Building an IBAN Validation API with Hono, SQLite, and MCP published: true

Building an IBAN Validation API with Hono, SQLite, and MCP I recently shipped IBANforge, a free API for IBAN validation and BIC/SWIFT lookup. In this article, I'll walk through the key architectural decisions and share real code from the project. ## Why Hono Over Express When I started IBANforge, I considered Express, Fastify, and Hono. I went with Hono for three reasons: Performance -- Hono is built for edge runtimes and benchmarks significantly faster than Express on Node.js TypeScript-first -- Full type inference on routes, middleware, and context Lightweight middleware -- Built-in CORS, compression, and logging with zero config Here's how the main app comes together: typescript import { Hono } from 'hono'; import { compress } from 'hono/compress'; import { cors } from 'hono/cors'; import { logger } from 'hono/logger'; const app = new Hono(); app.use('*', cors({ origin: '*' })); app.use('*', logger()); app.use('*', compress()); // x402 payment middleware only on paid routes app.use(