Comparison with other libraries

No single Result library fits every codebase. This page lays out how antithrow sits relative to the alternatives so you can pick the right one honestly.

Plain try / catch

try / catch is the baseline. It is universally understood, has no dependencies, and works with every API in the language. It is also the thing antithrow is explicitly reacting against.

The trade:

• Exceptions are invisible in types. The signature hides failure paths.
• Handlers nest poorly. A few layers of try in a single function and the happy path disappears.
• Recovery is ad hoc. There is no standard combinator for "try this, fall back to that, keep the error type."

antithrow costs you a wrapper (Result.try) at the boundary to any throwing code. In return you get everything the type checker can tell you about failures.

neverthrow

neverthrow is the closest neighbour. It also pairs Ok / Err with a separate ResultAsync type for async operations.

Where they differ:

• Three shapes versus two + async wrapper. antithrow treats Pending as a first-class member of Result<T, E>, not a parallel type. See the three-state model for the rationale.
• Eager, like neverthrow. Neither library describes an effect. Both run things as soon as you write them.
• Slightly different method surface. andThen, map, mapErr, orElse, unwrapOr exist in both. antithrow adds settle, flatten, and generator support (Result.do).

If you are already happy with neverthrow, antithrow is not a dramatic shift. The port is usually mechanical.

Effect

Effect is a lazy, algebraic-effects-inspired runtime. It models computations — not just results — and handles cancellation, concurrency, dependency injection, and retries uniformly.

The trade:

• Whole-application commitment. Effect is most powerful when everything runs inside its runtime. Using it for a single module is awkward.
• Steeper learning curve. Tag types, layers, fibers, scopes. Worth learning if the power pays off.
• Laziness. See eager vs lazy. If you need retry, cancellation, and resource safety as primitives, Effect is a better choice than antithrow.

antithrow deliberately does less. If you want Rust's Result semantics without rewriting the host app, stay here. If you want a full effect system, use Effect.

fp-ts

fp-ts offers Either<E, A>, TaskEither<E, A>, and the full Haskell-style typeclass hierarchy. It predates both antithrow and neverthrow by years and is the most faithful functional rendering.

The trade:

• Idiom. fp-ts expects pipe-first code (pipe(value, f, g, h)) and category-theoretic vocabulary. Lovely if you speak it, confusing if you don't.
• Two types, not three. TaskEither is separate from Either, with its own parallel API.
• Heavy runtime. More combinators, more imports, more bundle weight.

If your team already leans FP-heavy, fp-ts rewards familiarity. If they don't, antithrow's fluent API tends to land more smoothly.

Summary

	antithrow	neverthrow	Effect	fp-ts
Sync + async in one type	Yes (Result)	No (ResultAsync)	N/A (everything is an Effect)	No (TaskEither)
Eager execution	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Cancellation primitive	No	No	Yes	No
Dependency injection	No	No	Yes	Partial
Requires whole-app adoption	No	No	Effectively yes	No
Method-chaining ergonomic	Yes	Yes	Yes	No (pipe-first)

Pick whichever matches your constraints. antithrow is aimed at teams that want typed error handling without adopting a runtime.