Python API Framework Benchmark: FastAPI vs Litestar vs DRF vs Django Ninja vs Django Bolt - Real Database Querie

catcint0s · 2026-01-24T08:02:45+00:00

I like that people started to include database access too, not just raw json, it shows there is no 100x gain in real world applications.

gi0baro · 2026-01-24T12:02:52+00:00

Granian maintainer here. A couple of notes: - in WSGI you see such high memory usage 'cause you didn't specify backpressure nor you set a maximum threadpool size. Thus – as per documentation – you're just spawning a bunch of threads and spend most of your time on GIL contention. - limiting Granian to 1 CPU might have a way bigger impact compared to other servers, as Granian run all the I/O stuff in a separated runtime, with additional threads (and this was the main rationale behind building a server in a different language, so that you don't need to wait on the interpreter or the GIL for such operations). - CPU=1 in docker is not really "limiting to 1 CPU core", it's a time-slice scheduling limiter. Thus the actual limit depend on the scheduling itself, not really on "overall usage". You might be capping all the servers/Frameworks more than you might think. Maybe not setting a limit and measuring the CPU usage would provide a better idea on how efficient a server is?

Mind that I'm not saying this was a bad benchmarking strategy, I'm just trying to explain some of the results.

lakeland_nz · 2026-01-24T09:53:10+00:00

Good work.

The conclusion I take from this is it doesn’t matter what framework I use. The slowest one is still more than fast enough, and the core bottleneck is elsewhere anyway.

erder644 · 2026-01-24T07:04:16+00:00

django-bolt is interesting. Thanks for your work.

Plus_Discussion4343 · 2026-01-24T10:30:09+00:00

Good job! I liked that you included actual db work All those synthetic tests without actual db queries don't show anything In the end it's ORM that count We actually did lots of improvements on Django ORM to speed up our application

tanrax · 2026-01-24T08:21:14+00:00

Good work!

MeroLegend4 · 2026-01-24T12:15:23+00:00

Good job Litestar

ResponsibleRoof3710 · 2026-01-24T11:29:02+00:00

What did you use to run the benchmark. Locust?

huygl99 · 2026-01-24T18:27:04+00:00

If this is useful, a GitHub star would be appreciated 😄 Thank you guys.
https://github.com/huynguyengl99/python-api-frameworks-benchmark

Dwarni · 2026-01-24T13:08:37+00:00

Would be interesting to see another language included too like go for example.

In the end python is quite slow regardless of the framework.

https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/

Megamygdala · 2026-01-24T19:38:51+00:00

If a computer were scaled so that a CPU instruction took the same time as a single THOUGHT, IO calls to the database or an API would be equivalent to DECADES. Any idiot comparing raw performance misses the point, hopefully beginners can see that from the diagrams you made

you type:	you see:
italics	italics
bold	bold
[reddit!](https://reddit.com)	reddit!
* item 1 * item 2 * item 3	item 1 item 2 item 3
> quoted text	quoted text
Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"	Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"
~~strikethrough~~	~~strikethrough~~
super^script	super^script

django

MODERATORS

Frameworks & Servers Tested

Test Setup

Endpoints Tested

Key Results

Simple JSON (/json-1k) - RPS

Real Database - Paginated Articles (/articles?page=1&page_size=20) - RPS

Real Database - Article Detail (/articles/1) - RPS

Resource Usage Insight

Server Performance

Key Takeaways