New C++ Web Development Framework Bursts into GitHub Top

New C++ framework for web development gains popularity: feature overview

The world of web development is traditionally associated with Python, JavaScript, and Go. However, in recent months, an unexpected player has entered the arena — a new framework for the C++ language called Drogon. This project is rapidly gaining stars on GitHub and attracting the attention of developers tired of slow interpreted languages in high-load systems.

Drogon is an asynchronous, high-performance web framework written in modern C++17/20. Unlike many solutions, it does not require dependencies on libcurl, OpenSSL, or Boost.Asio — everything needed for working with HTTP/HTTPS, WebSocket, and databases is already built into the core. This makes it an ideal choice for microservices, API gateways, and real-time applications.

Why did Drogon become popular?

• Speed. Benchmarks show that Drogon processes up to 1.5 million requests per second on a single core — this is 10 times faster than most Node.js or Python frameworks.
• Simplicity. Developers note that Drogon's syntax resembles Express.js or Flask, but with the power of C++. Creating a REST API requires just a few lines of code.
• Support for modern standards. The framework actively uses C++20 features: coroutines, ranges, std::format. This allows writing safe and readable code without manual memory management.
• Ecosystem. Drogon provides ORM for PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQLite, a built-in template engine (analogous to Jinja2), and WebSocket support.

Code example in Drogon

Here is what a minimal REST API in Drogon looks like:

#include <drogon/drogon.h>using namespace drogon;

int main() {    app().registerHandler("/hello", [](const HttpRequestPtr& req,                                       std::function<void (const HttpResponsePtr&)> &&callback) {        auto resp = HttpResponse::newHttpResponse();        resp->setBody("Hello from C++!");        callback(resp);    });    app().addListener("0.0.0.0", 8080).run();}

After compilation (with a single cmake command), you get a binary about 3 MB in size that starts instantly and consumes only 5-10 MB of RAM at startup.

Where is it used?

Drogon is already used in production by companies such as Netflix (for internal microservices), Cloudflare (for edge computing), and a number of fintech startups. Main scenarios:

• High-load APIs (exchanges, analytics, IoT);
• Real-time chats and data streaming;
• Replacing Node.js/Python in projects where latency is critical;
• Embedding a web server into desktop applications (for example, for local administration).

How to get started?

Installation is simple: on Ubuntu/Debian, just run sudo apt install libdrogon-dev, on macOS — brew install drogon. For Windows, ready-made .dll files and instructions are available on the official website drogon.org.

Despite the fact that C++ is traditionally considered difficult for web development, Drogon is changing this perception. If you