Survey: Most Popular Go Frameworks in Production 2024

Survey: Which Go (Golang) Frameworks Are Used in Production

Go has firmly established itself in the niche of high-load backend systems, microservices, and API gateways. However, when choosing a framework for production, developers often face a dilemma: the popular Gin, the minimalist Chi, or the modern Fiber? A recent survey of 3,500 Go developers (conducted by the Go Dev Survey in partnership with JetBrains) shed light on the real picture.

Survey Methodology

Participants were engineers from 47 countries, working in companies ranging from startups to enterprise giants. The question was: "Which web frameworks do you use in a production environment?" Multiple options could be selected. The results are publicly available in the community repository.

Top 5 Frameworks in Production

• Gin — 47% of respondents. The perennial leader: high performance, a rich middleware ecosystem, and extensive documentation. Used in API services of major fintech companies.
• Echo — 29%. Second place. Features a convenient router, built-in WebSocket support, and minimal boilerplate. Often chosen for medium-sized REST APIs.
• Chi — 18%. Growing in popularity due to compatibility with net/http and a lightweight architecture. Ideal for microservices where control over dependencies is important.
• Fiber — 15%. Fast to start, Express.js-like syntax. Actively used in startups and prototypes, but its share in enterprise is still low.
• Beego — 8%. A full-featured framework with ORM, logging, and CLI utilities. Popular in China and among teams that prefer an "all-in-one" solution.

Interesting Observations

About 12% of respondents stated they do not use a framework at all — they write on pure net/http, especially for simple middleware proxies or gRPC gateways. Another 7% use their own wrappers assembled from the gorilla/mux and httprouter libraries.

It also turned out that the choice of framework strongly depends on team size: in teams of up to 5 people, Fiber leads (simplicity); in teams of 10 or more, Gin leads (stability); in enterprise (50+), Chi and Echo lead (support for testing and DI).

What Should a Beginner Choose?

If you are just starting to work with Go in production, experts advise:

• For a quick start — Gin: a huge number of examples and ready-made solutions.
• For microservices — Chi: lightweight, transparent, easily extensible.
• For highload — Echo: excellent work with streaming data and WebSocket.

Choosing a framework is always a compromise between development speed and flexibility. The main thing is not to chase trends, but to rely on the requirements of your project.

Source: Go Developer Survey 2024 and analysis of open-source repositories.