Hono — Ultrafast Web Framework for the Edge

Hono Features

Multi-Runtime Support

Built-in Middleware

import { Hono } from 'hono';
import { cors } from 'hono/cors';
import { bearerAuth } from 'hono/bearer-auth';
import { rateLimiter } from 'hono/rate-limiter';

const app = new Hono();

app.use('/api/*', cors());
app.use('/api/*', bearerAuth({ token: 'my-secret-token' }));

AI Streaming Responses

import { Hono } from 'hono';
import { streamSSE } from 'hono/streaming';

app.post('/api/stream', async (c) => {
    return streamSSE(c, async (stream) => {
        const response = await fetch('https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions', {
            method: 'POST',
            headers: { 'Authorization': `Bearer ${c.env.OPENAI_API_KEY}` },
            body: JSON.stringify({ model: 'gpt-4o', messages: [...], stream: true }),
        });

        const reader = response.body.getReader();
        while (true) {
            const { done, value } = await reader.read();
            if (done) break;
            await stream.writeSSE({ data: new TextDecoder().decode(value) });
        }
    });
});

OpenAPI Schema Generation

import { OpenAPIHono, createRoute, z } from '@hono/zod-openapi';

const route = createRoute({
    method: 'post',
    path: '/api/chat',
    request: { body: { content: { 'application/json': { schema: z.object({ prompt: z.string() }) } } } },
    responses: { 200: { description: 'Chat response' } },
});

app.openapi(route, (c) => { /* handler */ });
app.doc('/docs', { openapi: '3.0.0', info: { title: 'AI API', version: '1.0' } });

Performance

• ~14KB bundle size (zero dependencies)
• <1ms cold start on edge runtimes
• 150K+ req/s on Bun benchmarks
• Built on Web Standards (Request/Response)

FAQ

Q: What is Hono? A: Hono is an ultrafast web framework with 29,700+ GitHub stars that runs on Cloudflare Workers, Deno, Bun, Node.js, and more. ~14KB, <1ms cold start, built-in middleware, ideal for AI API endpoints.

Q: Why use Hono for AI services? A: AI APIs need low latency and global distribution. Hono runs at the edge (Cloudflare Workers) with <1ms cold start, has built-in SSE streaming for LLM responses, and includes auth/CORS/rate-limiting middleware out of the box.

Q: Is Hono free? A: Yes, open-source under MIT license.