NestJS vs Express vs Fastify

Pick NestJS when the team wants a structured, Angular-style architecture — modules, dependency injection, decorators — and you're building a larger service where the upfront ceremony pays back in long-term maintainability. Pick Express when you want a thin, unopinionated HTTP layer you assemble yourself, and the deepest pool of compatible middleware and tutorials matters more than performance or built-in structure. Pick Fastify when you want a modern, schema-driven framework with serious throughput and a cleaner plugin model than Express, without committing to NestJS's full architectural worldview.