node-reqwest

node-reqwest

Node.js bindings for reqwest — a Rust HTTP client library. A drop-in replacement for undici with HTTP/2 multiplexing that decisively outperforms it, system proxy, trusted system CA certificates, and Electron compatibility out of the box.

Implements the full undici.Dispatcher interface — including its error classes — and is verified against the same web-platform tests that undici uses for standards compliance.

Why node-reqwest?

Feature	node-reqwest	Node.js / undici
DNS resolver	Async pure-Rust (hickory-dns)	C (c-ares) — crashes Electron on Windows for nonexistent domains
System CA certificates	Built-in	Requires win-ca, mac-ca
System proxy	Built-in	Not available (complex Electron workaround)
SOCKS proxy	Built-in	Not available
HTTP/2	Multiplexed via hyper	Implemented, but materially slower (see benchmarks)
TLS	rustls	OpenSSL

Benchmarks

Throughput vs. undici on the same workload. The conservative number between two timed runs (with a warm-up run discarded):

Scenario	node-reqwest vs. undici
HTTP/1 GET	at parity
HTTP/1 POST (stream body)	+5%
HTTP/2 GET	+50%
HTTP/2 POST (stream body)	+55%

HTTP/2's multiplexing advantage is decisive — and every real-world server supports it. HTTP/1 GET, the tightest hot path, lands within run-to-run noise of undici (mean throughput; p50 favors node-reqwest by 3–7% but tail latency is GC-jittery on both sides).

Reproduce the benchmarks

The benchmark suite lives in packages/node/benchmarks/. Each scenario starts a loopback HTTP/1 or HTTP/2 server (using selfsigned for HTTP/2 TLS) and drives 100 parallel dispatches per iteration via vitest's bench() runner; warm-up dispatches prime the connection pool and JIT before timed samples.

To reproduce locally:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/vadimpiven/node_reqwest.git
cd node_reqwest
mise install           # installs Node, Rust, pnpm via the pinned toolchain
pnpm install
pnpm --filter node-reqwest run bench

pnpm run bench builds the Rust addon first (via prebench), then executes every *.bench.ts file in packages/node/benchmarks/. Each run prints per-bench hz (ops/sec), latency percentiles, and a "Nx faster than" summary comparing the two dispatchers.

The README numbers are the conservative result between two consecutive runs (the worst-for-node-reqwest ratio), with a discarded warm-up run preceding them. Absolute throughput depends on your machine; the ratio between the two dispatchers is what's stable across hardware.

Usage

This library provides an Agent that implements the undici.Dispatcher interface. Use it as a global dispatcher for fetch or with any undici-compatible API.

import { Agent } from "node-reqwest";
import { setGlobalDispatcher } from "undici";

const agent = new Agent({
    allowH2: true,
    proxy: "system", // also accepts "none" or { type: "custom", uri, auth? }
});

setGlobalDispatcher(agent);

// All fetch calls now use reqwest under the hood
const response = await fetch("https://example.com");

Installation safety

This package downloads a precompiled binary during npm install. GitHub releases for this project are immutable — once published, release assets cannot be modified or replaced, ensuring that the binary you download is the same one that was originally published.

In addition, the postinstall script uses node-addon-slsa to cryptographically verify that the binary was built in the same GitHub Actions workflow run as this npm package, using sigstore provenance attestations and the GitHub Attestations API.

Installation aborts with a SECURITY error if any check fails.

License

Apache-2.0 OR MIT