Compare Django and FastAPI
Django is Python web framework that encourages rapid development. It is based model-template-view (MTV) design pattern. It follows a "batteries included" philosophy and ships with many tools that are needed by application developers such as ORM framework, admin panel, directory structure and more.
Fast API is a high-performance web framework for building web applications with Python 3.6+ based on standard Python type hints. It is designed to be high performance and easy to learn.
Let's see how Django and FastAPI compare on various factors and features and which to choose when.
Django
FastAPI
Overall
Type
Type
Python all-inclusive, megaframework for building web application.
Type
Minimalistic framework based on starlette and pydantic for building fast web applications using async IO.
Release Date
Release Date
2005
Release Date
2018
Adoption and Ease of Use
Used by
Used by
Instagram, Pinterest, Coursera, Udemy.
Used by
Uber (internal use,) Explosion AI, Microsoft (internal use)
Performance [?]
Performance [?]
Not as fast as compared to bare-bones Flask or other microframeworks, but for many real-world use cases, the difference is negligible.
Flexibility
Flexibility
Django expects things to be done in a certain way unlike microframeworks (e.g. Flask) which have no opinion on how developers structure things. However, It does this without compromising on flexibility. Django has been used to build a variety of things from content management systems to social networks to scientific computing platforms.
Flexibility
Fast API is flexible to code and doesn't restrict users to a particular project or code layout.
Ease of Learning
Ease of Learning
Has a learning curve especially for those who are not familiar with other web frameworks. But there are some great online resources, courses tutorials and YouTube videos.
Ease of Learning
Easy to learn especially for people who are new to web development. However, it doesn't have a large number of online resources, courses and tutorials.
Database Support
RDBMS Support
RDBMS Support
Django ships with a built-in ORM framework for developers to start using out of the box.
Verdict ORM is one of the best features of Django, loved by developers.
RDBMS Support
FastAPI doesn't come with built in ORM, however is compatible with SQLAlchemy, Pydantic ORM mode.
NoSQL Support
NoSQL Support
NoSQL databases are not officially supported by Django. There are open source projects like PynamoDB or Django MongoDB Engine, Django non-rel to support NoSQL. Some of these extensions support specific Django versions and don't interplay well with Django ORM.
Verdict Using NoSQL database with Django is not recommended.
NoSQL Support
Fast API supports many NoSQL databases like MongoDb, ElasticSearch, Cassandra, CouchDB and ArangoDB. Read more here.
Web & Core Features
Admin Dashboard
Admin Dashboard
Django ships with a web-based admin site that has a friendly UI. It allows you to quickly perform CRUD operations against your models from your browser to test things out.
Admin Dashboard
Yes, uses Swagger as an API documentation web user interface.
REST Support
REST Support
While not built-in, REST development is supported via the popular and active Django REST Framework project. It provides support for API versioning, Browsable API for interacting with APIs through web browser, authentication (OAuth1 and OAuth2) and serialization support for both ORM and non-ORM sources.
REST Support
Yes, allows developers to build REST APIs quickly.
Security
Security
Built-in protection against several common attack vectors like CSRF, XSS, and SQL injection. When vulnerabilities are discovered, the Django team has an excellent security policy and fixes are released quickly.
Security
FastAPI provides several tools for many security schemes in the fastapi.security module. Not enough data.
Templating Library
Templating Library
Uses its own templating engine. You could configure Django to use Jinja2 if you like.
Templating Library
FastAPI supports Jinja2 for templating and also supports aiofiles for serving static files
Web Forms
Web Forms
Ships with built-in ModelForms which provides complete support for web forms including input validation, CSRF, XSS, and SQL injection.
Web Forms
Ships with it's own Forms, with basic features.
Authentication
Authentication
Built-in authentication, authorization, account management and support for sessions.
Authentication
Fast API supports OAuth2, JWT and simple HTTP authentiation.
Testing
Testing
Built-in support using Python's unittest framework.
Testing
Using Starlette and pytest.
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