{"slug": "vapor", "name": "Vapor", "category": "dev-libs", "category_name": "Libraries and frameworks", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 9, "warners": 0, "score": 4.809, "rising": -0.31, "first": "2025-11-06", "latest": "2026-10-31", "why": "I used Vapor for the web server in swift. It was surprisingly pretty good experience", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 6, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I used Vapor for the web server in swift. It was surprisingly pretty good experience", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "vapor.codes", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://vapor.codes/", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Vapor"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 795066305, "item_id": 49691644, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49691644", "by": "deminature", "date": "2026-09-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "seeing whether Swift Vapor can be used to build a complex backend and the answer appears to be yes", "excerpt": "https://topicle.com/ A social media platform trying to solve misinformation, astroturfing and inauthentic posting. I also thought there was a real space for some non-US-based social media, so this is based in Australia. This is owing to all the political instability going on in the US right now and especially stuff like users' identities being subpoenaed for criticising the government. It was a pet peeve of mine seei", "context": "", "use_case": "Backend web framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)"}, {"id": 778675632, "item_id": 48667227, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48667227", "by": "busymom0", "date": "2026-06-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used Vapor for the web server in swift. It was surprisingly pretty good experience", "excerpt": "I am primarily a mobile developer (I am the developer of Hack, hacker news app on iOS and android). While I have developed backends in rust and nodejs, I wanted to give swift a shot to see how it was. I used Vapor for the web server in swift. It was surprisingly pretty good experience and I am considering using it for my next project too.", "context": "mobile developer", "use_case": "Swift backend web server", "switched_from": "", "story": "PostgreSQL Is Enough"}, {"id": 776596945, "item_id": 48537309, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48537309", "by": "deminature", "date": "2026-06-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I picked this framework mostly because I'm historically an iOS dev, but have found it to be very capable in its own right", "excerpt": "I'm working on Topicle (https://topicle.com), a Reddit-inspired link sharing, voting and discussion platform that rethinks a bunch of basic aspects like moderation, anti-abuse and privacy to try to address some of the biggest pain points. Every moderation action has an admin appeal available, bots and astroturfing are aggressively monitored and policed, comment histories are always visible, no VPNs or datacenter IPs ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)"}, {"id": 749491264, "item_id": 46843204, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46843204", "by": "myko", "date": "2026-01-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using Swift Vapor for personal projects for awhile and it's great", "excerpt": "I have been using Swift Vapor for personal projects for awhile and it's great. I kind of regret it now on some projects since I use a lot of Go too and I miss the speed of compiling/testing when I'm using agentic coding (where my goal is to put the agent into virtuous loops leading to a success state) - it just takes longer in Swift.", "context": "", "use_case": "Personal server-side projects", "switched_from": "", "story": "Swift is a more convenient Rust (2023)"}, {"id": 733417488, "item_id": 45838593, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45838593", "by": "turnsout", "date": "2025-11-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "projects like Vapor [0] that are used in production.", "excerpt": "Not true at all. Swift is a very capable backend language, Apple has open sourced a lot of great libraries to power server software development, and there are projects like Vapor [0] that are used in production. [0]: https://vapor.codes", "context": "", "use_case": "Swift server framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "Swift on FreeBSD Preview"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "busymom0", "context": "mobile developer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48667227", "date": "2026-06-24"}, {"by": "well_ackshually", "context": "tried it, gave up", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47529380", "date": "2026-03-26"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["backend web framework", "swift backend web server", "swift web framework", "personal server-side projects", "swift web server", "swift server framework"], "compared": [{"slug": "swiftui", "name": "SwiftUI", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45837871", "title": "Swift on FreeBSD Preview", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50295821", "title": "ElementaryUI \u2013 Swift, in the Browser", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49686380", "title": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48666433", "title": "PostgreSQL Is Enough", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48528779", "title": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47527590", "title": "Swift 6.3 Released", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 3, "recommend": 1}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 805032400, "item_id": 50314525, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50314525", "by": "outlock", "date": "2026-10-31", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Reminds me of Vapor - Swift, but on a server", "excerpt": "Reminds me of Vapor - Swift, but on a server; https://www.vapor.codes/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "ElementaryUI \u2013 Swift, in the Browser"}, {"id": 795066305, "item_id": 49691644, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49691644", "by": "deminature", "date": "2026-09-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "seeing whether Swift Vapor can be used to build a complex backend and the answer appears to be yes", "excerpt": "https://topicle.com/ A social media platform trying to solve misinformation, astroturfing and inauthentic posting. I also thought there was a real space for some non-US-based social media, so