Rock-req

⭐️⭐️ Ensure your HTTP requests always reach their destination as efficiently as possible! ⭐️⭐️

Tested on Mac, Linux, Windows with NodeJS 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24, 25

🔥 Why?

In most existing libraries (2025):

Managing reliable retries is difficult, tricky with streams and not battle-tested
Using multiple forward proxies has several benefits like higher availability and increased bandwidth but Intercepting retries to use another Egress controller between two requests is not possible.
Many request libraries are heavy: node-fetch, superagent, needle, got, axios, request
Lightweight alternatives are not as light as they claim due to dependencies (simple-get, tiny-req, puny-req, phin, ...)

⚡️ Rock-req solves these problems with only 150 lines of code and zero dependencies

It also supports many features:

Follows redirects
Handles gzip/deflate/brotli responses
Modify defaults
Extend and create new instances
Automatically destroy input/output stream on error and premature close event
Advanced retries
URL Rewrite
Ultra-fast (> 20k req/s)
Keep Alive by default (3000ms)
Composable
Timeouts
Promises interface
HTTPS / HTTP
Composes well with npm packages for features like cookies, proxies, form data, & OAuth
Keep 98% of the simple-get API (fork source)

When the callback is called, the request is 100% finished, even with streams.

🚀 Benchmark Rock-req vs got, axios, node-fetch, phin, simple-get, superagent, ...

Stop using "slow-by-default" and "false-light" HTTP request libraries!

2025-11-14 on MacBook Pro M4 Max with all dependencies updated on this date

Library	NodeJS 22	NodeJS 24	NodeJS 25	Bun v1.3.2	LOC (2025/2023)
rock-req 🙋‍♂️	26842 ops	26782 ops	26179 ops	21229 ops	152 (+5%)
simple-get	26532 ops	26802 ops	25954 ops	21187 ops	317 (+0%)
axios	4110 ops	3999 ops	3996 ops	14788 ops	19883 (+42%)
got	14786 ops	15234 ops	15149 ops	15287 ops	16904 (+83%)
fetch	15676 ops	16252 ops	15784 ops	27675 ops	54211 (+306%)
request	17102 ops	14586 ops	14346 ops	18202 ops	58057 (+24%)
superagent	3862 ops	3979 ops	3889 ops	19271 ops	31913 (+98%)
phin	15549 ops	14160 ops	13915 ops	15430 ops	20064 (+5960%)
undici*	32480 ops	33272 ops	32738 ops	25961 ops	23235 (+43%)

2023-04-19 on Macbook Pro M1 Max with all dependencies updated on this date

Library	NodeJS 16	NodeJS 18	NodeJS 20*	Size deps inc.
rock-req 🙋‍♂️	22816 ops	21797 ops	21964 ops	144 LOC
simple-get	2937 ops	3260 ops	21258 ops	317 LOC
axios	5090 ops	4910 ops	3196 ops	13983 LOC
got	2163 ops	1762 ops	9961 ops	9227 LOC
fetch	2101 ops	2102 ops	2020 ops	13334 LOC
request	2249 ops	1869 ops	15815 ops	46572 LOC
superagent	2776 ops	2100 ops	2895 ops	16109 LOC
phin	3178 ops	1164 ops	21299 ops	331 LOC
undici*	24095 ops	24378 ops	24191 ops	16225 LOC

LOC = Lines of Code, including dependencies (excluding dev dependencies) ops = request per second

Since Node.js 20, HTTP keep-alive is activated by default, just like in rock-req. This improves the overall performance of all frameworks.

undici is a low-level API and a faster alternative to the native Node.js HTTP module. It represents the performance ceiling for Node.js.

rock-req uses only the native Node.js HTTP module and provides many high-level features — far more than phin and simple-get — with fewer lines of code.

Interestingly, the differences are less visible on Bun.sh.

Install

  npm install rock-req

Documentation

The full documentation is here to reduce Node package file size.

Supporters

This packaged in maintained by Carbone:

Thank you Feross Aboukhadijeh, creator of simple-get