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What are the best Express.js alternatives?

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Koa vs Strapi vs Hapi

 vs NestJS vs Sails.js vs FeathersJS vs fastify vs Moleculer vs aex vs purplecheerio-wave vs Express vs Remult

Specs

License

-

Platforms

-

Technology

-

Multi Language Support

-

Template Engine

-

Database

-

Written in

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Repository

-

Initial release

-

Price

-

Language

-

Examples Repository

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Tools Repository

-

website

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License

MIT

Platforms

Windows, Linux, Mac, Docker

Technology

Node.js

Multi Language Support

Yes

Template Engine

All

Database

Mongo, MySQL, Postgres, MariaDB, SQLite

Written in

-

Repository

-

Initial release

-

Price

-

Language

-

Examples Repository

-

Tools Repository

-

website

-

License

BSD-3-Clause

Platforms

Cross-platform

Technology

-

Multi Language Support

-

Template Engine

-

Database

-

Written in

JavaScript

Repository

https://github.com/hapijs/hapi

Initial release

August 21 , 2012

Price

-

Language

-

Examples Repository

-

Tools Repository

-

website

-

License

-

Platforms

-

Technology

-

Multi Language Support

-

Template Engine

-

Database

-

Written in

TypeScript

Repository

-

Initial release

-

Price

FREE

Language

-

Examples Repository

-

Tools Repository

-

website

-

License

-

Platforms

-

Technology

-

Multi Language Support

-

Template Engine

-

Database

-

Written in

-

Repository

https://github.com/balderdashy/sails

Initial release

-

Price

-

Language

-

Examples Repository

-

Tools Repository

-

website

-

License

-

Platforms

-

Technology

-

Multi Language Support

-

Template Engine

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Database

-

Written in

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Repository

-

Initial release

-

Price

-

Language

-

Examples Repository

-

Tools Repository

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website

-

License

-

Platforms

-

Technology

-

Multi Language Support

-

Template Engine

-

Database

-

Written in

-

Repository

-

Initial release

-

Price

-

Language

-

Examples Repository

-

Tools Repository

-

website

-

License

-

Platforms

-

Technology

-

Multi Language Support

-

Template Engine

-

Database

-

Written in

-

Repository

-

Initial release

-

Price

-

Language

-

Examples Repository

-

Tools Repository

-

website

-

License

-

Platforms

-

Technology

-

Multi Language Support

-

Template Engine

-

Database

-

Written in

-

Repository

-

Initial release

-

Price

-

Language

-

Examples Repository

-

Tools Repository

-

website

-

License

MIT

Platforms

-

Technology

-

Multi Language Support

-

Template Engine

-

Database

-

Written in

javascript

Repository

https://github.com/purplecheerio/

Initial release

-

Price

-

Language

NodeJs

Examples Repository

https://github.com/purplecheerio/wave

Tools Repository

https://github.com/purplecheerio/tools

website

https://purplecheer.io/wave.html

License

-

Platforms

-

Technology

-

Multi Language Support

-

Template Engine

-

Database

-

Written in

-

Repository

-

Initial release

-

Price

-

Language

-

Examples Repository

-

Tools Repository

-

website

-

License

MIT

Platforms

-

Technology

-

Multi Language Support

-

Template Engine

-

Database

-

Written in

TypeScript

Repository

https://github.com/remult/remult

Initial release

-

Price

-

Language

-

Examples Repository

-

Tools Repository

-

website

-

Pros + Cons

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.
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Pro
 Extremely lightweight 

Koa is very lightweight with just 550 lines of code.
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Con
 Community is relatively small

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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.
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Con
 Not compatible with express style middleware

Koa uses generators which are not compatible with any other type of Node.js framework middleware.
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Con
 Has no routes separated by HTTP method or URL pattern

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Con
 Wrong Middle ware, security issue

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Pro
 Development team has a proven track record

Koa is developed by the team behind a widely used node.js framework (express.js).
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Pro
 Built for ES6

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Pro
 Auto-generate REST APIs

Strapi comes with blueprints that let you create, read, update and delete your data. You also can paginate, sort and filter your results in a matter of seconds with simple but yet specific parameters.
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Pro
 Users, groups and permissions

Manage user settings, login, registration, groups and permissions on the fly. Strapi delivers all those essential features out-of-the-box.
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Pro
 Out-of-the-box administration panel

Easy way to manage your application. This panel allows you to add/edit/delete entries for your APIs, manage your users, groups and permissions. In the future, it will be such as WordPress-like administration panel dedicated to your application.
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Pro
 Consistency across applications

