Introduction:
When it comes to building RESTful APIs in Python, two popular frameworks that often come up are FastAPI and Django REST Framework (DRF). Both frameworks have their own strengths and weaknesses, and choosing between them can be a tough decision. In this tutorial, we will compare FastAPI and DRF in terms of performance, ease of use, flexibility, and features to help you make an informed decision on which one to choose for your next project.
Performance:
One of the key advantages of FastAPI over DRF is its performance. FastAPI is known for its fast speed and low latency due to its use of type hints and asynchronous programming. With FastAPI, you can utilize tools like Pydantic for data validation and serialization, which can help improve the speed of your API.
On the other hand, DRF is built on top of Django, which is a synchronous framework. While DRF is still fast and efficient, it may not be as performant as FastAPI when it comes to handling large volumes of requests or processing complex data.
Ease of Use:
When it comes to ease of use, both FastAPI and DRF have their own advantages. FastAPI is known for its intuitive and easy-to-use syntax, which can help developers get up and running quickly. FastAPI also provides automatic documentation using Swagger UI, making it easier to understand and test your APIs.
DRF, on the other hand, comes with a lot of built-in features and functionality, which can make it easier to build complex APIs without having to write a lot of code from scratch. DRF also provides a browsable API, which allows you to interact with your API endpoints directly from the browser.
Flexibility:
FastAPI and DRF offer different levels of flexibility when it comes to building APIs. FastAPI is designed to be lightweight and flexible, allowing you to build APIs with minimal code and dependencies. FastAPI also supports asynchronous programming, which can be useful for building high-performance APIs that can handle a large number of concurrent requests.
On the other hand, DRF comes with a lot of built-in functionality and features out of the box, which can make it easier to build complex APIs. However, this can also make DRF more opinionated and less flexible compared to FastAPI. DRF also follows the traditional model-view-controller (MVC) pattern, which may not be suitable for all projects.
Features:
Both FastAPI and DRF offer a wide range of features that can help you build robust and secure APIs. FastAPI comes with features like automatic data validation, support for dependency injection, request and response validation, and support for websockets. FastAPI also supports OpenAPI and JSON Schema, making it easy to integrate with other tools and frameworks.
DRF, on the other hand, comes with features like authentication, serialization, pagination, filtering, and more out of the box. DRF also provides support for nested serializers, custom permissions, and viewsets, which can help you build complex APIs with ease.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, both FastAPI and DRF are great frameworks for building RESTful APIs in Python. If you are looking for a fast and performant framework that is easy to use and flexible, FastAPI may be the right choice for you. However, if you prefer a more feature-rich framework with a lot of built-in functionality and support for complex APIs, DRF may be a better option.
Ultimately, the choice between FastAPI and DRF will depend on your specific project requirements, team expertise, and personal preferences. Whichever framework you choose, both FastAPI and DRF can help you build powerful and scalable APIs that meet your needs.
Used fastapi for 8 months, it's really fast and works with almost any existing python package, but the django ORM and admin panel is a significant advantage that DRF has over fastapi.
I believe that using one over the other boils down to whether you need the django ORM & admin and the django packages provided by the community, or you want to have control over every part of your API and a few ms in performance improvement is worth the switch and someone else is building the admin panel.
I hope by Pydantic you mean `SQLMODEL` in the modern world.
if we have large scale features ..I means we have various features to take care in a webapp ..In that case also can we consider FastApi?
compare with django-ninja
FastAPI vs Django-ninja pls
The problem is Django ORM is better, That's why Django is still better. You can optimize DRF for latency and speed.
I was going to use django rfw or even django ninja but i decided to use fastapi in the end. Django is good but i already made my front end and it seemed complicated to get it working solely as a backend.
Like for your effort and performances Figure ❤
Need a full fledged FastAPI project with authentication and ReactJS as frontend
So… is django dying? What would be a good use case for it?
Looking for a course with FastAPI and Next.js with all auth features 😢
Our company is already using fastapi since 2021
Any other comparisons you want to see?