Koin
Pragmatic, lightweight dependency injection framework for Kotlin. Unlike Hilt/Dagger, Koin uses runtime resolution (not compile-time code generation) via a simple DSL: module { single { MyService() } factory { MyRepo() } }. Supports Android (ViewModel injection, Fragment, Activity), Ktor server, and Kotlin Multiplatform. Koin 3.5+ adds KSP-based compile-time verification as optional. Favored for simplicity over Hilt's annotation-heavy approach.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
DI framework — no direct security surface. No network calls. Enables clean separation of auth credential injection.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
You want pragmatic, readable DI without code generation complexity — Koin's DSL is readable and setup is fast, making it great for prototyping and smaller apps.
Avoid When
You need strict compile-time DI validation on a large Android codebase — Hilt provides better build-time safety guarantees for large projects.
Use Cases
- • Wire Android/Kotlin agent dependencies with a readable DSL without kapt/KSP code generation overhead
- • Inject ViewModels and repositories in Android agent apps using koinViewModel() and get() extension functions
- • Use Koin with Ktor server for server-side Kotlin dependency injection in agent API backends
- • Test agent components with Koin's checkModules() verification to catch missing bindings before runtime
- • Use Koin Multiplatform for shared DI configuration across Android and iOS agent targets in KMP projects
Not For
- • Applications where compile-time DI safety is critical — Hilt/Dagger catch errors at build time; Koin catches them at runtime (unless using KSP verification)
- • Large enterprise Android apps with strict performance requirements — Koin's runtime resolution has more startup overhead than Dagger's generated code
- • Teams that prefer annotation-based DI — Hilt's @Inject and @Provides annotations are more familiar to teams coming from Spring or Dagger
Interface
Authentication
DI framework — no authentication. Auth credentials injected as dependencies.
Pricing
Community-maintained open source library. Apache 2.0 license.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ Koin's runtime resolution means missing bindings throw NoBeanDefFoundException at runtime, not compile time — always run checkModules() in tests to catch missing bindings early
- ⚠ ViewModel injection in Compose requires koin-androidx-compose — using the wrong artifact (koin-android vs koin-androidx-compose) causes different injection APIs that are incompatible
- ⚠ Koin modules are global by default — declaring the same binding in multiple modules without override = true causes DuplicateDefinitionException on Koin startup
- ⚠ Scope management in Koin requires explicit scope creation and closing — if you create a scope (e.g., session scope) and don't close it, it leaks until application scope ends
- ⚠ koinViewModel() in Compose works differently from viewModel() — it uses Koin's scope not Jetpack's ViewModelProvider; mixing both causes duplicate ViewModel instances
- ⚠ Koin 3.x changed module creation DSL from applicationContext to module — code examples from Koin 2.x are not compatible and will cause compilation errors
Alternatives
Full Evaluation Report
Detailed scoring breakdown, competitive positioning, security analysis, and improvement recommendations for Koin.
Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-06.