The original minimal Node.js web framework - still the most widely known and the most-copied API shape in the ecosystem.
Where express fits, based on its real tags and topics.
git clone https://github.com/expressjs/express.gitSee the repository's README for language-specific setup steps.
Category: 🧩 Backend
Difficulty: Beginner
Part of: Backend Frameworks
“The most approachable of the major frontend frameworks - official docs and tooling are exceptionally well designed for newcomers.”
“The most widely adopted framework for chaining LLM calls, tools, and retrieval into real applications - a near-default starting point for RAG and agent projects.”
“The default choice for production React today - server components, file-based routing, and first-class deployment story make it the fastest path from idea to shipped app.”
The Postgres development platform. Supabase gives you a dedicated Postgres database to build your web, mobile, and AI applications.
“A genuinely open-source Firebase alternative - real Postgres underneath, with auth, storage, and realtime built in rather than a proprietary database.”
“The runtime underneath most of the JavaScript backend ecosystem - understanding it well pays off even if your actual server framework changes.”
“Brings real architecture (modules, dependency injection, decorators) to Node.js backends - the closest thing the ecosystem has to a Spring/Angular-style framework.”
“A schema-first, plugin-based Node.js framework built for speed - often the right choice once Express's performance ceiling becomes a real constraint.”
“The most widely used Go web framework - a thin, fast router with a middleware model that stays out of your way.”
“A genuinely complete web framework - the built-in admin panel and ORM alone can save weeks on a typical CRUD-heavy backend.”
“An ultra-fast web framework that runs identically across Node, Bun, Deno, and edge runtimes - genuinely useful if you don't want to rewrite your API when you change where it's deployed.”
“The industry-standard container orchestrator - not always necessary at small scale, but the default assumption for any serious cloud-native platform team.”
“The most capable open-source relational database available - strong standards compliance, extensions for nearly everything (including full-text search and vectors), and a default choice for good reason.”
“Unifies dozens of LLM providers behind a single API, making model switching almost effortless in production.”
“The standard library for working with open-weight models - thousands of pretrained models are one line of code away.”
“The modern default frontend build tool - native ESM in dev means a dev server that starts and reloads almost instantly, even on large apps.”
“The open-source engine behind Docker - understanding containers here pays off no matter which orchestrator sits on top later.”
