Best HTTP Client for a Loco/Axum-based Project?

[alokmahor]

Summary

I am working on a Loco project, which is built on top of Axum, which in turn is built on Tower and tower-http. My application primarily deals with JSON-based HTTP requests and responses.

I need a general-purpose HTTP client for making outbound API requests, and I’m considering whether to:

1. Use a standalone HTTP client like reqwest, which is widely used and provides built-in JSON handling.
2. Leverage existing Tower-based components such as hyper::Client with tower and tower-http middleware (timeouts, retries, logging, etc.) for better integration with Loco/Axum.

Given that Loco/Axum is already built on Tower, would it be better to stay within the Tower ecosystem by using Hyper + Tower middleware for better compatibility? Or would reqwest still be the better choice for a JSON-heavy application?

axum version

0.8.1

[mladedav]

Honestly, just use whatever feels best. I would be surprised if you reused a lot of middlewares between the server and client.

Also reqwest is built on top of hyper.

[alokmahor]

Thank you for telling about reqwest is built on top of hyper.