Three Kings. One Crown.
It's 2026.
Node.js is the incumbent giant, slimming down.
Bun is the speed demon written in Zig.
Deno is the secure, modern standard bearer.
Which one deserves your next production deployment?
Deep Dive: WinterCG Compliance
The Web-interoperable Runtimes Community Group (WinterCG) defines a common API set (Fetch, WebCrypto, Streams).
Bun and Deno are effectively "Browsers on the Server". Node.js implementation of these standards is often wrapped or slightly divergent (e.g. `node:fetch`).
03. HTTP Throughput (Requests/Sec)
We tested a simple "Hello World" native server and a complex JSON serialization task.
Bun 1.5
Node.js 23
Deno 2.1
* Tested on AWS c7g.2xlarge (Graviton3).
04. Startup Time (Cold Boot)
05. The Senior Engineer's Choice
What do I start my company with?
Choose Node.js if you are a large enterprise. The ecosystem stability, observability tooling (OpenTelemetry support), and hiring pool are unmatched. Node 23 is "fast enough."
Choose Bun if you are building ephemeral serverless functions, CLI tools, or local dev scripts where startup time is king.
Choose Deno if you are starting a new greenfield project and care deeply about security permissions and TypeScript usage without a build step.