# Go net/http

12 Hacker News commenters recommended Go net/http and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Go's standard library HTTP package, praised as fully featured with an excellent server side. Critics say the client side is clunky, verbose and error-prone, with surprising behaviour changes.

## Why people recommend it

- Fully featured out of the box (2 comments): "I've never had any issues with it. Go has some of the best http batteries included of any language" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47515475)) "because it's so fully featured out of the box" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47515332))
- Excellent server side (2 comments): "Go’s server side net/http is excellent, the client side is clunky verbose" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47517432)) "The server side is great. Sending a http request is… not" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47517155))
- Production-grade, broadly liked standard library (2 comments): "I think having production-grade implementations makes a huge difference also." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49383397)) "I would have thought everyone is happy we have it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47831117))

## What people warn about

- Surprising behaviour and breaking changes (4 comments): "That's a subtle behaviour change." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49141999)) "This is a surprising implementation of "Close" and should be documented somewhere." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50092129)) "std added new fields to the type in a way that silently breaks existing users" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49153232))
- Client side clunky and verbose (2 comments): "Go’s server side net/http is excellent, the client side is clunky verbose" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47517432)) "The server side is great. Sending a http request is… not" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47517155))
- Slow, especially HTTP/2 (2 comments): "It indeed isn't very performant, though one should be careful" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47289145)) "HTTP/2 in Go is significantly slower" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50099046))
- Client has footguns, not convenient (2 comments): "It is not built for convenience." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47520197)) "everyone sane avoids the built-in http client in any production setting because it has rather severe footguns" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47596775))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Requests (Python library)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/requests.md): 23 recommend
- [Axios](https://hackerapproved.com/p/axios.md): 21 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, "Go net/http", https://hackerapproved.com/p/go-net-http/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).