this is based in Australia. This is owing to all the political instability going on in the US right now and especially stuff like users' identities being subpoenaed for criticising the government. It was a pet peeve of mine seei", "context": "", "use_case": "Backend web framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)"}, {"id": 778675632, "item_id": 48667227, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48667227", "by": "busymom0", "date": "2026-06-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used Vapor for the web server in swift. It was surprisingly pretty good experience", "excerpt": "I am primarily a mobile developer (I am the developer of Hack, hacker news app on iOS and android). While I have developed backends in rust and nodejs, I wanted to give swift a shot to see how it was. I used Vapor for the web server in swift. It was surprisingly pretty good experience and I am considering using it for my next project too.", "context": "mobile developer", "use_case": "Swift backend web server", "switched_from": "", "story": "PostgreSQL Is Enough"}, {"id": 776596945, "item_id": 48537309, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48537309", "by": "deminature", "date": "2026-06-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I picked this framework mostly because I'm historically an iOS dev, but have found it to be very capable in its own right", "excerpt": "I'm working on Topicle (https://topicle.com), a Reddit-inspired link sharing, voting and discussion platform that rethinks a bunch of basic aspects like moderation, anti-abuse and privacy to try to address some of the biggest pain points. Every moderation action has an admin appeal available, bots and astroturfing are aggressively monitored and policed, comment histories are always visible, no VPNs or datacenter IPs ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)"}, {"id": 760470080, "item_id": 47529380, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47529380", "by": "well_ackshually", "date": "2026-03-26", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Mind you, Kotlin/Native (which is what gets used when you're compiling for iOS) doesn't have access to the JVM. However, the Kotlin community is fundamentally all about open source, whereas Apple & iOS Devs have an allergy to it. The quality and quantity is already miles above the vast majority of what's in the Swift ecosystem. https://klibs.io has all the native compatible libs. And if you're targeting a platform wh", "context": "tried it, gave up", "use_case": "Swift web framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "Swift 6.3 Released"}, {"id": 749491264, "item_id": 46843204, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46843204", "by": "myko", "date": "2026-01-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using Swift Vapor for personal projects for awhile and it's great", "excerpt": "I have been using Swift Vapor for personal projects for awhile and it's great. I kind of regret it now on some projects since I use a lot of Go too and I miss the speed of compiling/testing when I'm using agentic coding (where my goal is to put the agent into virtuous loops leading to a success state) - it just takes longer in Swift.", "context": "", "use_case": "Personal server-side projects", "switched_from": "", "story": "Swift is a more convenient Rust (2023)"}, {"id": 738006689, "item_id": 46125418, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46125418", "by": "busymom0", "date": "2025-12-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Vapor for web server in the Swift app", "excerpt": "Previously, I had always used Postgres for database and Rust or NodeJS for my backend. For my new website (https://limereader.com/), I used Swift for my backend, SQLite for Database, Vapor for web server in the Swift app and am self-hosting the site on an old Mac mini. A sqlite related issue I ran into had to do with accessing the SQLite database from multiple threads. Found out a solution easily: for multi-threading", "context": "", "use_case": "Swift web server", "switched_from": "", "story": "100k TPS over a billion rows: the unreasonable effectiveness of SQLite"}, {"id": 733441488, "item_id": 45840093, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45840093", "by": "fastily", "date": "2025-11-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "There\u2019s also hummingbird: https://github.com/hummingbird-project/hummingbird", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Swift on FreeBSD Preview"}, {"id": 733419920, "item_id": 45838745, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45838745", "by": "wlesieutre", "date": "2025-11-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Vapor is the surviving one from that era", "excerpt": "There were three major server side Swift projects, and Vapor is the surviving one from that era Dead projects are - Kitura https://github.com/Kitura/Kitura - Perfect https://github.com/PerfectlySoft/Perfect Don't know of large organizations using it in production, the vibe I get is that it's useful for an iOS developer who wants to deploy a small server for their product without learning Python or Javascript. You cou", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Swift on FreeBSD Preview"}, {"id": 733417488, "item_id": 45838593, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45838593", "by": "turnsout", "date": "2025-11-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "projects like Vapor [0] that are used in production.", "excerpt": "Not true at all. Swift is a very capable backend language, Apple has open sourced a lot of great libraries to power server software development, and there are projects like Vapor [0] that are used in production. [0]: https://vapor.codes", "context": "", "use_case": "Swift server framework", "switched_from": "", "story": "Swift on FreeBSD Preview"}, {"id": 733417296, "item_id": 45838581, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45838581", "by": "afavour", "date": "2025-11-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "frameworks like Vapor seem like they\u2019re still pretty active", "excerpt": "Chicken/egg, I think. There was a burst of activity of Swift on the server a few years ago and frameworks like Vapor seem like they\u2019re still pretty active: https://vapor.codes/ But I think \u201cwhy\u201d remains a valid question when you could make a safe pick like Node, Python etc. I really like Swift as a language but I\u2019d still struggle to justify using it outside of iOS.", "context": "", "use_case": "Server-side Swift web apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Swift on FreeBSD Preview"}]}