# Boa JavaScript engine

14 Hacker News commenters recommended Boa JavaScript engine and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended for being standards-conforming and very easy to embed in Rust apps; the most common caveat is slow performance compared with V8 and other engines.

## Why people recommend it

- Easy to embed in Rust apps (3 comments): "I love how supremely easy it looks to embed in normal Rust apps without a complicated build script." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45940416)) "plenty of Rust projects have found good use for it as they find it easy to embed and use" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45939970)) "Oh my god, that's so easy to embed." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45940130))
- Clear, well-architected, extensible project (3 comments): "I really appreciate the clear and detailed project description" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45942666)) "This sounds really well architected and extensible." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45940598)) "Seems like a nice team and project." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45942704))
- Early Temporal implementation praised (2 comments): "we caught up with the top engines but we surpassed them when working on Temporal" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45940318)) "The Temporal in rust release happening in Chrome & others is so cool!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45940477))

## What people warn about

- Slow performance versus JIT engines (5 comments): "each request is almost guaranteed to be slower because V8 will be faster than Boa" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46301030)) "V8-jitless is in the benchmarks and even then still blows it away" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45939605)) "Boa is very very slow compared to JIT compiled JavaScript" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46298298))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [V8 JavaScript engine](https://hackerapproved.com/p/v8.md): 59 recommend
- [QuickJS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/quickjs.md): 33 recommend
- [MicroQuickJS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/microquickjs.md): 19 recommend
- [JavaScriptCore](https://hackerapproved.com/p/javascriptcore.md): 14 recommend
- [SpiderMonkey](https://hackerapproved.com/p/spidermonkey.md): 8 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Boa JavaScript engine", https://hackerapproved.com/p/boa-javascript-engine/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).