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Quick Start

Start with a fresh Nitro project or adopt it in your current Vite project.

Try Nitro online

Get a taste of Nitro in your browser using our playground.

Play with Nitro in StackBlitz

Create a Nitro project

The fastest way to create a Nitro application is with create-nitro-app.

Make sure you have the latest LTS version of Node.js, Bun, or Deno installed.
npx create-nitro-app
Preview

Follow the CLI instructions and you will be ready to start your development server.

Add to a Vite project

You can add Nitro to any existing Vite project to get API routes, server-side rendering, and more.

Install nitro and vite

npm i nitro vite

Add Nitro plugin to Vite

Add the Nitro plugin to your vite.config.ts:

vite.config.ts
import { defineConfig } from "vite";
import { nitro } from "nitro/vite";

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [
    nitro()
  ],
});

Configure Nitro

Create a nitro.config.ts to configure the server directory:

nitro.config.ts
import { defineConfig } from "nitro";

export default defineConfig({
  serverDir: "./server",
});

The serverDir option tells Nitro where to look for your server routes. In this example, all routes will be inside the server/ directory. By default serverDir is false, so no directories are scanned until you set it (or scanDirs).

Create an API route

Create your first API route at server/api/test.ts:

server/api/test.ts
import { defineHandler } from "nitro";

export default defineHandler(() => {
  return { message: "Hello Nitro!" };
});

The file path maps directly to the route URL — server/api/test.ts becomes /api/test. Handlers can return strings, JSON objects, Response instances, or readable streams.

As an alternative to filesystem routing, you can declare routes programmatically using the routes config option. See Programmatic route handlers for more details.

Start the development server

npm run dev

Your API route is now accessible at http://localhost:3000/api/test ✨

Next steps

  • Learn about dynamic routes, methods, and middleware in Routing.
  • Serve HTML or a single-page app for unmatched routes with the renderer.
  • Take full control of every request with a server entry.

Introduction

Nitro is a full-stack server framework, compatible with any runtime and any deployment target.

Renderer

Use a renderer to handle all unmatched routes with custom HTML or a templating system.