Node.js Community Awards 2024: Best Libraries of the Year Announced

JavaScript (Node.js) Community Chooses Best Libraries of the Year

The annual Node.js developer vote has concluded — the community named its favorites for 2024. Over 23,000 developers from 120 countries participated in the survey. We've compiled the key results and are sharing which tools won in each category.

Best Web Framework: Express Remains King

Despite the emergence of new competitors, Express.js takes first place in the "Web Framework" category for the 12th consecutive year. It is used by 78% of respondents. Second place went to Fastify (a 15% increase in popularity compared to last year), and the top three is rounded out by Hono — a lightweight framework gaining traction among edge application developers.

Best Testing Library: Vitest Overtakes Jest

This year saw a change in leadership: Vitest surpassed Jest in the number of votes for the first time. Developers highlight its speed (built on Vite) and out-of-the-box TypeScript compatibility. Third place was shared by Playwright and Cypress — both tools are actively used for E2E testing.

Best Data Validation Library: Zod

Zod became the absolute winner in the "Validation and Schemas" category. It is preferred by 67% of developers. In second place is Yup, and in third is Joi. Experts attribute Zod's success to its simple syntax, excellent TypeScript support, and active community.

Best API Library: tRPC and Hono

In the "API Tools" category, tRPC won — a solution for creating type-safe APIs without schema generation. Second place went to Hono (also mentioned as a framework), and third to GraphQL Yoga. Interestingly, the traditional Axios moved from this category to "Utilities".

Best Security Library: Helmet and bcrypt

Among security tools, first place went to Helmet (a set of middleware for securing HTTP headers). Second is bcrypt (password hashing), third is jsonwebtoken. Developers also noted the growing popularity of Express's Rate Limiter and the crypto package from the standard library.

Best Utility: Lodash Still on Top

Despite the emergence of native alternatives in JavaScript, Lodash remains the most popular utility library. It received votes from 54% of participants. In second place is Day.js (date handling), and in third is nanoid (unique ID generation).

Results and Trends

The vote revealed several key trends:

• TypeScript — nearly 95% of the winning libraries are written in TypeScript or have full support for it.
• Performance — developers are increasingly choosing lightweight and fast solutions (Hono, Vitest, Fastify).
• Security — interest in security tools has grown by 30% over the past year.