# Axios

21 Hacker News commenters recommended Axios and 37 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Developers recommend it for easier error handling, interceptors and JSON parsing than raw fetch. Main caveat: critics point to malicious npm releases and say native fetch covers much of it.

## Why people recommend it

- Handles errors, interceptors and JSON parsing (4 comments): "Because your fetch most likely mishandle errors, lack retries, fail on redirects and is unnecessary verbose for both people and agents." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47873953)) "Also it has interceptors, which allow you to build easily reusable pieces of code" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582554)) "Axios handles errors better, has interceptors, parses JSON for you" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47638210))
- Avoids reinventing HTTP client features (4 comments): "Every team I've seen write a fetch wrapper eventually reimplements half of axios, just worse." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47611836)) "Axios is something where you get most of that work done for you by the community for free" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47872804)) "Axios and other libraries provide much more for building that sort of framework." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47872042))
- Better ergonomics than fetch (4 comments): "They do the same thing, except axios does it a little better, when it doesn't pwn you." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47872545)) "axios definitely has better ergonomics than fetch, especially for calling APIs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47871982)) "Axios offers a lot over fetch for all but the simplest use cases" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47872146))
- Long-standing, reliable and well regarded (3 comments): "Axios has been one of my favorite libraries for over a decade." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47614440)) "Axios... just works. No need to reinvent anything" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47583113)) "Axios has a good reputation." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47591272))

## What people warn about

- Native fetch makes it unnecessary (6 comments): "Most of axios' functionality has effectively been promoted to a language feature as `fetch`, but the problem is people don't bother to migrate." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47585578)) "axios-like packages don't make sense to use any more in a world where AI+vanilla accomplishes the same thing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48242405)) "axios is not really needed now given that fetch is part of the JS std lib" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47585938))
- Supply chain compromise via malicious versions (5 comments): "If you ever did a npm install on a project using one of the affected axios versions, your entire system may be compromised." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47584697)) "We have seen it happen with Axios which is one of the biggest supply chain attacks on the Javascript / Typescript ecosystem" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47877344)) "Axios was just compromised on npm with malicious versions dropping a remote access trojan" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47595514))
- Breaking changes and surprising behavior (3 comments): "Libraries that automatically throw errors for status codes in the 400 and 500 ranges are pretty obnoxious" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48080181)) "I lost respect for Axios when they made a breaking change in a patch release." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47584187)) "Axios tries to adapt itself to fetch, which doesn't always work well." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47594214))
- Security vulnerabilities and CVE warnings (2 comments): "Any Node.js service that forwards user-controlled JSON through axios can be crashed with a single request." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47540916)) "I think I had around 800 CVE warnings in relations to Axios in side a Microsoft tool" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50023228))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Requests (Python library)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/requests.md): 23 recommend
- [Go net/http](https://hackerapproved.com/p/go-net-http.md): 12 recommend
- [libcurl](https://hackerapproved.com/p/libcurl.md): 10 recommend
- [httpx](https://hackerapproved.com/p/httpx.md): 10 recommend
- [Niquests](https://hackerapproved.com/p/niquests.md): 8 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Axios", https://hackerapproved.com/p/axios/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).