zod is great, but I have been moving to @effect/schema and think it deserves a mention here. @effect/schema is the evolution of io-ts, which originally inspired zod.

It supports decoding as well as encoding, and fits natively into the rest of the effect ecosystem.

https://effect.website/docs/guides/schema/introduction

It does come with the cost of importing effect, so might not be the best in certain scenarios. However, there are smaller options than zod if that is a concern.