Why I Switched from Node.js to Bun for AI Backends (Benchmarks Inside)

I run AI agents that make hundreds of API calls per minute. Node.js was the bottleneck. Then I tried Bun. The Numbers Metric Node.js 22 Bun 1.3 Difference Startup 200ms 12ms 16x faster HTTP requests/sec 45,000 110,000 2.4x faster SQLite reads 0.8ms 0.4ms 2x faster Memory (idle) 45MB 22MB 2x less npm install 12s 2s 6x faster Why It Matters for AI AI backends have a unique workload: High HTTP throughput — proxying LLM API calls SQLite for state — conversation history, CRM data Fast startup — serverless/edge deployments Low memory — running on constrained devices (Raspberry Pi) Bun wins on all 4. My Stack import { Hono } from " hono " ; import { Database } from " bun:sqlite " ; const app = new Hono (); const db = new Database ( " app.db " ); // SQLite with WAL mode — 0.4ms reads db . exec ( " PRAGMA journal_mode=WAL " ); db . exec ( " PRAGMA cache_size=64000 " ); app . post ( " /chat " , async ( c ) => { const { message } = await c . req . json (); // Call Claude API const response = awai