Rate Limiter Comparison

Quick Comparison

hitlimit vs express-rate-limit

express-rate-limit is the most popular rate limiter with 3M+ weekly downloads. It's a solid choice for basic Express rate limiting.

Migration from express-rate-limit

import rateLimit from 'express-rate-limit'

const limiter = rateLimit({
  windowMs: 60000,  // 1 minute in ms
  max: 100,
  standardHeaders: true,
  legacyHeaders: false
})

import { hitlimit } from '@joint-ops/hitlimit'

const limiter = hitlimit({
  limit: 100,
  window: '1m'  // Human-readable!
})

hitlimit vs rate-limiter-flexible

rate-limiter-flexible is a feature-rich library with support for many backends. It's great for complex rate limiting scenarios.

hitlimit vs @nestjs/throttler

@nestjs/throttler is the official NestJS rate limiting module. It integrates deeply with NestJS decorators and DI system.

Migration from @nestjs/throttler

import { ThrottlerModule } from '@nestjs/throttler'

@Module({
  imports: [
    ThrottlerModule.forRoot([{
      ttl: 60000,
      limit: 100
    }])
  ]
})

import { HitlimitModule } from '@joint-ops/hitlimit/nest'

@Module({
  imports: [
    HitlimitModule.register({
      limit: 100,
      window: '1m'
    })
  ]
})

hitlimit vs @fastify/rate-limit

@fastify/rate-limit is the official Fastify rate limiter plugin maintained by the Fastify team. It's the default choice for Fastify-only projects.

Migration from @fastify/rate-limit

import rateLimit from '@fastify/rate-limit'

await app.register(rateLimit, {
  max: 100,
  timeWindow: '1 minute'
})

import { hitlimit } from '@joint-ops/hitlimit/fastify'

await app.register(hitlimit, {
  limit: 100,
  window: '1m'
})

Performance Comparison

High-traffic scenario (10,000 unique IPs) - where hitlimit excels.

Memory store, 10k unique keys. hitlimit is also fastest on single-IP (5.96M vs 2.06M for rate-limiter-flexible). hitlimit also supports MongoDB, Redis, Postgres, and other distributed stores for multi-server deployments. These are our benchmarks — we've done our best to keep them fair and reproducible. See full benchmarks or clone and run them yourself.

Feature Overview

hitlimit-bun is the only dedicated rate limiting library built for the Bun runtime. Here's what you get out of the box.

hitlimit-bun vs hono-rate-limiter

hono-rate-limiter is a community-maintained rate limiter for Hono (rhinobase/hono-rate-limiter). It works on Bun via Hono, but isn't Bun-native.

Migration from hono-rate-limiter

import { rateLimiter } from 'hono-rate-limiter'

app.use(rateLimiter({
  windowMs: 60000, // milliseconds
  limit: 100,
  keyGenerator: (c) => c.req.header('x-api-key')
}))

import { hitlimit } from '@joint-ops/hitlimit-bun/hono'

app.use(hitlimit({
  window: '1m', // human-readable!
  limit: 100,
  key: (c) => c.req.header('x-api-key') || 'anonymous'
}))

Store Performance

Every store is optimized for its use case. In-process stores offer raw speed; distributed stores trade latency for shared state across instances.

In-Process Stores

Zero network overhead — data lives in the same process.

Distributed Stores

Shared state across multiple server instances.

Bun significantly outperforms Node.js at 10K IPs (5.57M vs 4.08M) and single-IP (7.73M vs 5.96M). These are our benchmarks — we've done our best to keep them fair. They're not set in stone; there's always room for improvement. See full benchmarks or clone and run them yourself.

When to Use Each

When to Use hitlimit-bun

Get Started

Ready to try hitlimit?

npm install @joint-ops/hitlimit

• Quick Start Guide
• Express Adapter
• Full Benchmarks
• Configuration Options

Get Started

Ready to try hitlimit-bun?

bun add @joint-ops/hitlimit-bun

• Bun Quick Start
• Elysia Plugin
• Full Benchmarks
• Configuration Options