Compared

Compared

Each stack this framework gets compared to, "pick it instead when" first. A row in this framework's favour cites a command, a file or a page you can check; a claim about another stack links that stack's own documentation. As of 2026-11. No head-to-head chart: a vendor's numbers against its rivals convince nobody, so this page publishes its own figures and the harness, and you point the harness at yours.

What you give up here, whichever stack you come from

You give up	Where it is stated
any runtime but Bun	non_goals in .dz/maintainer/maintainer.yml; FAQ
any database but Postgres	the same list; Home
any renderer but SolidJS	the same list; Routes and render modes
a long track record: released in 2026, no outside production adopter claimed	FAQ
a slow major cadence: from v30, one major per 90 days	Stability
a third-party security audit: there has been none	SECURITY.md
a plugin API: an app wraps a primitive instead	Home
a serverless or edge target: containers only	Deployment
everything on the open list	Known gaps

Measured, and how to reproduce it

One local run on an 8-core laptop, As of 2026-11-06, not yet a CI figure; the method, the box and the caveats are scripts/bench/results/README.md, and every number below is held to the committed JSON by bun run scripts/bench-claims.ts (X_BENCH_CLAIM_STALE).

Figure	Measured
scaffold, published create-ultimate (29.4.0)	4.7 s
bun run setup, cold Bun cache	43.3 s
node_modules after setup	165 MB
first bun run verify	red on 29.4.0: budgets was X_BUDGET_UNMEASURED until something built; the step builds first on main
/ under x dev, one client, concurrency 16	median 267 req/s, p99 181.85 ms
a typed read, /_x/query/post-list	median 183 req/s, p99 258.26 ms
cold start to the first 2xx (x dev)	4.8 s

x dev is the development server — every role and an embedded Postgres in one process — so these are a laptop's first-hour numbers, not a production capacity claim.

Reproduce on any machine with Bun and a clone of this repository:

bun run scripts/bench/first-hour.ts --runs 5 --json
bun run scripts/bench/http-hello.ts --url http://localhost:3000/ --seconds 30 --runs 5 --start 'bunx x dev' --cwd <the work directory first-hour printed>/firsthour

http-hello.ts --url loads any URL, so point it at your own app on any stack and compare like with like. It refuses a run under 10 s (X_BENCH_RUN_TOO_SHORT), and a non-2xx answer or a server that dies mid-run is X_BENCH_RUN_FAILED, never a figure. .github/workflows/bench.yml re-measures weekly and on every release, on a free ubuntu-latest runner, and opens a pull request with the JSON.

Rails

Pick Rails instead when	your team writes Ruby; you need MySQL or SQLite as well as Postgres (Active Record); you want two decades of gems, hosts and hiring; you want server-rendered HTML with Hotwire and no client build
Pick this when	the primary author is an agent: one declaration projects HTTP, OpenAPI, a typed client and an MCP tool (Actions), and x verify is one green-or-red answer over 21 steps (VERIFY_STEP_NAMES, packages/cli/src/verify-step.ts); you want types end to end with no codegen step (Client data)
What you give up	the table above, and Rails' ecosystem. The concept map: Migrating from Rails

Next.js

Pick Next.js instead when	your team and component library are React; you deploy to a serverless or edge platform (Next.js deploying); you want the largest ecosystem of the five
Pick this when	you want jobs, realtime, authz, mail, storage and an admin in the box rather than chosen per project (Jobs and workflows, Realtime, Policies and authz, Admin dashboard); you want a page's JavaScript budget to fail the build (budget: { js: '0kb' }, Routes and render modes)
What you give up	React, and the platform features this framework will not use. The concept map for a Node app: Migrating from Node and Drizzle

Meteor

Pick Meteor instead when	your data is in MongoDB, Meteor's primary database (Meteor docs); you already run a Meteor app
Pick this when	you want realtime that reuses the one authz system per delivered row: a live query is a query with its policy (Queries and live queries); you want Postgres and SQL you can read (postgresDriver(), packages/entity/src/pg-driver.ts)
What you give up	MongoDB, and Meteor's package ecosystem

Phoenix

Pick Phoenix instead when	you want the BEAM: lightweight processes, supervision and clustering (Phoenix docs); you want LiveView's server-held state over a socket
Pick this when	you want TypeScript on both sides with one schema per declaration (Actions); you want durable step workflows as a primitive rather than a library choice (Jobs and workflows)
What you give up	the BEAM's concurrency model and a long-proven runtime. Realtime capacity here is measured on one node: scripts/bench/results/README.md

Inngest and Zero

Pick them instead when	you keep the framework you have and add durable functions (Inngest docs) or a sync engine (Zero docs) to it
Pick this when	you want their shapes — a job with steps, a mutator — inside one runtime under one authz system, with nothing to operate beside Postgres (The eight primitives)
What you give up	keeping your current framework