oRPC v1 Announcement - Typesafe APIs Made Simple 🪄

oRPC is a thing help you build type-safe APIs with TypeScript. It's has own goal but can fairly be compared to other libraries like tRPC, ts-rest, next-safe-action, etc. or even serve as an alternative to them.

My Story

My oRPC journey started in early 2024 after I lost my job. Finding a new one was hard, and I realized a standard job wasn't really what I wanted. I had always dreamed of being an "indie hacker" – someone who makes useful things for others.

But looking back at my past work, I noticed something: I often spent more time complaining about the tools I used than focusing on what users needed. Maybe I cared too much about the tools themselves.

Because I was often frustrated with existing tools, I changed my plan. I thought, "What if I make a tool for developers, one that fixes the problems I always had?" I hoped that if I built a tool I liked, other developers would like it too.

That's how oRPC started. I began working hard on it around September 17, 2024. It wasn't easy; I had to rebuild oRPC three times to get the base right. After about three months, I shared an early version on Reddit (see post).

At first, oRPC was just a side project. Then, a turning point came when someone privately offered $100 to support it. I was surprised and really motivated! A month after that, I decided to stop my other projects and work on oRPC full-time, even though I didn't have another job. My life became: code, eat, sleep, repeat.

I had so many ideas for oRPC. I realized it would take all my focus and time, probably until the end of 2025, to make it happen.

But !!! Today is a big step on that journey. I'm happy and proud to announce that the core of oRPC is now stable, and Version 1.0 is officially out!

INFO

V1 means the public API is stable and ready for production use.

The Idea behind oRPC

oRPC philosophy is powerful simplicity. Define your API endpoints almost as easily as writing standard functions, yet automatically gain:

End-to-end type safety (includes errors)
Server Action compatibility
Full OpenAPI specification generation
Contract-first workflow support
Standard function call compatibility

const getting = os
  .use(dbProvider)
  .use(requiredAuth)
  .use(rateLimit)
  .use(analytics)
  .use(sentryMonitoring)
  .use(retry({ times: 3 }))
  .route({ method: 'GET', path: '/getting/{id}' })
  .input(z.object({ id: z.string() }))
  .use(canGetting, input => input.id)
  .errors({
    SOME_TYPE_SAFE_ERROR: {
      data: z.object({ something: z.string() })
    }
  })
  .handler(async ({ input, errors, context }) => {
    // do something
  })
  .actionable() // server action compatible
  .callable() // regular function compatible

Beyond built-in features, oRPC metadata system allows for community-driven extensions and future possibilities.

Highlights

🔗 End-to-End Type Safety: Ensure type-safe inputs, outputs, and errors from client to server.
📘 First-Class OpenAPI: Built-in support that fully adheres to the OpenAPI standard.
📝 Contract-First Development: Optionally define your API contract before implementation.
⚙️ Framework Integrations: Seamlessly integrate with TanStack Query (React, Vue, Solid, Svelte), Pinia Colada, and more.
🚀 Server Actions: Fully compatible with React Server Actions on Next.js, TanStack Start, and other platforms.
🔠 Standard Schema Support: Works out of the box with Zod, Valibot, ArkType, and other schema validators.
🗃️ Native Types: Supports native types like Date, File, Blob, BigInt, URL, and more.
⏱️ Lazy Router: Enhance cold start times with our lazy routing feature.
📡 SSE & Streaming: Enjoy full type-safe support for SSE and streaming.
🌍 Multi-Runtime Support: Fast and lightweight on Cloudflare, Deno, Bun, Node.js, and beyond.
🔌 Extendability: Easily extend functionality with plugins, middleware, and interceptors.
🛡️ Reliability: Well-tested, TypeScript-based, production-ready, and MIT licensed.

tRPC alternative

I used tRPC extensively and really liked it. However, I needed OpenAPI support for my projects. Although I found trpc-openapi to add OpenAPI to tRPC, it didn't work with Edge runtimes and has since been deprecated. This was very frustrating, prompting me to look for alternatives.

Also, setting up tRPC sometimes felt too complicated, especially for smaller projects like Cloudflare Durable Objects where I just needed a simple API. Another point is that tRPC mostly supports React Query. That was okay for me, but less helpful if you want to use Vue, Solid, or Svelte.

I did some simple benchmarks between oRPC and tRPC, and results show (full report here):

oRPC is 1,6 times typecheck faster (5.9s vs 9.3s)
oRPC is 2,8 times runtime faster (295k reqs vs 104k reqs / 20 sec)
oRPC is 1,26 times less max cpu usage (102% vs 129%)
oRPC is 2,6 times less max ram usage (103MB vs 268MB)
oRPC is 2 times smaller in bundle size (32.3 kB vs 65.5 kB)

WARNING

Benchmark results can vary across environments and depend heavily on factors like your project's size, complexity, and setup. Many conditions can influence the outcome — so treat these numbers as a helpful reference, not a guarantee.

INFO

You can read more about comparion here

ts-rest alternative

After running into the OpenAPI issues with tRPC, I tried ts-rest. While it helped with OpenAPI, I soon found it was missing features I relied on from tRPC, like flexible middleware and easy handling of certain data types (like Dates or Files). After using it for some APIs, I felt it wasn't the complete solution I wanted. This frustration was a key reason I started building oRPC.

INFO

You can read more about comparion here

next-safe-action alternative

I also experimented with next-safe-action to test server actions in Next.js, hoping they might be a good replacement for the tRPC style. However, I found they didn't quite fit my needs. I believe a dedicated RPC library like oRPC still provides a better developer experience for building APIs.

oRPC v1 Announcement - Typesafe APIs Made Simple 🪄 ​

My Story ​

The Idea behind oRPC ​

Highlights ​

tRPC alternative ​

ts-rest alternative ​

next-safe-action alternative ​

Sponsors ​

oRPC v1 Announcement - Typesafe APIs Made Simple 🪄

My Story

The Idea behind oRPC

Highlights

tRPC alternative

ts-rest alternative

next-safe-action alternative

Sponsors