Nolan Lawson had agents build the same Pokémon app in 12 setups, from Angular and Next.js to Astro, Hono with htmx, and vanilla JavaScript. Hono with htmx was the cheapest at $2.67 per run with the least code. Angular was the most expensive at $4.97, the slowest, and the largest. Astro was the quickest to build and shipped almost no JavaScript. The benchmark is open, so you can pick a stack based on evidence, not vibes.
nolanlawson.com/2026/10/28/the-ai-cost-of-javascript-frameworks