numtel:mysql. For reactive PostgreSQL support, there is numtel:pg.
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
45
21
44
Sails.js
My Rec
ommendation
for
Sails.js
My Recommendation for
Sails.js
All
11
Experiences
3
Pros
6
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Transparent support for Socket.io
Sails.js is built with a focus on building real time communication apps such as chat or multiplayer games, so naturally it has Socket.io extremely well supported.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Poor ORM
The built-in Waterline is not well designed and is not suitable for production environments. Populating more than 1 level deep is a nightmare, there is no transaction support, new features/bug fixes are not implemented anywhere near a timely manner (the most requested feature 'deep populate' has been lingering in their github issues list for over a year and a half now).
See More
ArtisticAphrodite's Experience
Was wonderful. Thats why I recommend this tech.
See More
Specs
Repository:
https://github.com/balderdashy/sails
Top
Pro
•••
MVC architecture
This could be a huge plus, if you prefer to build your apps using the Model View Controller architecture. Using Sails.js you'll find the task of separating the business logic from the user interface and keeping the interactions between them in a separate layer, extremely easy.
See More
ThoroughKishar's Experience
Used sails for many projects and my experience was great! The documentation is very complete and very flexible
See More
Top
Pro
•••
JSON API generated for free
Exposes public JSON API for free. No additional routing to be defined. Makes it pretty easy to access data from anywhere.
See More
IndependentCizin's Experience
I've been working with Sails for 4 years now, my experience has been great since day one. Sails has great documentation, it is easy to understand even if you are completely new in server side javascript. It is not perfect, as anything but I highly recommend it.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
ORM that can be plugged into any database, or even custom web service
Sails.js uses Waterline ORM at its backend which means you can store your data in any datastore that you like; all you have to do is make a change to the Waterline adapter, this will allow you to store your data in MySQL/Redis or any other kind of database.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
So easy to deploy and lift
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Great documentation and structure
Clear documentation and easy to understand. The file structure gives you a way to understand where you can start to develop when you encounter a new Sails project
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
33
13
--
Koa
My Rec
ommendation
for
Koa
My Recommendation for
Koa
All
8
Pros
7
Cons
1
Top
Pro
•••
Developed by the original Express.js team
See More
Top
Con
•••
Community is relatively small
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Even more modular and lightweight than Express
Extremely powerful when it's used alongside with electrolyte.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Basically next generation Express
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Async/await keywords are supported and has transcended beyond generator functions
Generators functions are of course a huge plus, but at the time Koa team has transcended generations functions and shifted towards async/await style programming. It has made the Koa best framework available in the market.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Promise based
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Extremely lightweight
With just 550 lines of code.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Generator support from ground up
Using generators (a bleeding edge feature, even for Node.js) would clean up your code from the mess caused by all those callbacks; making your code more manageable.
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
15
7
--
FeathersJS
My Rec
ommendation
for
FeathersJS
My Recommendation for
FeathersJS
All
9
Experiences
1
Pros
8
Top
Pro
•••
Can sync events between different Node instances
Feather can sync events happening in two different Node processes or even servers in real-time. For example: an event happens in server A, the user connected to server B is instantly notified of that event. This is done through a central Redis or Mongo collection or through a websocket libraries' clustering library.
See More
TalentedKayra's Experience
it's very good
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Easy REST APIs
Through services, Feathers provides instant CRUD functionality, it also can easily expose a RESTful and real-time API through HTTP/HTTPS and websockets.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Great generator feature
You can setup resources in no time.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Support for different socket transports
FeatherJS uses primus which is a universal wrapper for real-time frameworks. Through primus you can easily choose which socket transport you want to use.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Plug-in any feature you need
Feathers makes extensive use of modules (which are called Feathers services). These services work like ExpressJS middleware and can be used with app.use('/path', serviceObject). Services help developers keep their applications modular and as minimal as possible, without any unnecessary libraries or bloat.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Framework agnostic
You may use it with express or without express.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Isomorphic
You could use same code for accessing the services on frontend and backend. Feathers client provides paging, search, etc. out of the box.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Can be integrated in an existing ExpressJS project
Since Feathers itself is built on top of Express (it's a thin wrapper over socket.io, primus and Express) and because of Feathers' highly modular nature, it's very easy to integrate Feathers in an existing Express project.
