What's the best way to build an API in Node.js?

Node.js has many API frameworks, each with different strengths.

Express is the classic choice: minimal, flexible, huge ecosystem. Its middleware pattern is simple to understand. The downside is it's somewhat dated—async error handling requires extra work, and TypeScript support is added-on rather than built-in.

Fastify focuses on performance and developer experience. It's significantly faster than Express, has built-in JSON schema validation, TypeScript support, and a plugin architecture. Good for when performance matters and you want more structure out of the box.

Hono is a modern, lightweight framework that runs anywhere (Node, Deno, Bun, edge). It's TypeScript-first with a small bundle. Great for serverless and edge deployments where bundle size and cold start times matter.

NestJS is a full framework (not just routing) with Angular-inspired architecture: modules, decorators, dependency injection. It's opinionated and batteries-included. Good for large teams wanting enforced structure, but more complexity for simple APIs.

tRPC takes a different approach: end-to-end type safety between client and server without REST/GraphQL. If you control both ends and use TypeScript, it eliminates the API contract problem entirely.

For most projects, Fastify or Express work well. Choose Fastify for performance and modern features, Express for maximum flexibility and ecosystem, Hono for edge/serverless, NestJS for enterprise structure.