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Preferred HTTP library: Req or HTTPoison?

/phoenix#httpoison#req
itzmidinesh

itzmidinesh

Preferred HTTP library: Req or HTTPoison?

Hi all,

I’m working on a Phoenix project where I need to make external HTTP requests and I’m trying to choose between Req and HTTPoison.

Req looks modern and composable, which is appealing. But, HTTPoison has been around for a long time and seems to be a battle-tested choice. I also noticed that HTTPoison has only one dependency which makes it attractive for keeping things lightweight.

I’d love to hear what the community prefers in 2025:

  • Which library do you use and why?
  • Any caveats, issues or limitations you’ve run into with either?

Thanks in advance!

5 comments
#httpoison
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sabiwara

sabiwara

Elixir Core Team

You might want to read this deep-dive on the topic:

I also noticed that HTTPoison has only one dependency which makes it attractive for keeping things lightweight.

It may have only one direct dependency (:hackney), but :hackney itself comes with several dependencies (mentioned in the article above too).

3
Post #2

Also Liked

garrison

garrison

I would go with Req for new projects at this point. It has a wonderful API and buy-in from the right people, so we know it will be used and maintained. The only downside is it’s still not a stable release, but it’s been pretty stable for the last year or so now so I don’t expect any substantial breaking changes or anything at this point. I’ve personally switched over (I was previously rolling my own on top of Finch) and the batteries-included API is very nice.

Also: Req is a pure-Elixir stack underneath (Finch, Mint). Which doesn’t really matter but it’s cool!

4
Post #6
adamu

adamu

Tesla is pretty underrated IMO, and it no longer “relies a bit too much on module-based configuration and meta-programming”, citied as downsides in that article.

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