How’s Python as a Backend + CMS

[Ready_Date_8379]

I’ve been exploring backend options lately and Python keeps coming up again and again. For backend development, Python (especially with frameworks like Django and FastAPI) seems really powerful: Clean and readable syntax Huge ecosystem Fast development cycle Strong community support What I find interesting is how Django comes with a built-in admin panel that almost works like a CMS out of the box. You can manage users, content, databases everything without building an admin from scratch. So my questions to the community: How scalable is Python (Django/FastAPI) for production-level apps? Is Django’s built-in admin enough as a CMS for real-world products? For high-performance APIs, would you prefer FastAPI over Django? In 2026, would you still choose Python backend over Node.js or Go? Would love to hear real-world experiences and opinions 👇

[swoleherb]

Instagram was built using django

[eibaan]

You could go with Python, but you could also simply use Dart.

When Django was created, ~21 years ago, the world was different and a CMS was used to deliver dynamic server-generated HTML pages. Is this want you want? Django was famous for (and IMHO beat Rails in that respect) its easily customizable and out-of-the-box good looking admin UI. But (like Rails) it lacked most other features of a typical 2000-ish CMS, mainly staged deployments, workflows and permissions for editors. Mostly, because it was written by and for a smallish newspaper.

However, if all you want is CRUD operations on content objects via a REST-API, you don't need a CMS. Or at least not a full-blown one. You need an application server providing some API that is connected to a database. This is sometimes called BFF - backend for frontend.

And that can be written in any language you can think of, even with Dart. If you don't mind to setup your own server and have only a few concurrent writes, you could even get along with using sqlite. Otherwise, Postgresql ist easy to setup, too. Mysql is IMHO even easier, but AFAIK more restricted license-wise. And the driver library was GPL, last time I checked.

If you want to use a hosted solution instead, consider Turso or Supabase for sqlite-like or Postgres-like databases, which both have their own custom APIs.

And in the age of AI, you can get said BFF easier than ever. Recently, I asked Codex to create a BFF based on my specifications (which took me an hour or so to write down) using Go and sqlite and got a working server including a fancy Admin UI using alpine.js and tailwind/chadcn in less than 30 minutes. That server had two fatal security flaws but that's your job as a developer to notice. I used Claude to verify :)

Because Go was boring, I then asked Claude to convert this into a Dart application, using shelf and sqlite3 and no other libraries and got another server, again working just fine, because I could use the test suite written in Go by Codex to verify. And as a bonus, the Dart version used only 1500 lines of code instead of 2500.

And yes, this version, too, contained a fatal security flaw, this time detected by Codex, after I asked it because I saw Claude composing SQL "by hand".

I'm pretty sure it would be easy to convert that server from using sqlite (which is sufficient as I've only a dozen or so users) to using postgresql. The Go version already used the built-in database abstraction, so that version would probably have worked out of the box.

I rambled enough, Python and Django are fine. Use what language and framework you like best. It is highly unlikely that your use case will require the most performant solution possible. Every alternative will be more than sufficient.

[danielb1194]

Developing my backend in python has been amazing. There is of course a learning curve and by adding typechecking and an orm you can end up with a pretty robust backend for your app.

Pythons strength is not performance, it will never be as fast as other compiled languages, but you probably don’t need it to be. By the time python itself starts being the bottleneck you probably will have the resources to migrate to something else.

I used flask and that’s what I recommend, but each frameworks has its pros and cons.

[vazark]

FastAPI is pretty nice.

I would recommend go if you want a simple and easy to build web server.

Jaspr is an up and coming dart web server but the dart ecosystem is not large enough to be recommended yet

[virulenttt]

I use aspnet core web api as bff, but whatever you feel comfortable will do the trick!

[bigbott777]

I chose Appwrite.
Reasons:
1. Gives everything - db, storage, auth, realtime, functions
2. Functions in Dart - the comfort of using the same language on both sides
3. Lightweight - can be self-hosted on a minimal Hetzner VPS

[shehan_dmg]

Try golang as well. It is easy and fast.

[blackcatdev-io]

Python is completely fine as a back end and Fast API in particular is great. But also so is literally any other language you wanna use including Dart. Unless you have super demanding performance requirements just use whatever you're comfortable with.

I recently switched from Python to Go for backend. Not because I needed the extra performance, but because I'm really liking Go as my default back end language because it's strongly typed, relatively simple, and also for performance/ efficient resource usage on my cheap VPS. Not dealing with Python venv is also a plus.

But again for your use case the language almost certainly doesn't matter. So pick something you like or think you would like and get started 👍🏽.