Got is a human-friendly and powerful HTTP request library for Node.js, written in TypeScript and designed as an alternative to other HTTP clients. The library is used by over 10,000 packages and 5 million repositories, making it one of the most widely adopted HTTP clients in the Node.js ecosystem.
The library provides both Promise-based and Stream APIs for making HTTP requests. The Promise API includes a dedicated JSON mode with a `.json<T>()` function that returns `Promise<T>`, along with advanced options like `parseJson` and `stringifyJson` for handling JSON payloads. The Stream API enables handling of large responses and streaming data. Got also offers a Pagination API for handling paginated endpoints, making it easier to work with APIs that return data in pages.
Got distinguishes itself through several advanced features not commonly found in competing libraries. It includes RFC-compliant caching, built-in cookie handling out-of-the-box, and advanced timeout handling with detailed timeout configuration options. The library implements automatic retries on failure by default, with configurable retry limits through the `options.retry.limit` setting. It supports HTTP/2 on Node.js 15.10.0 and above, provides Unix Domain Socket support, and includes comprehensive error handling with metadata-rich error objects.
The library supports hooks for request lifecycle customization, instance creation for managing multiple configurations, and a plugin system that has spawned ecosystem tools like got4aws for AWS API interactions, gh-got for GitHub API access, and got-scraping for web scraping purposes. Got also integrates with Node.js Diagnostics Channel for observability and provides full TypeScript support with type definitions.
The package is native ESM-only and no longer provides CommonJS exports, requiring projects to convert to ESM if they use CommonJS. Got v11 is no longer maintained. The README explicitly recommends Ky, also by the same author, as a smaller alternative that works in browsers and is built on the Fetch API, or fetch-extras for simpler use cases. Comparison tables in the documentation show Got's advantages over node-fetch, axios, and superagent, particularly in areas like pagination support, RFC-compliant caching, advanced timeouts, and composability. Migration guides are provided for users coming from the unmaintained Request library, Axios, or Node.js built-in HTTP modules.