Hapi's philosophy is that configuration is more important than code. This is especially useful for very large teams because it helps developers maintain consistency and reusability throughout their code.
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Pro
 Backed by a major corporation

Hapi was developed and is still being used by Walmart. Being backed by such a major company means that it will not lose support any time soon and most importantly it's being developed by professionals and that you will always get support for it.
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Con
 Requires too much boilerplate

Hapi seems to be made with large applications in mind. The sheer amount of boilerplate code it requires is simply not practical for a small web app. This also means that there are few examples of Hapi applications around for beginners to learn from.
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Pro
 Uses Typescript

There is a lot of cool stuff, like decorators, full-fledged object-oriented programming and static types.
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Pro
 MVC 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.
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Pro
 Convention over configuration

Sails follows the Convention over Configuration philosophy. This is shown even through the CLI that comes with it which quickly and painlessly generates and scaffolds a new project following the conventions already established by the Sails community.
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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.
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Con
 Documentation is lacking, outdated, or incomplete

Especially for authentication
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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.
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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.
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Pro
 Works on top of Express

Sails was created to add stronger conventions to Express apps, as well as to have an ORM which could work transparently with both NoSQL and SQL databases. It works on a bit of a higher level on the development stack as Express, and the fact that it's built on top of it means that Sails does not have to deal with the most lower level stuff (such as critical performance and consistency issues across many different modules, like the Express router, cookie parser, body parser, etc.)
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Pro
 Generators

We wanna automate everything! Let's use generators
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Con
 Pathologically poor performance

So bad that it gives Node a bad name. Sails can be nearly 300x slower than Express. Not worth the overhead.
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Con
 Starting up takes a lot of time

One of the major benefits that Sails has is performance. But it's not as efficient when starting up. sails lift takes quite a lot of time to execute completely (although it is doing a lot of things behind the scenes - if you run it with the --verbose option, you can see all the different things it's doing). Granted, this would be perfectly fine if you had to execute sails lift just once, but unfortunately, every time that you change anything you have to stop and start lift again.
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Con
 Limited ORM

The Waterline ORM is a bit limited. Associations were finally added after much time and many requests. However, they are (as of 2015) still incomplete. It is not a great ORM for MongoDB. You will very likely be using native MongoDB queries throughout your code more than you might like (for example, in the event you want to use Mongo's $inc to increment something). It's strange that Sails did not simply leverage an existing ORM for their frameworks. Many people fall into the trap of wanting to build their own despite many other existing solutions. It is only then that they realize just how much work goes into an ORM. Fortunately, you can bring in whatever packages you want to use with Sails.js.
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Con
 Asset handling is messy

It's always best to serve assets statically (CDN, NAS, nginx proxy, etc.). But when you must do it through Node.js, you should at least be certain to take into consideration cache busting. Sails will adjust your layout templates by adding HTML to it for new styles and scripts. You must go through their process of handling assets to minimize this. Not bad in and of itself, but it does make it annoying to bust cache. Overall the asset management in Sails.js is a little messy and is certainly not full-featured (yet).
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Pro
 Self hosted

Can run on your own server or servers like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Digital Ocean.
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Pro
 Supports a wide variety of database programs

This includes Mongo, MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, MsSQL, ElasticSearch, RethinkDb, Local, ASync, and In Memory.
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Pro
 Uses Express Middleware

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Pro
 CLI Generator creates Authentication for Local, Twitter, FB, Google, and Auth0

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Pro
 CLI Generator creates CRUD Routes

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Con
 Small team seems overwhelmed with only a small user base

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Pro
 Light weight, decorated, object-oriented style of programming

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Pro
 Compatibility with express middlewares, most expressjs middlewares can be used directly with aex.

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Pro
 async/await support

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Pro
 Very simple to use, Code reduction

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Pro
 Auto-generated Documentation

All the documentation for the services is auto-generated based on the configuration files and schema used to specify the services.
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Pro
 Robust and scalable micro services platform

Quickly gets fully functional and secure micro-services started.
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Pro
 Test harness is in built

All the web services specified in the configuration can be tested with an inbuilt harness.
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Pro
 Inbuilt Security

All the web services can be configured with security options that include https The location of the certificates are configurable. Other forms of security like authentication can be specified.
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Pro
 Schema Validation for parameters and data payload

The JSON Schema standard compatible input parameters and payloads can be specified and auto validated at run time.
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Pro
 Configurable Route Specification

All routes can be specified in a configuration file and the corresponding classes can be implemented in separate files.
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Pro
 Takes care of routing

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Pro
 Provides choice

Being an extremely lightweight and unopinionated framework, it can be integrated with just about anything. Especially since anyone building anything for Node makes sure it can work well with Express.
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