FastAPI vs Django in 2024

One of the most common questions from clients: "Should I use FastAPI or Django for the backend?" The answer depends on the project, and in this article I'll compare both frameworks honestly.

Quick Overview

Django — "batteries included". Created in 2005, battle-tested. ORM, admin panel, auth, forms — all out of the box.

FastAPI — a modern async framework. Created in 2018. Maximum API development speed, auto-documentation, full typing support.

Performance

FastAPI is built on Starlette + Pydantic, fully asynchronous:

# FastAPI — async endpoint
@app.get("/users/{user_id}")
async def get_user(user_id: int, db: AsyncSession = Depends(get_db)):
    user = await db.get(User, user_id)
    return user

Django is traditionally synchronous, but native async was added in Django 4.1+:

# Django — async view
async def get_user(request, user_id):
    user = await User.objects.aget(id=user_id)
    return JsonResponse({"name": user.name})

Benchmarks: FastAPI handles ~50,000 req/s, Django ~5,000 req/s under the same conditions. But for most projects this difference doesn't matter.

Out-of-the-box Features

When to Choose Django

• Need a quick admin panel (models → CRUD in 5 minutes)
• Standard website with templates
• Team already knows Django
• Monolith with auth, profiles, content management

# Django — 5 lines and you have a full CRUD admin
from django.db import models

class Article(models.Model):
    title   = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    content = models.TextField()
    created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)

    class Meta:
        ordering = ["-created"]

When to Choose FastAPI

• Pure REST / GraphQL API
• Microservice architecture
• Need auto-documentation out of the box
• High performance requirements
• AI/ML services (great integration with Python ecosystem)

# FastAPI — typing, validation, documentation automatically
from pydantic import BaseModel, EmailStr

class UserCreate(BaseModel):
    email: EmailStr
    name: str
    age: int | None = None

@app.post("/users", response_model=UserResponse, status_code=201)
async def create_user(payload: UserCreate, db: AsyncSession = Depends(get_db)):
    user = User(**payload.model_dump())
    db.add(user)
    await db.commit()
    return user

My Personal Pick

In 90% of projects I choose FastAPI:

1. Pydantic typing eliminates a whole class of bugs
2. Swagger/ReDoc — clients immediately see the API
3. Async — the right architecture for I/O-heavy workloads
4. Easy to test with httpx

I choose Django when I need a quick admin panel or CMS-like logic.

Django + FastAPI Together

A popular pattern — use both:

├── backend/
│   ├── api/          # FastAPI — REST endpoints
│   └── admin/        # Django — internal admin panel

This gives you FastAPI speed for the client API and Django admin convenience for internal operations.

Summary

Both frameworks are excellent tools. It's all about the task.

Need help choosing your stack or building something? Get in touch.