head to head · open source
fastapi vs bichon
fastapi has 102,409 GitHub stars, 9,906 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. bichon has 1,955 stars, 80 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. fastapi leads on adoption by 5,138% (102,409 vs 1,955 stars). fastapi is written in Python under MIT; bichon is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. fastapi has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, bichon 4%. bichon was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (openapi), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| fastapi | bichon | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 102K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.9K | ⑂ 80 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick fastapi if
- You weight community size — 102K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick bichon if
- You want the bichon feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and bichon fits your workflow better
About fastapi
FastAPI is an MIT licensed, high performance Python web framework for building APIs with standard Python type hints, aimed at Python developers and teams that need production ready HTTP services with automatic OpenAPI documentation.
read the full fastapi overview →
About bichon
Bichon is a self hosted email archiving server written in Rust that downloads mail from IMAP accounts, builds a full text search index, and serves a REST API with an embedded WebUI for long term preservation, cross account search, and programmatic access — built for people and teams who need to keep and query large volumes of email rather than send it.
read the full bichon overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is fastapi or bichon more popular?
fastapi has 102,409 GitHub stars and bichon has 1,955. fastapi has the larger community by that measure.
Are fastapi and bichon free?
Both are open source. fastapi is licensed under MIT and bichon under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between fastapi and bichon?
fastapi is written in Python and bichon in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, fastapi or bichon?
Choose fastapi if you want the larger community (102,409 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose bichon if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.