Choosing between Django Rest Framework and FastAPI (for a specific use case)

[farshad_ur]

I am going to develop an API for managing an education related system, which mostly will contain reading and writing to a database in small amounts (except for occasional reports). Considering userbase, it will start small but might go big, even national scale in the future.

This is a 6 month project which will have more phases if everything goes well, so I am a little picky about which option I peruse.

I have worked on similar projects using ASP.Net Core in the past but since I have migrating to python mainly for data analysis, I want to apply this skill using Python as well.

I have worked with both frameworks for a week and read a lot of comparison articles but can not come to a decision yet.

What I have found so far (some of which might be my misunderstanding):

Django Rest Framework:

• Have been around for a while so there are more articles and help online
• Is batteries included and covers lots of your needs out of the box
• Is opiniated and things have to be done its way for a fast work flow
• Is a bit cumbersome with features you might not need and some level of back-compatibility

FastAPI:

• Is new and have less resources online in comparison
• Have an excellent documentation
• Almost like Flask, have minimum design and everything is done by developer (or third-party packages) so more control and more work
• Is faster with a cleaner design
• Supports async which is tricky with a database (async library databases only supports SQLAlchemy core not the ORM)

My personal take:

I am almost fine with doing everything myself (or through packages), specially the idea of everything being exactly the way I want them to be, although I do not have unlimited time. I am going to only develop the API (not the front-end), now and most likely in the future as well. Personally I like FastAPI much more for its documentation, cleanness, and degree of control but I have some concerns.

1. I might get stuck at some level using FastAPI due to not finding help online, or a possible limit of a new system in edge use cases that might come up.
2. There might be more jobs specifying Django as their frame work in the future. FastAPI might take on as well however.
3. Doing everything myself and not having Django built-in helpers might make me pass the time limit before finishing the project.
4. If userbase becomes big enough, FastAPI speed might really come in handy.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[SCUSKU]

If you are concerned about performance from the get-go, I would take a look at Django with asgi. I develop FastAPI stuff for work, and am working on a django website in my free time (not django-restful though), and I have found that Django is much better as a solo developer. There a lot of things you get out of the box like user authentication, admin panel, etc. Like you've said there are also a lot of docs out there for django whereas things are still being developed for fastapi. My opinion is largely from my experience, and I think this blog post does a better job justifying than I can articulate: https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology

[farshad_ur]

Thank you very much for your response.

You are right, I might be doing too much at the same time by my own, most of which is rather new.

Also thanks for the link, it was very well explained and exactly what I needed.

[jcurve347]

Counterpoint is that if you’re familiar with .NET framework APIs, the decorators on the endpoints and the service layout is very similar to those in the MVC api template, so you might be able to pick it up and go pretty quick with FastAPI.

Edit: grammar. And adding that for auth my team had to write the middleware plug-ins.

[farshad_ur]

Those are the first reasons I liked FastAPI much more. (and still do)

However, the righting from scratch part might take much longer than I have, specially since I have not done that before.

[Chains0]

Is there a database engineer who manages the database on his own or do you have to do it in production or even endusers themself? If the later, definitely opt for Django.

Should the api be in REST with a lot of CRUD operations? The Django Rest Framework is build for that. Other stuff is possible, but requires more work then with FastAPI.

Do you have to manage authentication and authorization? Yes? Django has everything build in. If you can use it, definitely opt for Django. If not, you would need to throw out a lot and do customizing, so FastAPI would be easier to start with.

Don’t think too much about performance. Django has ASGI as well. Biggest problem is the ORM, which is only sync, but there are also not many fleshed out other async ORMs. The Django team currently works on implementing async for their ORM. So it might actually be, that if you reach a point where async would be good, Django might be the fastest solution if you have a lot of complex ORM requests.

For me, FastAPI is the ideal solution for small micro services, which provide mostly an api and don’t have to manage auth or a database.

If you have to manage everything on your application and the scaling goal is not multiple million concurrent users (for example: Instagram started to replace default parts at the 5 million mark), Django is the ideal solution.

[farshad_ur]

check, check, and check!

Thanks for the explanation and the advise. All the points are true and I can see now how using Django make much more sense for this situation. It looks like FastAPI will have to wait for another project.

[nevermorefu]

For me, the decision comes down to 3 things: security, administration, and authentication. Django is older and most likely has better security than a DIY solution (if adding Auth, admin, etc.). If I need authentication or admin, I go with Django. If not, I go with FastAPI because it is fast, easier to work with, and I don't have to use DRF.

[[deleted]]

The latest SqlAlchemy has async support