For web applications, you're definitely going to get better performance with OpenResty. However, Node has one advantage: you can write any sort of socket server

For web applications, you're definitely going to get better performance with OpenResty. However, Node has one advantage: you can write any sort of socket server with it. With nginx/OpenResty, you're stuck with HTTP(S) servers. The creator of OpenResty has expressed interest in eventually extending it to work for non-HTTP usecases though.