NEXTSCRIBE

Gofiber vs Echo for Building APIs in Go

Two Go web frameworks walk into a bar... who wins?

Here’s a list of 10 things I noticed while messing around with both Gofiber and Echo.

Spoiler alert they both good but also not the same vibe.

1. Speed and perf

Gofiber is freakin fast.
Like it’s built on top of fasthttp which is optimized like crazy. You’ll see better latency numbers if you’re into benchmarking stuff.
Echo’s fast too but not Gofiber fast. It’s using the standard net/http under the hood so yknow it’s more traditional.

2. Ease of use

Echo just feels comfy.
The APIs are super clear and not doing anything too weird. You can just sit down and write a REST API without googling too much.
Gofiber can feel a bit different if you’re used to standard Go http.

3. Middleware support

Both support middlewares.
But Echo got a richer ecosystem out the box.
Like you need JWT auth logging rate limiting whatever... Echo prob has a plug for that.
Gofiber has some too but it’s a bit more scattered and sometimes you end up writing your own stuff.

4. Request context

Echo uses Go’s standard context.Context which is great cause it’s what everything else in Go uses.
Gofiber has its own context thing which can be kinda annoying if you tryna pass values around or plug into something like gorm or whatever.

5. Routing

Both support route groups and params and all that jazz.
Gofiber routes are a bit more expressive I’d say. Like you can chain stuff nicely.
Echo’s routing is super solid though and very readable.

6. Error handling

Echo has a solid error handling system.
You can define custom error handlers and respond consistently.
Gofiber has it too but again feels a bit more manual sometimes.

7. Community and docs

Echo been around longer.
So more blog posts stackoverflow answers and all that.
Gofiber docs are nice too but community support is still catching up a bit.

8. Websocket support

Both have it.
Gofiber’s based on fasthttp so it does fine... but you need to be careful cause fasthttp doesn’t support full standard http features.
Echo works with Gorilla Websockets or whatever you like.

9. Deployment

No big diff here.
They both compile to a single binary and work great in Docker or whatever you use.
But since Gofiber is a bit faster you might get better resource usage in high traffic stuff.

10. Learning curve

Echo is just easier to grok if you already wrote stuff with net/http before.
Gofiber kinda does its own thing and takes a sec to get used to.

Bonus Point. Syntax Vibes

Some folks just like how code looks and feels.
Here’s a simple example of a basic API route in both to compare.

Gofiber

package main

import "github.com/gofiber/fiber/v2"

func main() {
  app := fiber.New()

  app.Get("/hello", func(c *fiber.Ctx) error {
    return c.SendString("Hello from Fiber")
  })

  app.Listen(":3000")
}

Echo

package main

import (
  "net/http"
  "github.com/labstack/echo/v4"
)

func main() {
  e := echo.New()

  e.GET("/hello", func(c echo.Context) error {
    return c.String(http.StatusOK, "Hello from Echo")
  })

  e.Start(":3000")
}

Echo code feels more Go-ish.
Gofiber code feels snappy and clean but kinda not standard if you’re picky about that.

So which one should you use?

Gofiber
Use it if you care a lot about speed or building high perf microservices and you're ok with its custom style.

Echo
Use it if you want a super stable well documented easy to maintain API in pure Go style.

Honestly try both for a bit and see what feels better.
Your future self will thank you. Trust me.

That’s it.
Hope that helps.

Feel free to ping me if you wanna nerd out more on Go stuff.

#go #api
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