Go vs Node.js for API Development — My Take

I've shipped production APIs in both Go and Node.js. They're both excellent — but they're not interchangeable.

When I choose Node.js

Node.js is my default for most web APIs. The ecosystem is massive — npm has a package for everything. If I'm building an API that talks to a database, sends emails, and integrates with third-party services, Node.js wins on speed-to-production.

When I reach for Go

Go shines when performance actually matters. Thousands of concurrent connections, large data processing, long-lived services — Go's goroutines and low memory footprint are hard to beat. The compiled binary is also a deployment advantage.

The honest answer

For 90% of web APIs, Node.js is fine. The performance difference doesn't matter if your bottleneck is the database. But if CPU and memory matter — Go is worth the learning curve.