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
14
--
Total.js
My Rec
ommendation
for
Total.js
My Recommendation for
Total.js
All
16
Pros
8
Cons
8
Top
Con
•••
Developed only by one person
Framework is developed by only one person.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
No dependencies
Which in other words means, a high performance solid core which provides you with a with a minimal (but stable) layer to build your app on.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Paid support
Framework lacks any community, if you need support you are forced to buy support package from developer.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Websocket support
Up to date with Websocket RFC 6455.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Best practices
This framework doesn't adhere to any best practices in software development.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Automated compression
Minification and gzip compression is built in and automatic.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Poor design
Framework is designed very poorly, autocomplete in IDEs don't work.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Good documentation and examples
Often updated examples and well written documentation.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Poor documentation
Source code is very poorly documented, only available information is on the official website.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Getting the things done efficiently without useless ceremony
Following and adding to Node.js the proven battle-tested paradigm implemented by Django, Laravel & ASP.NET MVC.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Prototype pollution
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Good support
See More
Top
Con
•••
Node IDE support or Autocomplete
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Really reactive community and developers on their Chat
https://my.totaljs.com/
See More
Top
Con
•••
Poor performance
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Working on all versions of the node.js
See More
Hide
See All
0
Recommend
28
13
--
Loopback
My Rec
ommendation
for
Loopback
My Recommendation for
Loopback
All
3
Experiences
1
Pros
1
Cons
1
Top
Pro
•••
Easy to get a project up and running
Easily and quickly get going.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Strong-PM process manager
It's not required to run a loopback app and can be a pain to deal with.
See More
Florian Fuss's Experience
Good concept
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
10
--
Restify
My Rec
ommendation
for
Restify
My Recommendation for
Restify
All
3
Pros
2
Cons
1
Top
Con
•••
Performance is not very optimum
As most of the benchmarks have already revealed, for large inflows of traffic, apps powered by Restify perform below par and are easily beaten by Express.js in terms of load time (in heavy traffic).
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Automatic DTrace support
DTrace helps you with troubleshooting and building robust RESTful applications.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Specialized for Restful APIs
As the name suggests, Restify is devoted solely to creating an elegant REST API. The API is the core of your site or service, so it makes sense to use a framework that excels at that.
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
3
--
Hapi.js
My Rec
ommendation
for
Hapi.js
My Recommendation for
Hapi.js
All
2
Experiences
1
Pros
1
Top
Pro
•••
Auto-generated API documentation
It's Joi-aware.
See More
EarnestMihr's Experience
Implemented a couple of products with it.
See More
Hide
Get it
here
Recommend
17
8
--
Mach
My Rec
ommendation
for
Mach
My Recommendation for
Mach
All
5
Pros
5
Top
Pro
•••
Streaming
Mach has some pretty cool streaming functionalities built directly into it, if your web app provides any audio/video/data streaming features, you can consider using Mach to build it.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Composability
Since Mach already is asynchronous (stateless) which means your logic is implemented by using promises (then objects); hence your functions are pretty independent and composable.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Simplicity
No complex layers between plain HTTP requests and the corresponding JS functions invoked. Which in turn means each GET/POST/PUT or any other HTTP request is directly mapped to a Javascript function. Hence leading to a huge increase in performance for your app
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Robust
One of the distinguishing features of Mach is it's robustness, errors won't be terminating your complete app, instead they'll bubble up so you can handle them gracefully.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Asynchronous
Like most of the Node.js's core, Mach is an asynchronous web framework too. Each response (of a request) can simply be hooked up to a then method so that its result or the reason for failure can be retrieved after the action is complete. If you're wondering what async operations are, here's a pretty good explanation for you
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
2
--
Moleculer
My Rec
ommendation
for
Moleculer
My Recommendation for
Moleculer
All
1
Experiences
1
ThoughtfulArohirohi's Experience
Very easy to implement business logic
See More
Hide
0
Recommend
4
--
Geddy.js
My Rec
ommendation
for
Geddy.js
My Recommendation for
Geddy.js
Hide
Get it
here
Recommend
2
--
FoollJS
My Rec
ommendation
for
FoollJS
My Recommendation for
FoollJS
All
1
Pros
1
Top
Pro
•••
Perfect for team work
FollJS is perfect for teamwork: everyone works on his own folder, ensuring that work progresses smoothly, with no major conflicts or problems.
See More
Hide
Get it
here
Recommend
3
--
Socket Stream
My Rec
ommendation
for
Socket Stream
My Recommendation for
Socket Stream
All
1
Pros
1
Top
Pro
•••
Specialized for real time websites
See More
Hide
Recommend
--
Flatiron
My Rec
ommendation
for
Flatiron
My Recommendation for
Flatiron
All
1
Pros
1
Top
Pro
•••
Supported by Nodejitsu
See More
Hide
Recommend
Don't see your favorite option? Add it.
Built By the Slant team
Find the best product instantly.
4.7 star rating
Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to Safari
Try it now - it's free
One sec!
Are you sure that you want to abandon your hard work?
Delete Work
Continue working
{}
undefined
url next
price drop