Categories: Computer science

Django Vs FastAPI: which one is better?

If you’re a Python back-end developer, chances are you’ve already heard of the Django and FastAPI web frameworks. Simply put, a web framework is a set of tools and software components organised according to an architecture, whose purpose is to optimise the development of web software with APIs.

However, choosing one of these two frameworks is a rather complicated task for both experienced and novice developers. By looking in detail at various aspects we will help you to choose the best of the two while saying in which case each of the two can be used; but first it is important to give you a quick overview of the two frameworks.

Django Vs FastAPI: Quick overview

Django is a free, open-source web framework built entirely on Python and for server-side development; it follows the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) Principle. This helps to keep the code simple and non-repetitive. It is to this day the best known of all Python developers. Many companies like Instagram, Pinterest, Mozilla use Django.

FastAPI is a modern and powerful framework for web development, creating REST services; it is based on standard Python types and is compatible with Python 3.7 and later. It is very easy to use, simple to learn and easy to deploy. It thus compensates for some of the drawbacks of Django. FastAPI is used by Netflix.

Django Vs FastAPI: some of the strengths of the two frameworks

As mentioned above, Django is a free and open-source framework, excellent for web application development; in addition to this, Django has a range of interesting points to consider. These are :

Security: as it easily avoids common threats against cross-site scripting (notably with its CRSF: Cross Site Registration Forgery), SQL injections ;
Scalability: by offering the possibility to move from small to large scale projects
Versatility: Django is based on Python, which is a fairly versatile language, so it is also versatile.
Popularity: Django is the best-known framework for Python developers and therefore benefits from a large community, which is a major asset for a developer.

Django follows the MVT (Model View Template) architecture based on the MVC (Model View Controller)

For more details, I suggest you refer to the official documentation by clicking here https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.1/.

FastAPI for its part, in addition to being easy to learn has many strengths that will leave you without saying a word. These are :

Its interactive, fairly simple and intuitive documentation and better editor support than Django’s
Its speed in coding and handling makes it an optimization in terms of development speed varying from 200 to 300% in
Its compatibility with Open API standards and the JSON schema
Reduces lines of code and the risk of induced bugs by 40%.
Its compatibility with asynchronous programming

FastAPI is designed according to the MVC model. You can find more details here: https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/

Django Vs FastAPI: Weaknesses of both Frameworks

With regard to the features and benefits Django offers, it should be noted that it also has some weak points:

Django is sometimes not suitable for small projects as its wide range of features could confuse the developer
Django is not easy to learn because of its multiple features and configurations that slow down the learning process
Django uses a much inferior ORM to SQLAlchemy used by FastAPI, which makes it less flexible.

As far as FastAPI is concerned, the modern framework is almost perfect, except for the following aspects that tarnish its performance:

FastAPI at the time of writing is a fairly new framework that is no more than 05 years old, and therefore does not have a large community, which can slow down a developer when looking for solutions to errors encountered with FastAPI
The main file can sometimes be too long as everything has to be linked

Django Vs FastAPI: the actual comparison

Django Vs FastAPI: which one performs better?

FastAPI, being a minimalist framework, is lightweight compared to Django and therefore offers very high performance, whereas Django is not as fast as FastAPI, which is a micro framework.

FastAPI is therefore a step above Django in terms of performance.

Django Vs FastAPI: Which is more flexible?

Developers focus on the flexibility of the code by planning for future changes and updates. FastAPI offers some freedom to the developer in organising their code, whereas Django wishes to maintain the coding standard.

So together we can see that FastAPI is more flexible than Django.

Django Vs FastAPI: which one has the largest community?

Even though FastAPI is a step faster than Django, Django is an older framework, but Django has a larger community than FastAPI. In addition, there are more tutorials, jobs, materials and resources on the net about Django than about FastAPI.

We can see that FastAPI does not have a strong community.

Django Vs FastAPI: which one has more packages?

Django has more than 2500 packages in its libraries, which makes it a full stack web framework that promotes code reusability, whereas FastAPI is a minimalist framework.

Django then equals FastAPI in this versus.

Django Vs FastAPI: which one is easier to learn?

FastAPI is speed-oriented and therefore easier to learn than Django which takes longer to learn because of its many libraries and features.

FastAPI takes the lead in this versus from the point of view of ease of learning.

Django Vs FastAPI: verdict

Looking at the points we have focused on in this Django vs FastAPI versus, it appears that FastAPI, for its outstanding performance, ease of learning, flexibility and interactive documentation wins this versus over the robust Django Framework.

However, the choice of a Framework depends on the use you wish to make of it. If you wish to conceive robust full stack websites, Django is better adapted with its multiple functionalities and its numerous libraries. On the other hand, you should opt for FastAPI if you are looking for speed, scalability and more flexibility.

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