Redbean
Ranked 7 of 8 web servers by recommenders
Recommended as a single-file, portable web server that runs from one executable; critics note outdated TLS.
Recommended as a single-file, portable web server that runs from one executable; critics note outdated TLS.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 90%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 9 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Single executable runs across platforms
“Another way to achieve something like this is Cosmopolitan C Compiler, Actually Portable Executables.”
Comment from 16 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite” “I love APE and redbean and your articles on the code trickery you get up to.”
Comment from 29 May 2026 in “Social Animus” “a very high-performance APE-packaged web server”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “Restartable Sequences” Impressive low-level engineering tricks
“I love APE and redbean and your articles on the code trickery you get up to.”
Comment from 29 May 2026 in “Social Animus” “I think most people don't realize just how crazy this is.”
Comment from 27 Aug 2026 in “Actually Queryable Executables” “These projects are fascinating”
Comment from 6 Jun 2026 in “Zeroserve: A zero-config web server you can script with eBPF”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
TLS certificates expired; removed from GitHub
“the tls certs are expired and it seems scrubbed off of github”
Comment from 11 Oct 2026 in “Unikernels were hard. key word: were”
Other web servers people recommend
The four most recommended other web servers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nginx | 130 | 44 | 75% | 12 | 15 yrs5 owners | Approved |
| Caddy | 114 | 10 | 92% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Apache HTTP Server | 52 | 32 | 62% | 12 | 10 yrs5 owners | — |
| Zeroserve | 17 | 8 | 68% | 1 | — | — |
| RedbeanThis page | 9 | 1 | 90% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
10 of the 12 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“found Redbean to be almost ideal so never got past overall design”
“the tls certs are expired and it seems scrubbed off of github”
“Another way to achieve something like this is Cosmopolitan C Compiler, Actually Portable Executables.”
“I think most people don't realize just how crazy this is.”
“These projects are fascinating”
“why doesn't redbean do TLS1.3”
“a very high-performance APE-packaged web server”
“I love APE and redbean and your articles on the code trickery you get up to.”
“redbean/llamafile might be the closest, though.”
“the way to go imo is Redbean”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.