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labstack/echo

📈 Trending★ 32,388GoAudience · developerComplexity · 2/5ActiveLicenseSetup · easy

TLDR

A fast, minimalist web framework for Go that routes HTTP requests and handles middleware, perfect for building lean REST APIs and microservices.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((Echo))
    What it does
      HTTP routing
      Middleware pipeline
      Request parsing
      Error handling
    Key features
      Fast router
      JSON/XML binding
      TLS/HTTPS support
      HTTP/2 ready
    Use cases
      REST APIs
      Microservices
      Web services
    Tech stack
      Go
      Go modules
    Ecosystem
      JWT auth
      Prometheus metrics
      OpenTelemetry tracing

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Build a REST API backend that handles thousands of requests per second with minimal overhead.

USE CASE 2

Create microservices that need tight control over dependencies and a small memory footprint.

USE CASE 3

Add authentication, logging, and compression to HTTP handlers using reusable middleware.

USE CASE 4

Serve JSON responses with automatic request validation and centralized error handling.

Tech stack

GoGo modules

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min
Use freely for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as you keep the copyright notice.

In plain English

Echo is a high-performance, minimalist web framework for the Go programming language. It is designed for building RESTful APIs and web services that need to be fast and flexible without a lot of built-in opinions about how your application should be structured. The framework centers on a fast HTTP router that handles URL routing, mapping incoming HTTP requests like GET /users/123 to the function that should respond. Echo optimizes this routing by intelligently prioritizing competing route patterns. On top of routing, it provides a middleware system where you can attach layers of functionality to your request-handling pipeline: logging every request, recovering from unexpected crashes without crashing the server, handling authentication, compressing responses, and so on. Middleware can be applied globally to all routes, to a group of related routes, or to individual routes. For building APIs, Echo includes helpers for automatically parsing JSON, XML, or form data from request bodies into Go structs (called data binding), and for sending various kinds of responses including JSON, HTML, files, and streaming data. It handles errors centrally so you can define consistent error responses in one place rather than repeating error-handling logic throughout your handlers. It supports HTTP/2 for better performance and can automatically manage TLS (HTTPS) certificates via Let's Encrypt. You would choose Echo for a Go backend project where you want a lean, unopinionated framework that is easy to reason about and has excellent routing performance. It pairs well with microservice architectures where you want tight control over what the framework includes. The ecosystem includes official middleware packages for JWT authentication, session management, OpenTelemetry tracing, and Prometheus metrics. Echo is written in Go, installable via Go modules, and currently on version 5.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Show me how to set up a basic Echo server with GET and POST routes that return JSON.
Prompt 2
How do I add JWT authentication middleware to specific routes in Echo?
Prompt 3
Create an Echo middleware that logs every incoming request with timestamp and response status.
Prompt 4
How do I parse JSON from a POST request body into a Go struct using Echo's data binding?
Prompt 5
Set up Echo to serve HTTPS with automatic Let's Encrypt certificate management.
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Generated 2026-05-18 · Model: sonnet-4-6 · Verify against the repo before relying on details.