PrinceJS vs Hono vs Express vs Elysia: Benchmarking the Fastest Bun Frameworks in 2025

If you're building a backend with Bun in 2025 and you care about raw performance, you've probably looked at Hono and Elysia. They're fast. But there's a new framework sitting comfortably in the top three — and it was built by a 13-year-old from Nigeria. That framework is PrinceJS. This post breaks down the real benchmark numbers, what they mean for your application, and why PrinceJS might be the right choice even though it isn't the fastest framework in the list. The Real Benchmark Numbers All benchmarks were run with oha -c 100 -z 30s on Windows 10. Same machine, same conditions, no tricks. Framework Req/s Total Requests Elysia 25,312 759k Hono 22,124 664k PrinceJS 21,748 653k Express 9,325 280k PrinceJS hits 21,748 requests per second — third globally among Bun frameworks and 2.3x faster than Express. Elysia leads the pack, Hono is second, and PrinceJS is right behind at third. The gap between Hono and PrinceJS is about 1.7%. The gap between PrinceJS and Express is enormous. Why Prin