Edit this page

What is Photon?

Photon is designed as an unopinionated and flexible alternative to Nitro, with support for universal server capabilities.

Philosophy

Photon follows these core principles:

Universal Server Support

Unlike other solutions that lock you into specific frameworks, Photon works with any server framework:

• Hono - Ultrafast web framework for edge runtimes
• Express - The most popular Node.js web framework
• Fastify - High-performance web framework
• Elysia - Bun-optimized framework with end-to-end type safety
• H3 - Minimal and modern web framework
• Hattip - Universal web framework built on Web Standards

Deploy Anywhere

Write once, deploy anywhere. Photon applications can be deployed to:

• Edge Runtimes: Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Edge, Netlify Edge (coming soon)
• Serverless: Vercel Functions, Netlify Functions (coming soon), AWS Lambda (coming soon)
• Traditional Servers: Node.js, Docker, VPS
• Static Hosting: GitHub Pages, Netlify, Vercel (for SSG)

Vite-Powered

Built on top of Vite's Environment API, Photon provides:

• Hot Module Replacement for server code
• Fast builds with Vite's optimized bundling
• Rich ecosystem compatibility with Vite plugins

Key Features

Server Code Splitting

Each page and API route can be deployed as a separate function:

// Each route becomes its own deployable unit
export default {
  entries: {
    'api/users': './src/api/users.ts',
    'api/posts': './src/api/posts.ts',
    'pages/dashboard': './src/pages/dashboard.ts'
  }
}

Universal Middleware

Write middleware once, use everywhere:

// Works across all server frameworks
const authMiddleware = createUniversalMiddleware((context) => {
  // Universal middleware logic
})

Comparison